Cool Automotive Inventions: The First-Ever Electronic Trip Computer in 1978 Cadillacs!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Learn more about this cool option available on the Cadillac Seville and Eldorado, the trip computer! And, take a walk around this 1978 Seville Elegante with me.
I like how controls had words written in English back then, rather than symbols on modern cars.
The trip computer was an expensive option that few people bought. The Seville was already the most expensive at $14,000 in the lineup yet the smallest Cadillac. Asking for an additional $900 option was a tall order. In today's dollars it would be about $5,000 for what is basically a fancy calculator.
I had a 92 Lincoln LSC and the reason I got rid of it in 1996 was because every electronic gadget had stopped working and the dealer was incapable of repairing it without leaving it for weeks. Other than that I loved that car!
Babe wake up, another rare classic cars video has dropped
* *throws candle at your head* *
That’s hilarious.
That car does NOT need a vinyl or fabric roof.
Few cars did.
Geez, that first shot of the black and silver Seville, with the wire wheels, looks simply glorious. What a stunning car.
The Seville was a very cool car, still looks good today
You failed to mention that the fuel gauge is digital as well, this was an expensive option, $985 from what I recall, that's like $4,000 in Ameropesos today.....
I'd keep mine on "English," since I don't know how to speak Metric...
Thanks for this one, Adam.. Working as a new car salesman in late 1980/early 1981, we happened to get one of these black & silver color 1978 Seville Elegante models on our used car lot with only 2800 actual miles; our used car manager had picked it up at an auction. It had always been garaged, and looked showroom new.. I was sorely tempted to buy that one for myself but ultimately passed on the car. I think we had about $4500 in the car, I could have bought it for that plus $600.. But I had an always new company car and didn't really need a car so..
I don't think most drivers would have used it especially back then
I see people in New cars still holding their phone when virtually all cars now have Blue tooth
I'm old enough to remember when Canada went metric. After all these years, many things are still referred to in the old units. To this day, hardly anybody talks about fuel economy in liters per 100 km.
I had a friend who bought a new 1979 Buick Riviera. It had option U40, the trip monitor. In the future I would love to hear the story of two options available in early 70’s Buick’s. First was the “Max Trac” wheel spin control offered from 1971-1974. The other is the convenience center, the little compartment available on 1972-1974 Buicks. I had a 1971 Riviera with Max Trac and a friend had a 1974 Regal with the convenience center.
What amazes me about Buicks is that the 455 block weighs little more than a Chevy 350.
@@skylinefever Well.. The 350 isn't exactly lightweight either.. so.. lol
Frigidaire which was a GM division back then had an ad campaign advertising its 1957-58 appliances as having the "Sheer Look".
Front light monitors on Buick cars from the same period had the flasher monitor in the center and on both sides there was a blue and green lens for the outer (low beam) and inner (high beam) lamp. Rear monitors were also on C and E bodies back then a single monitor for each side link to one of the combined tail/brake lights no matter how many taillights were on the car.
The antenna switches on other GM cars equipped with the automatic power antenna back then also allowed to raise it fully in the "up lock" position or to about 8" when left in the normal position. Antennas could still be lowered or raised manually while the radio was turned on and remained closed with the radio turned off.
I had a "descendant" of this system on my 1989 Old 98 Regency. It was perhaps the best trip computer I've ever had in a vehicle I owned. The fuel economy readout was phenomenally accurate; usually within 0.5 mpg of dead-on.
Thats a brochure shot NOT an advertisement, that brochure shot you show is from the 1979 Cadillac brochure, it was available on the new downsized Eldorado. Buick also had a simpler version available on the Riviera in 1979-80.
The AACA museum in Hershey PA has a 1977 Seville that was owned by Betty White its paint was custom ordered in seafoam green with white top and interior, really neat looking car. The museum is great to see if your in the area.
This body style Seville and the B-Body cars of that era are my favorite cars.
This was basically what became the MPG Sentinel in 1981, with the added cylinder displacement info and then later the Fuel Data Center from 1982 and up, but they removed the engine data like RPM, though that can still be called up by the OBD system in the climate control.
Adam, hands down this has to be the most Beautiful and Technologically advanced Cadillac, American Car for that matter, for the era. They were all over the road when I was in my late teens and I was in AWE. !!! GORGEOUS CAR. !!! Thanks so much for this video of the Extraordinary Original Cadillac SEVILLE. !!!!
