What are those "Upscale Sporty Coupes" noted in the headline? I'm referring to the 1966-67 generation of the Oldsmobile Toronado, Buick Riviera, and Cadillac Eldorado that shared the same body platform. (Though this was not the case for 1971-1978 redesigns that had platform and wheelbase differences.) I wrote about 1966-67 here in a post titled "A High Point in Platform-Based Brand Styling Variation." As for the 1986 model year redesigns, I touched on that in my post "Sorta Sporting Siblings for 1986 by Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Buick" here.
My motivation for writing the present post was the fact that the 1986-generation Cadillac Seville sedan shared those coupes' new 108-inch (2743 mm) wheelbase. (Previous-generation coupes and Sevilles had a 114-inch (2896 mm) wheelbase, part of a GM-wide downsizing. One result was lower sales levels for Seville. Another was the 1992 Seville redesign using a longer wheelbase of 111 inches (2819 mm) that saw increased sales levels.
As for the coupes' futures, the Toronado was discontinued after its 1986-1992 model year run. The Riviera also was dropped, but reappeared 1995-1999 on a 113.8-inch (2891 mm) wheelbase. Eldorados were continued for model years 1992-2002, but with the 108-inch wheelbase.
Images below are left-side views of those models over the two design generations discussed above. Plus a 1992 short-wheelbase Eldorado. Unless noted, images are of for-sale cars.
Door cutlines and passenger compartment profiles (including the blanked C/corner panels) are the same for all the '79 models. Here the wheel openings are rounded, and the door sculpting aligns with fore (almost) and aft side sculpting.
Side trim is relegated to rocker panels. The fenderline subtly curves in homage to previous post-1962 Rivieras.
Side sculpting is positioned about the same as on the Toronado. Wheel openings are not round -- a carryover from earlier Eldorados.
The reduced wheelbase yields a Toronado that does not seem like a Toronado. Which is likely why sales were only around half those of the 1979 generation, resulting in the model being dropped from Oldsmobiles's portfolio.
The fenderline barely hints at a flow. Sales levels collapsed even more than Toronado's.
The long-established Eldorado image is contradicted by this small vehicle. The styling of all three of these '86 generation coupes isn't bad, but not product market image-appropriate. Here too, Eldorado sales were generally less than half of those of the 1979 generation.
Cadillac already had a seriously short 101.2-inch (3570 mm) wheelbase in its 1982+ entry-level Cimarron. They did not sell well despite being priced about half that of Sevilles. But the stubby 1986 generation Sevilles, like the Eldorados, sold about half as well as those of the previous (1980) generation.
Although General Motors and other American carmakers needed to downsize their products starting in the late 1970s, GM clearly overshot the reduction for its 1986 generation of upscale sporty cars, as production data reveal. Yet for some reason the 1992 Cadillac Eldorado generation seems to be a heavily facelifted 1986-generation design. Unsurprisingly, sales volumes remained in the same reduced range.
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