Introduced in 1938, the Sixty Special was a style setter for the Cadillac division at General Motors. But the final Sixty Special of 1993 wasn’t really all that special.

A few months ago here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we shared the story of the original Cadillac Sixty Special. Introduced in 1938, it altered the styling course of the Cadillac divsion and launched the career of a young stylist named Bill Mitchell, who eventually became vice president of General Motors design. (See our feature here.) Through numerous product generations, the Sixty Special would continue in the lineup for another 55 years, though the final edition of 1993 was an anticlimax, to be truly honest about it.

For its final product cycle of 1989-93. the SIxty Special was closely based on the de Ville, Cadillac’s volume leader, and built on the same GM C-body front-drive platform and 113.8-inch wheelbase. Same 4.9 liter V8 with 200 hp, same four-speed automatic transmission and so on. But for ’93, the Fleetwood designation was dropped (the name was relocated to a larger rear-drive model) and the car was now labeled as simply the Cadillac Sixty Special. And on the exterior, there wasn’t really all that much to distinguish the Sixty Special from a standard de Ville—mainly, a pair of fender skirts partially shrouding the rear wheels.

The Sixty Special did get its own interior, with real American Walnut trim on the doors and instrument panel and the buyer’s choice of standard Esteem cloth or optional leather upholstery. There was also a super-deluxe Ultra interior package exclusive to the Sixty Special with 22-way adjustable seat for another $3,550. Three audio systems were offered, with the top of the line represented by a Delco/Bose Gold Series unit with a built-in CD player and equalization tuned for Sixty Special’s cabin dynamics.

For the Sixty Special’s final year, serious consideration was given to offering a coupe, easy enough to do as the de Ville was produced in a two-door body style. This would have been the first production coupe in the Sixty Special’s history, but in the end only a four-door was offered. Priced at $37,830, roughly $6,000 more than the remarkably similar de Ville, the Sixty Special sold only 5,286 units in its final year and did not return for 1994. Since then, Cadillac has cycled through several generations of model-naming conventions without looking backward, so it seems unlikely we will ever see the Sixty Special name again.