Look at that image up there. There’s an element to it that has always baffled me. It’s not the Cadillac Seville itself, with its bold bustle-back rear; that I’ve always respected. It’s not the use of electric lights made to look like gas lamps on the street – that’s a bit of strange nostalgic subterfuge but I guess it’s not really hurting anyone, and has its charm, I suppose. It’s not Williams-Sonoma, though I do think their letterspacing on that awning is a bit too tight and I can’t afford anything in there, most likely. It’s not the woman’s bangs, which I think are fantastic. It’s not even the garish wire wheelcovers, which at least can be used to grate cheese in a pinch. No, it’s something far worse.
It’s the roof.
Specifically, that roof that is not just a vinyl roof, but is what Cadillac called a “full cabriolet roof,” and is sometimes called other things like a “carriage roof” or “landau top” (even though I think this one is wrong, because there are not necessarily any actual landau bars present) or simply “fake convertible top.”
They’re terrible, but you could get them as a factory option from Cadillac back in the ’80s and well beyond that:
According to Cadillac’s copywriters, this was an “added look of distinction,” I suppose the distinction being that you were a person with the sort of taste that would make the most common greeting you get at any social gathering be “the fuck are you wearing?”
It wasn’t just Cadillac, of course. All the major American luxury car makers dipped deeply into this tepid, gelatinous cask of faux-class. Look, here’s one from Lincoln:
Let’s clarify the key traits of a fake convertible top over just a vinyl roof. The crucial part here, like in so many things in life, is intent: a vinyl top is what it is, and the only subterfuge most vinyl tops harbor is that they’re likely hiding a lot of rust and sloppy factory bodywork on the roof itself. But a fake convertible top’s goal is to deceive: it wants to look as though it is an actual, foldable convertible roof, even though it isn’t. As a result of this deceptive nature, we can see traits like these:
The fake ribs are likely the most common and essential defining trait; this is the basic essence of what separates the fake convertible top from the vinyl top, the pantomime of an underlying structure of convertible top ribs that don’t actually exist. The line of useless snaps around the base is an extra, advanced option, suggesting the attachment points of a convertible top boot that only exists in the fevered imagination of some likely long-dead designer.
An embroidered (or sometimes silkscreened) logo helps to draw attention to the fact that the roof is fabric (covered), and it’s worth noting that fabric is a more convertible-appropriate canvas-type material instead of vinyl.
Finally, we have the most obvious tell that this is all a ruse: the door cuts. These are likely the biggest slap in the face of all of this, the way the whole illusion of the convertible is brutally shattered by seeing the very clear cutlines for the doors that go right into the allegedly fabric roof. And that’s already if somehow you were able to ignore the fact that a huge four-door car like this is a pretty unlikely convertible in the first place.
What was the appeal of these tops? They mostly died out in the ’90s- early 2000s, but not entirely. It’s still possible to see a modern, aerodynamic car with one of these tops and it looks absolutely preposterous.
Were people just wanting to feel like they had a convertible, but without the option of being able to do the one thing with the car that makes it fun, taking down the top? Is this feeding some kind of denial or frustration fetish? A sort of automotive retelling of the myth of Tantalus, condemned to always offer the temptation of taking down the top, but never able to actually realize it.
It’s cruel.
Unrelated, but from this same brochure, is this wonderful illustration of the Seville’s remarkable four speaker sound system:
It’s so wonderfully laser-y in there, with those sound beams bouncing all over the place! It looks like the rear speakers bounce sound off the rear window, which then bounces off the windshield, where it then saturates the driver? Am I reading that right?
Also, those two little slots in each of the rear speaker units look exactly like USB-A ports, making this feel strangely prescient.
But two tone cars almost always look better than mono colour. Think the false vinyl thing came when they copied the first Citroën DS cars with their white fibre glass roofs, absolutely revolutionary at the time…
I think vinyl roofs became a thing because it was another option they could charge extra for. And because a lot of people have bad taste.
“Parking on the wrong side of the street” is what irks me (though it might be a one-way street).
