1985 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d’Elegance: When America Wasn’t Afraid of Luxury
Once upon a time, a person who had done well for themselves could drive down to their local Cadillac or Lincoln dealer, and with ease, get a truly luxury conveyance. Vinyl top, moonroof, coach lamps, opera windows, velour or leather, power everything, and elegant good looks.
Oh, and size too—most of these ’80s domestic luxo-cruisers had plenty of that to spare, most being six-passenger capable with front and rear bench seats. Why don’t we have cars like this anymore? Why does everyone have to have a crossover or SUV?
Yes, I understand they are popular with many, and have their uses. But decades ago, Bill Mitchell, GM’s head honcho in Styling, said it takes just as much money to design and bring to market an ugly car as it does a beautiful one. So where have all the attractive cars gone?
Take the 1985 Fleetwood Brougham. Sure, it wasn’t precisely the kind of Cadillac that existed, say, from 1950 to 1960, but it was still large, imposing, comfortable, and clearly a luxury car.
And Cadillac was still Cadillac, recognizable as such to folks who may have somehow warped from 1950, 1960 or 1970. Today, those time traveling folks might not understand an Escalade or XT5 is a product of the wreath and crest.
The 1985 Fleetwood Brougham was in its sixth year of relatively unchanged visual appearance, though the basic design had been around since 1977. It was the third year of the polarizing HT4100 V-8 with digital fuel injection.
To hear folks tell it, it’s either a reliable albeit leisurely power plant, or the worst thing in the automotive world ever. Of course, it was ushered in due to emissions and CAFE, and early ones definitely had teething issues.
But my friend Jayson Coombes had an ’84 Seville Elegante and drove it on many CLC tours trouble-free, with the A/C cranked the whole time. As he related, “My experience was if you followed the maintenance schedule it worked just fine.”
Another friend’s father in law had a similar vintage Seville, and put over 140,000 miles on it, again with no major issues, until he finally replaced it in the ’90s.
Few are neutral about this engine! But the later ones were improved, and in the lighter front-wheel drive 1985 de Villes and Fleetwoods, they didn’t have to work quite so hard. It eventually was modified into the much improved 4.5-liter V-8 in 1988, and the 4.9 starting in 1991.
As for the Fleetwood Brougham, in 1985 it remained available as a $20,798 coupe or $21,402 sedan. The d’Elegance package remained available on both, and possessed some of the comfiest seats of the year, with a “lawyer’s office” button-tufted, floating-pillow style.
This was the final year for the Fleetwood Brougham coupe, which first appeared in mid-1980. Starting in 1986, the Fleetwood Brougham would become sedan-only, and remain so all the way to the end in 1996. Though there would still be a smaller front-wheel drive Fleetwood Coupe through the 1992 model year.
52,450 Fleetwood Brougham sedans and 3,000 coupes were built for the model year. Of course the HT4100 remained under the hood, but for 1986 it would be replaced with the Oldsmobile-supplied 307-cubic inch V-8 instead.
’85 4100s produced 135 hp and benefited from new cast aluminum rocker covers. The same engine, mounted transversely in the de Ville, Fleetwood, and Fleetwood 75 limo, produced 125 hp.
Our featured d’Elegance was recently in inventory at my friend Anthony Gozzo’s classic car dealership, and I was immediately smitten with the color combination.
Today’s luxury cars typically have tan, beige, gray or black interiors, with white, silver or black exteriors, a country mile away in luxuriousness when compared to today’s Fleetwood, finished in Medium Blue Firemist with white leather and white padded roof.
I especially love how the white leather is contrasted with the dark blue instrument panel and carpeting. I miss colors. And sedans with stand-up hood ornaments and cushy interiors. Not everything has to be a sport sedan, faux or otherwise, you know!
Anthony didn’t have a ton of information of the car’s history, but relayed that it was a one-owner car.
The owner was Rick Minton, who was in the House of Representatives for the state of Florida back in the 1990s. He donated it to a non-profit, which is where Anthony saw it and eagerly snapped it up. He’d had it a while and recently decided to get it out of the far corner of the garage and get it presentable.
As you read this, it’s now with a happy new owner, no doubt pleased with the fantastic colors and power Astroroof!
