I was prepared to dislike the 1993 Cadillac Fleetwood, this country's largest regular-production automobile and the only remaining descendant of the behemoth Caddies of the '50s and '60s.I had pretty much written the review of the car in my mind even before I took delivery of it for a weeklong test drive. The general theme revolved around the automotive equivalent of fat jokes.
The joke was on me. Against all rationality, I found myself liking, even coveting the Fleetwood - all two and a quarter tons of it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something that might sound ridiculous: With a base price of $33,990, the Cadillac Fleetwood may be the best bargain out there in luxury car land.
Regular readers of this column will know that I usually have to reach to find anything good to say about the oversize land yachts that Detroit continued to build in the '70s and '80s even after it became clear that consumers wanted smaller, better handling and more fuel-efficient cars.
The Big Three thought they knew better than their customers. The result was that imports took away 30 percent of their business.
Eventually, Detroit figured out that buyers were serious about this downsizing thing, and even mighty Cadillac reluctantly got into the act in the early '80s with its Cimaron, a baby Caddy that dealers didn't want to sell and traditional Cadillac customers didn't want to buy. It was eventually dropped.
Those were dark years for Cadillac, a proud marque that had long ruled as the ultimate American symbol of success but which saw that position eroded by pricier cars from Germany and Sweden and, most recently, Japan.
Cadillac might have gone the way of some other domestic cars that had failed to keep pace in the second half of this century - Packard, Hudson, DeSoto and Studebaker come to mind.
Cadillac has avoided that fate but had to reinvent itself to do it. While no longer the undisputed king of the hill, its Seville and Eldorado models now compete head-to-head with the best of the world's carmakers.
Then there's the Fleetwood. It no longer has swooping tailfins (although vestigial fins remain) but it remains one enormous car at nearly 19 feet long and more than 6 feet wide. If you pull into a parking space and bump the Fleetwood's front wheels against the curb, the front end hangs over the sidewalk nearly 4 feet. The rear overhang is nearly 5 feet.
For someone who normally drives a Honda Civic, getting behind the wheel of a Fleetwood is like a pilot making the transition from a Cessna 150 to a Boeing 747.
But there is a lot to be said for 747s. For one thing, they hold a lot. On a let's-escape-the-snow trip to St. George earlier this month, the Fleetwood's trunk (20.8 cubic feet) swallowed four sets of golf clubs and a dozen or so suitcases, satchels and sacks. In a word, it's huge.
The trunk lid is also big and heavy, but that's no problem. Push the proper button on the key-chain remote and it doesn't just pop the latch, the trunk lid flies full open. This is a great feature, but I suppose it could be dangerous if someone were leaning over the trunk at the moment of release.
Closing the lid is also a snap: Push it down to where the latch touches and it screws itself down tight. Again, a nice feature but you wouldn't want your fingers in there at the moment of truth.
The Fleetwood's exterior is as low-key and refined as a 19-foot car with whitewall tires can be. Yes, it's big, but Cadillac's design gurus have been circumspect: No opera windows, no vinyl top (standard but deletable on the Fleetwood Brougham version) and no continental kit. Lose the Fleetwood's whitewalls and standup hood ornament, and its a refined and tasteful automobile.
The Fleetwood has an all new body style for 1993. It is 4.1 inches longer than last year and is much more aerodynamic. Both the windshield and back window are larger with a flush-glass design that makes the car more slippery and reduces wind noise. A new grille is integrated into the hood, and the doors are a single, stamped piece of metal that fit perfectly.Cadillac saved the best for the interior. Intended to hold six adults, when there are just four on board it's as plush and roomy as it gets in a motorcar. It's like sitting in a La-Z-Boy.
The instrument panel is very clean and functional. The excellent sound system has large, comprehensible buttons and both cassette tape and CD players, a very nice touch.
Safety? All the usual stuff as well as anti-lock brakes and both driver's and passenger's side air bags. But the Fleetwood's real safety feature is its size. Short of a Kenworth, almost every vehicle on the road is smaller than the Caddie. In an accident, the Fleetwood's sheer mass will go a long way toward protecting its occupants.
Handling is surprisingly good for a car this size. The Fleetwood has little of the bounce, dive and terminal understeer that I remember from driving its Brobdingnagian ancestors. No, it's no sports car, it's not even a BMW or Infiniti sedan, but it's a quantum leap ahead of its predecessors when it comes to cornering.
It's also surprisingly quick, again for a car of its size. The 5.7 liter fuel injected V8 will propel the Fleetwood to 60 mph in a respectable 10.5 seconds, according to Cadillac's figures, and I don't dispute them. While 10.5 seconds is from from high-performance territory, the car felt much faster than either the Audi 100 CS or Mercedes-Benz 300 that I reported on last month.
Even the car's gas mileage is decent. EPA rated at 16 city and 25 highway, I got 20.43 mpg in mostly highway driving, not awesome but more than acceptable for a car weighing 4,418 pounds and carrying a full load of passengers and gear. With a generous 23-gallon gasoline tank, the car's cruising range is 460 mpg with me driving; 575 mpg if you believe the EPA figures.
Also, the Fleetwood does not carry a "gas guzzler" tax, an amazing feat considering its size and weight.
Base price is $33,990. My test car had the "security package" (auto door locks, remote key entry, theft deterrent system) at $545, leather seats at $570, upgraded sound system at $360 and an automatic day/night rear view mirror for $396. With destination charges, the bottom line was $36,211.
A bargain? Not when taken out of context. But against its competitors, some of which cost tens of thousands more, the case can easily be made.