A friend had a late-90s Olds Cutlass (the one that was a slightly nicer fifth-gen Malibu) with a fake-convertible vinyl roof. It looked terrible, since the shape of the car was “melting butter” and then it had odd corners and hard angles on the roof. It was the cheapest running and driving car my friend could find, and I think the hideous roof was a big reason why.
AMEN!
I remember seeing a beautiful blue 2004-2007 CTS-V with a tan fake convertible roof and thinking how strange for a fake vert to be installed on a 400HP, rowdy, V8 manual Cadillac.
I was going to comment on my greatest disappointment with these nasty vinyl roofs being on a brand new red 2009 CTS-V at the Caddy dealer by my office in West Houston. They not only had the audacity to put a white vinyl, pseudo-convertible top on it, but then to charge $8500 for it AND add another $5000 for a bunch of tacky chrome bits they added all over the inside and outside of the car. I’m still not sure what the dealership was thinking doing those kinds of mods to it, but it sat on the lot for at least six months.
I still remember driving past Cadillac dealers and seeing a then-new CTS with the vinyl roof treatment. To complete the aesthetic, it would also have chrome wheels and whitewalls. This is all done by the (multiple) dealers, and often displayed proudly in the showroom where the flagship should have been parked. Talk about desecration of what was a genuinely competitive sports sedan, and I can’t believe Cadillac corporate allowed that.
Some dealers will still install these today. The worst I ever saw in person was a Ford Contour.
Those ugly fake convertible tops, gold badging, big ass Rolls Royce style grills, vogue tires, etc are a very north Jersey or Staten Island look. Usually found on a Cadillac or Lincoln driven by some slick haired 300lb goomba in a track suit named Paulie, Vinny, Tony, Rocco or Carmine.
Naive question: can these be removed and the roof repainted? Or are they glued in such a manner that it would ill-advised?
I see them on newer cars and just assume it was a half-assed hail repair. You can buy a new trunk and a new hood, but the roof is part of the unibody. That’s expensive to fix. So why not cover it with fakery?
My issue is they didn’t take it far enough.
I say go ahead and upholster the whole car.
https://www.theautopian.com/this-absurd-car-is-really-a-truck-with-vinyl-body-panels-and-wild-pop-open-doors/
Brings to mind Madeline Kahn’s Louis Vuitton Seville (with matching pantsuit) in High Anxiety, which actually predates the real Gucci Seville by a year!
The worst part of my convertible is the top, and how it looks when up. Most convertibles look worse with the top up. Why then would anyone willing style their car like that??
I had an 88 Fleetwood Brouham with the white “half” vinyl top. I loved the look of that car.
The Hater’s Guide to the Faux-Convertible Roof Catalog
(I hate these so much, too. I don’t even enjoy convertibles, so why would I want my brougham to make it look like we’re about to eat bits of wafting hair for “fun?” A standard vinyl roof can add some style and contrast, but these just look goofy. My impatience for fakes, frauds and liars extends to vehicle options, I guess.)
I always hated these carriage tops. I hate the bustle-back Sevilles too. I was a small child when they were new, and ever then I got viscerally angry every time I was one.
Until a few years ago, I had a neighbor in his 80’s who drove a celery green late 2000’s Nissan Altima, with a tan carriage top, chrome wheels, and vogue tires. It was the ugliest car … in the world.
So many otherwise beautiful cars were junked up with vinyl roofs. It was one of the worst periods of automotive fads.
Wait until the current cars with DRLs and headlights as separate units age. It will be like the 00’s “Altezza” tail lights fad.
https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/08/29/08/hyundai-kona-electric-0923-dynamic-01.jpg
The “tablet stuck on top of the dash” infotainments is already looking terrible and it’s just a few years old.
https://www.carkeys.co.uk/media/20847/all-new-mazda_cx-3_sp_2015_interior_12_hires.jpg
Buddy of mine worked on infotainment units for Porsche. He was driving a Mercedes at the time and used it’s terrible infotainment screen as a place to stick a suction cup mount for his iPhone.
