With characteristic Cadillac swagger, the GM luxury brand described its 1958 edition as “Motordom’s Masterpiece.”
In the glory years of the Motor City styling studios, annual facelifts were sort of a mixed bag. They’re not really done anymore, and they’re not really missed. Often, yearly restyles were no more than change for the sake of change, not necessarily aesthetic improvements. They were performed in the service of planned obsolescence and all that, luring buyers into the showrooms to keep up with the Joneses. However, there were exceptions here and there. The 1958 Cadillac restyle had an actual purpose behind it.
Series 62 Extended Deck Sedan
According to the preeminent historian Michael Lamm writing in Collectible Automobile (August 1997) the Cadillac styling team led by studio chief Ed Glowacke was more than pleased with the 1957 car. “We were all crazy about the 1957 Cadillac design,” stylist David Holls told Lamm. “We just loved it.” However, feedback from dealers and customers reflected a different opinion. In their view, the ’57 cars didn’t look big enough. The public felt they lacked physical presence—a critical factor among luxury car buyers at the time.
So for the ’58 facelift, the stylists were directed to add more heft to their look. While the new car was barely one inch longer, it was made to look larger in every direction. Quad headlamps (first seen on the ’57 Eldorado Brougham) were adopted across the board and the grille was widened. Out back, the reverse-canted tailfins were flipped and stretched almost to the rear bumper to lengthen the profile. For Cadillac buyers who desired even more physical presence, an Extended Deck version of the Series 62 Hardtop Sedan was offered, which added another 8.5 inches to the trunk and quarter panels on the same 129.5-in wheelbase. It outsold the standard-deck version by a healthy margin.
As this was simply a facelift, the X-frame chassis introduced in ’57 returned with no major changes. Air suspension, standard on the ’57 Eldorado Brougham, was now offered on all models as a $215 option, but fewer than 15 percent of Cadillac buyers checked that box. On the standard suspension cars, coil springs and trailing arms replaced the rear leaf springs of ’57. Output of the standard 365 CID V8 was boosted to 310 hp with a bump in compression ratio, while the dual four-barrel carburetors on the 335 hp Eldorado V8 were exchanged for three two-barrels.
Sixty Special
In these years, Cadillac towered over the rest of rest of the U.S. luxury car field, with sales more than double that of Lincoln, Imperial, and Packard combined. The brand’s advertising reflected that complete dominance with slogans that read like royal decrees. The 1958 Cadillac was “a crowning achievement from every standpoint,” according to Cadillac, anyway. Here, declared the sales catalog, was “Motordom’s Masterpiece.” Sales actually slipped in 1958 by 17 percent, a rare occurrence for Cadillac that was triggered by a recession, but Lincoln and Imperial suffered far worse while Packard breathed its last. Cadillac continued to rule over the premium car field.
Eldorado Biarritz
That would be focus group feedback on the ’57s I assume? Wouldn’t the ’58 already be finalized and sent to tooling by the time the ’57s were launched?
I’m surprised one of the changes they made wasn’t eliminating the 5 chrome pieces on the rear doors which, even though they were below the beltline and more horizontal than the single upright trim piece on the ’57, still formed a vertical point the car would’ve looked longer without.
The 1958 GM cars all across the board looked similar (perhaps in honor of General Motors’ 50th anniversary), so it’s not surprising that Cadillac had the fanciest looks of them all). Harley Earl wanted as much chrome as could be shoveled on any of his creations, so I am amazed the Cadillac seemed to have less glitter than say, an Oldsmobile 98 or Buick Limited… Interestingly, with the exception of the 75 sedan and limousine and/or the Eldorados, ANY 1958 Cadillac outsold more cars than Packard did (2,622 Packards all told that year)!