They were beautiful cars and way ahead of anything else produced in US Murica at that time. BTW, this car shared very little of its structure with the Nova. This car and the Nova had identical 'hard points' which meant they could be build on the same assembly jigs, saving lots of money in the process.
Yes Sir, I hate the comparisons to the NOVA like the Cimarron and the Cavalier. It was no way as close as that and like you said it was loosely based on the Nova, in fact the chassis was stretched for the Seville. When you look at the Cimarron and the Cavalier you see the same car, not so with the Seville and Nova. Thanks @@MrSloika
Indeed. Back then American.electronics were ahead of the curve. I think Japanese tech was a joke until about 1983.
*laughs in stutz bearcat*
Loved the design of this Cadillac.i could see why Arnold Palmer did the commercials. He owned a Cadillac dealer in Pennsylvania
The funniest part of that commercial is showing most of the digital readouts but only mention, not showing the gas mileage, for obvious reasons!!
How does this compare to the Lincoln Versailles? Ride/handling, noise, etc.?
Ford did a pretty good job of improving the Granada's ride, problem was the Versailles looked like a Granada that got puked on by a very ill JC Whitney catalog.
Adam, perhaps for a future video you can talk about the story of GM being the first company to offer airbags as options back in 1973 or so with Cadillacs and full sized Buicks and Chevys. They beat even Mercedes by 10 years with both drivers and passenger airbag options.
Chevrolet only made the 1973 test cars, the ACRS was a full size Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac option. Not available on convertibles, wagons and limousines.
I’d be curious to know how many airbag equipped cars were actually sold, roamed the roads and were wrecked with airbag deployment. Given the dangers of the Takata airbag débâcle, have to wonder how safe those nascent units were.
@@nathanexplosion5478 It wasn't very popular, there are ACRS cars that come up for sale here and there. It was a few thousand a year. I've seen it most on loaded up Fleetwood sedans and Oldsmobile 98s, it looked a little awkward and you lost the tilt and tele wheel option.
@@rafaelfiallo4123 I’m not sure I’d want to buy one and potentially be on the receiving end of an airbag engineered in the early 70’s. Wonder how the deployment speeds compare to modern more vetted units. And if they can be safely disabled and removed. I’m curious and will need to research more.
@@nathanexplosion5478 I think they were actually more safe and successful than you might think. The thing that kept them from becoming more widely available and then ultimately GM ending the option all together until around 1990 is cost - $2000 for a car that at the time might sticker for $6500 fully loaded. Not even rich people would swing for that.
The only thing I did not like about those cars is that the front doors do not open up enough to get the seats out without rubbing the door panels,door panels should be removed before the seats.but have not worked on one for over 20 years and probably never again.
The EFI system in the Seville was not only the first EFI in an American MASS produced car but was also the most reliable system up to that point, proving to not only GM, but the buying public, that EFI was reliable enough to become that standard as the 1980s came and went.
Love the Caddy Trip Computer! Neat system. GM really dominated these trip computer system up into the 90's, the electronic trip computer in my '90 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Regency Brougham was a great system with features such as instant MPG and gallons used options, things that even some modern cars don't have. That trip computer was so good that it made its way into the Aurora, almost unchanged aside from the little door it featured on the Aurora.
Isn't it interesting that the commercial says it was only available on the Seville, but the brochure mentioned the Eldorado?
The Bendix (not Bosch) EFI was first available on the 1975 500" engines, and was allegedly available on the 425" engines afterward. My theory is that while the electronics would have been there to give the Eldorado the Trip Computer, they they would have had to redesign the pre-existing (and-about-to-be-replaced) dashboards.
The EFI Oldsmobile 350 of course lasted through the '79 Seville and Eldorado (til 1980 in California.) Then the DFI came in with the self diagnostics and MPG Sentinel - which were probably the only functions that owners bothered with on the Trip Computer...
How fun. I actually had a 1979 Seville years ago with that trip computer. It seemed so advanced for back then.
My mom had one Ruidoso Brown Over Western Saddle Firemist with Saddle interior. It was a sharp looking car.
This example also had the relatively rare CB radio option. '78 was in the height of the CB craze sweeping the US.