Please post my contact info on I have been following you for years thanks Ross
So nice to hear other people’s story of these cars nothing today could even come close to these cars that was when they built cars not just stamp out a few light plastic crap. Lol.
I had a 307 powered ‘86 Fleetwood Brougham in Platinum with Academy Grey roof Platinum leather interior. It was a fabulous car.
The back seat looks like the sofa from my grandmother’s house as a kid. It just needs the plastic wrap on it.
Fun to see cars of this vintage. They usually have aluminum tape on the rear bumpers covering the rust. I’ve come to expect that. Without it the look is lacking,almost incomplete. Next time photograph in the garage next to the golf cart in anywhere Florida to complete the Klockau Classic look. Gary B is right.The back seat does indeed look like grandmas sofa…but vinyl covers don’t prevent that old fart smell.
I owned a 1983 Coupe De Ville with the 4100 engine. Terrible gutless engine. I now have a 1991 Broughm D’Elegance with 350. Perfect ride. The car is very heavy thus the 4100 or the 305’s were never powerful enought for this beast. Alot of 305’s blew up due to the weight.
Three of my college roommates and I drove one of these from Ft Lauderdale to NYC on our way home from Spring Break in 1985, via Auto Driveaway (a company that got cars from one place to another for the snowbird crowd). What a great way to travel! It was very comfortable, and powerful enough to drift it through highway interchanges. Both the car and the travelers arrived without a scratch. Still remember that trip like it was yesterday.
I worked as a tech at a Cadillac dealer back in the early ’80’s through the mid ’90’s. I was there to experience all of the work that the HT 4100 brought to us. The engine was surely gutless and it had one basic fault that created all of the mechanical issues that were associated with the HT 4100 such as camshafts and main bearing problems. Gasket technology had not yet figured out how to seal dissimilar metals and the intake manifold gaskets used to leak as the aluminum intake and iron heads expanded and contracted at different rates. The intake gaskets would leak just enough coolant to degrade the oil so camshafts and the main bearings would wear out prematurely. We also had some sticking exhaust valves due to the intake gaskets leaking oil onto the hot exhaust valves causing them to stick in their guides. You could remove the intake manifold bolts with your fingers as the gaskets wore out. We also had a few vehicles with stacked ring gaps that used oil. I was told that the machine that installed the rings put them on all at once and the end gaps were all aligned when the piston came out of the machine. The next step before installation was for the rings to be shifted in their grooves to stager the end gaps by the assembly line worker. Apparently sometimes this step was neglected and an oil burning engine was the result. Fortunately, GM came out with a new intake gasket and fasteners in 1989 that would work with all of the previous HT 4100 engines. The gasket looked like it was coated in graphite and the intake bolts had very large Beville washers that acted as springs to hold the intake manifold on the engine. The new gaskets and bolts worked perfectly and an engine with the new gaskets would last forever. Unfortunately it took GM seven years of pain and warranty claims to come up with an answer. It made for a lot of angry customers but it kept our service department very busy.
I’m sympathetic, I really am. Always wanted a Caddy or Lincoln about 19′ long or so, with lots of chrome, a V8 appropriate for marine applications, and that velour bench-seat upholstery that could double as the world’s most comfortable living room couch. So I’m with you. But let’s blame their extinction upon the correct parties: it wasn’t government regulations that killed these great beasts, it was changing tastes in the marketplace, and a realization by manufacturers that they could make more money selling modified pick up trucks than they could specialized platforms like that upon which this lovely-if-underpowered beast resides. It was people just like you and me, and the manufacturers we love to lionize, who decided that an Escalade was more desirable (and profitable) than a Sedan de Ville. I don’t think the world is a better place for it, but we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves.
Really nice-looking, but that 4100 is a deal-killer; even if it had been more reliable, it was still lame-dog slow.
Late to the party here but I have a 1988 burgundy specimen with the 307. It’s my 2nd driver when the ’87 F-250 is having a bad day. Of course all nine plastic “body filler” parts have dissolved but everything still works, even the AC! The Astro sunroof embedded in the padded vinyl roof has developed a leak, no big deal. It is gutless (only 145 hp) but it’s great to have. Blows minds at the gas station when I pull up far ahead so I can fill it from behind the license plate. Turn on the radio and the antenna rises from the fender. Just changed the incandescent bulb in the rear deck mounted brake light. A time machine indeed.