The Cadillac DeVille was General Motors idea of making a car destined to be driven in an urban environment. In fact, the name itself originates from French where it means “town car”.
Throughout the history of the Cadillac DeVille it has undergone no less than eleven generations with production periods dated between 1949 and 2005.
The Cadillac DeVille has had numerous trim levels, options but there were a few things that never changed; the engine may have varied from 4.1 to 8.2 liters but it was always a V8 powerplant and it was always connected to an automatic transmission.
In the mind of many, the Cadillac DeVille is the iconic American luxury car and since at no point in its life did it have a wheelbase that was shorter than 2.8 meters, if there was one thing it was never lacking in it was space.
Curb weight for the lightest Cadillac DeVille came in at 3.800 lbs and since the large V8 engines never went past the 300 horsepower figure you can imagine the incredible amount of performance it lacked at all point in existence.
That’s something the Cadillac DeVille never was known for anything other than comfort so why not give it credit for that to say the least. In 2006 the Cadillac DeVille was replaced by the DTS.
EVERY CADILLAC from 1956 through 1970 had OVER 300 HP! When the 1970 472 cid (375 Horse power DeVille ) was outdone by the Eldorado 500 cid at 400 HP with 550 lbs of torque in 1970 only, but the tamer version was in the Eldo only 70-74 and in all models for 75-76! Before the 500 cid (8.2 ltr) Eldorado in 1970 all Cadillacs got the same engine and all of them made over 300 hp from 56-70 and the 472 & 500 on a dyno made 340 hp stock from 71-76 even though they were rated much lower for insurance and emissions reasons! Trust me, a 190 hp engine in a 5500 lb car would barely move let alone burn rubber but a well tuned 76 DeVille would burn rubber across a 5 lane intersection without much trouble!