I saw a video earlier today about one of the European countries (or was it an EU thing?) changing regulations so that some functions like wipers, turn signals, HVAC, and audio go back to using physical switches and buttons. It’s for safety. They don’t want drivers searching for stuff on touch screens, drawing their attention from the road. Yay! Some car makers are already doing this.
I remember these being particularly popular in Boston years ago. One time in the early 2000s I visited and was surprised to see a Ford Tempo and a Pontiac Bonneville with this roof treatment.
I have always held that the fake convertible top is the automotive equivalent of stuffing a sock in your underwear. Yeah, some idiot may fall for it, but once she’s inside, the party’s over.
Sock? I’m from Idaho, boy. We use a potato.
Potato? I’m from Canada. We use snowballs.
Snowballs? I’m from Costa Rica, we use bananas
PO-TA-TOES, boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in your pants
They exist because lots of Americans with significant money have aggressively terrible taste and go for the most obnoxious, look-at-me option available. This is why BMW’s newer designs have done relatively well, and full-size pickups tend to look like a prop from a Michael Bay movie.
Laser lights, LSD and Pink Floyd….”The standard of the world…..”
Feels like an unnecessary diss on Pink Floyd to associate them with this garbage
On a second thought, it’s also wrong towards LSD and laser lights.
No, my friend. Disco balls, Quaaludes and that cheesy Walter Murphy cover of Beethoven’s Fifth. That’s how you roll in a bustleback Seville.
I had forgotten all about “A Fifth of Beethoven”. Loved that song when I was kid. I was a dumb kid.
It’s a further evolution of the yearning for an “easier” lifestyle, the “ye olde America” movement of the immediate post-World War 2 era.
It’s also simply a design fix for the inherent shortcomings of a stylish convertible, concurrent with the introduction of Di-Noc sides to replace wood on station wagons.
That’s the way hardtops were originally advertised in the fifties; the look of a convertible without the hassle. They said so in the copy (I think Chevy actually called the 1950 the “hardtop convertible” iirc; please correct me if I’m wrong). This to me seems like the logical next step in that post-colonial-influenced suburban Sloanian 1950s aspirational narrative; bastardized by the Lidos of the industry to the largest extent. Also remembering that car styles to this day bear influence and names from the carriage trade, e.g. sedan, wagon, coupe, and not too long ago, brougham. In the further subdivision of the neo-post-colonial 70s, the Bill Blass boating influence era, this reached a peak. The Captain and Tennille effect?
But in essence: There was always whimsy in coach building, dating back hundreds of years. We still live in that world. Except now the sleight of hand is, for instance, a four-door “coupe” or the way FCA butched up the Jeep Renegade its last year.
TLDR: I’d say the vinyl or cloth roofed style was a surrey with a fringe on top, as it were?
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top-norman-johnson.jpg
I never liked fake convertible tops because they’re there purely for cosmetic reasons. However, aren’t MOST of the things on cars and many other products driven by looks? In that regard, this car is just another relic of an era of car design. One can hate the top, but that’s just how things were.
If I had more money or time I would love to restomod a Seville. I love the look.
Minus the stupid faux-vertible.
I have a soft spot for them, when I was in elementary school my grandfather had one, in a gorgeous blue (Almost like 1960’s GM “Marina Blue”) with navy blue velour interior. I LOVED riding in the back seat of that car; it was so comfy.
You can keep your fancy Napa leather, crushed velour is where it’s at.
IIRC, he bought it used from a neighbor, and it still had the original diesel in it, he eventually had that swapped for a gas V8. I’m also pretty sure it did not have the rot top.
Back in the day when these cars were new you had to look at the people who bought them, it was mostly the older crowd. Then look at the time period they grew up in I can see how they may relate to these things.
Warm take: This was just early adoption of vinyl wraps. Nobody believed these were convertibles just like nobody believes that Cybertruck came from the factory with iridescent purple paint.YOU ALL MUST HIDE YOUR SHAME. Hide it.
I don’t hate that, but I think the MOPAR mod tops win that honor:
https://mooresmopars.com/
My parents bought a 1979 Cadillac Coupe Deville with one of these tops in the early 80’s. White body over white interior with a navy blue top. I think this is what cemented my dislike for Cadillac style at an early age.