Shed of the Week: Cadillac Seville STS
The fifth generation Seville was the first to receive European type approval. Now it gets the Shed seal, too...
The average size of the motor car through history makes for an interesting social commentary. In the early Edwardian days, when only members of royalty or the Nabob of Bengal could afford them, they were massive - and that was before they even had roofs.
The introduction of world wars had an ensmallening effect on cars, as you might expect, but once the austerity reins were off in the 1950s there was no holding the Americans. They went all in on bulk, girth and chrome, with nary a thought given to party-pooping considerations like fuel consumption or good taste.
But by the early 1990s, even General Motors was realising that they needed to broaden their appeal a little beyond the tobacco-chewing, stetson-wearing Caddy customer who wanted to see 'spitoon' on the options list and liked a nice long bonnet on which to lash a couple of freshly murdered deer. Enter stage right the gen-four Seville of 1992, coming in either SLS (Seville Luxury Sedan) or STS (Seville Touring Sedan) versions.
This baby boomer luxury car was the smallest ever Cadillac. It was designed to draw younger customers into the brand, which shouldn't have been a difficult task given that the typical full-size Cadillac DTS or De Ville customer back then was an octogenarian with perfectly cemented silver hair, white calf-length sports socks and a Zimmer frame sporting a bicycle bell, a few witty bumper stickers and a wire basket for the supermarket slippers.
Sadly for GM, those old-timers didn't want small Cadillacs because they didn't have enough metal to crash with, so it was time to look beyond national boundaries. The gen-five 1998 Seville STS was the first Euro type-approved Cadillac, and the first one to be built in RHD as well as LHD. In a sop to our sensitivities, the Euro STS was five inches shorter than the American model, but that didn't stop us Brits laughing and pointing at it.
However, the embiggening plague of the last decade that is about to make parking your car and getting out of it an either/or proposition means that, dare we say it, the 1800kg STS that is this week's Shed looks almost sportily compact now. Its 2850mm wheelbase is the same as that of a 2005 Lexus GS. At five metres, it's shorter than an Audi Q7 or a BMW 7 Series.
Under the deer-friendly bonnet we find its best feature: the L37 Northstar 4.6-litre V8. This produced 300hp at a lofty 6000rpm, somewhat more than a GS ever had, and delivering a decidedly unshabby 0-60 time in the mid-sixes. Slightly annoyingly, the STS is front-wheel drive, but that does at least mean you'll be able to get it off your driveway when the slush and ice returns in a few weeks time.
There's not much room in the back, but the boot is a goodly size. The interior materials are decent, the assembly not so much. Where the Caddy does score is on creature comforts. It's properly loaded. Besides the Bose stereo, full climate and electrified, perforated, heated leather pillow seats with all the comfort and adjustment you could ever want, it even had electrically adjustable seatbelts. That operation might involve a degree of squeaking though, because it's not something you're likely to be doing more than once unless you're planning on getting pregnant a lot, or have to regularly vary your body size for major film roles.
What about the bad stuff? Well, it goes without saying that a 4.6-litre V8 is not going to be ideal if you're motoring on a sub-Nabob budget and most of your driving is in built-up areas. So we won't say that. These chain-cam Northstars are pretty good motors generally, but they can go through a bit of oil, either burnt or leaked from the crankcase. Sure enough, last December's MOT report on this car did make mention of an engine leak, and of another one from the steering rack. It also mentions some rear subframe corrosion, but let's ignore that and hope it goes away of its own volition, ha ha.
More leaks can occur at the water pump and the plastic tanks for the aluminium rad, which can itself crack and leak. The air con might not be functioning at peak efficiency either, nearly 20 years on - but that's true of any 20-year-old AC system. Shed has just gone through the £50 gamble of recharging the AC on both his current runarounds. One stuck, the other didn't. Them's the breaks.
STSs had a reputation for light driveline vibration at around 80mph. That didn't matter in the States because this sort of speed was something US Caddy drivers associated with Han Solo's Millennium Falcon or those crazy fools on European 'autobarns'. The gearbox isn't as smooth as you might hope, but we are talking 1990s GM technology here, not state of the art 2018 ZF.
The alarm system can play up, preventing engine start. Helped by the occasionally failing fuel pump, this is a nice way to reduce your fuel bills, but it might be a little inconvenient if you have to get somewhere.
Crank position sensors, coils, PCMs (power control modules) and EGR valves go, again problems that are far from exclusive to the CTS, and the electronic self-levelling can conk out (as enjoyed by Range Rover and Audi Allroad owners), giving you either that cool gangster stance or the less cool pig-on-stilts look. If the engine light comes on, that could be a problem with the torque converter, or it might be something as random as a loose-fitting petrol cap. It's worth checking the trans fluid on a fairly regular (30k miles) basis.
Finally, you may have noticed this one has an aftermarket exhaust, which for Shed is reason enough on its own to sink some cash into this interesting American chariot. If you would like to know what it might sound like, here's an idea. Not bad, eh. Channel your inner rapper, or break it for parts and bung the motor into an MR2. It's been done.
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