Hi Adam, great vlog, I hope you can do a little vlog about the Bosch fuel injection system!
Cadillac bought the long block from Oldsmobile but Cadillac assembled it.
"Put a Tiger in your tank," In Mirror at 2:14. Thanks to Adam for another fine watch....
The Humble Tiger!!! I remember around 1970 they opened a new Humble station near my house, and they had a guy there dressed up like the Humble Tiger! I think they were giving away drinking glasses too.
Later, they changed their name to Exxon.
Adam, The most expensive Nova ever made deserves the first-ever electronic trip computer. 😁
The Seville wasn't a Nova that same way the Versailles was a Granada.
It looks like the G body that came a few years later. The Seville hides its Nova roots well.
My mother bought a Subaru GL-10 in 1988 that had, amongst it's long list of futuristic whiz-bang features, an electronic trip computer. It got used exactly once, other than the outside temperature feature (which was great fun on trips, comparing it against the various bank and billboard temp displays we drove past).
I think Subaru hired some giant mecha animators to design interiors for the premium models.
I had a 1989 Ford Probe with a digital dash and trip computer. In addition to the trip computer functions, the dash would tell you if the oil, coolant and washer fluid levels were low. It would monitor function of all the lights, etc. It was just like a modern car but instead of using a center mounted LCD display it used a couple LED displays.
I see parts from my 94 Buick Regal in that interior, a car built 18 years later...
All car companies share parts, sometimes for decades. No reason to reinvent the wheel.
The FI system was Bendix and a similar system was used on the Porsche 914 four cylinder. Perhaps thats here the Bosch connection originated from.
Perhaps it is because Bendix built the electrojector EFI, then sold the patents to Bosch due to low sales. It ended up in some Chryslers in the 1950s, but was cancelled because it had too many problems.
Great video. While I knew that the trip computer was an option on the 1978-79 Sevilles, I never saw one equipped this way in person. Even a moonroof was not all that common, though I had a cousin who had one on his Seville, which was in that two-tone black over silver color. One rather unique feature that I've never heard mentioned was the positioning of the radio antenna; this vehicle is the only one that I recall having the antenna on the driver's side fender instead of the usual placement on the right side fender or even on the rear quarter panels.
HOW ARE YOU PUMPING OUT VIDEOS SO FAST!?
I would guess he truly loves this stuff and could go on for hours and hours. In fact the only thing holding him back is having to make the videos and upload them.
Second! Thanks Adam.
The first Sevilles were so super sexy and great vehicles...powered by the best V8 of that time.. Olds 350
Wow! I've never seen a trip computer in a 78 Eldo, those photos are like from an alternate universe, digital speedo? I need to see one of these in the wild to believe they actually sold any. Thank you for all your awesome videos!
I don't think they had it on 78 Eldo. Probably 79 Eldo offered this rare feature.
@TeeroyHammermill I agree. The 78 stock eldo didn't even have a computer (the Fuel Injection version did but was different from sevilles) so is the photo at 6:09 fake???
That's not an Eldorado dash, that's a Seville dash.
@@TeeroyHammermill The 1979 Eldorado did offer it, as did the Riviera but it was a little more basic on the Rivieras.
This had multiport injection, or did I miss hear? Why wouldn't they use that on the 8 6 4? With the throttle body injection they had a wet intake but with multiport that would have eliminated that, right? Weird choice.
The 1908 Cadillac also had a trip computer. His name was Jeeves, or “Driver”.
My mother bought a '79 Cadillac Seville when I was in high school and I got a chance to drive it occaasionally. Ironically my step-father was driving a '75 Buick Apollo which was Buick's Nova clone which means both vehicles came from the same bones. The Buick was not nearly as nice as the Cadillac. The Seville was not an Elegante but was finished in a brown color with a brown vinyl roof (nicer color in person than describing it). It had the gas Olds 350 engine. It had leather seats, the package that included the mirror thermometer and the exterior key light mentioned in this video. And it had a CB radio integrated into the main factory radio system, which was cool on long trips. The wheels were the wire wheel caps, not the true wire wheels. She eventually traded the car for a '84 Sedan Deville, which was a larger vehicle with a much worse engine. Now I'm obviously very tall and while the Seville was pretty cozy on the inside, I could get behind the wheel thanks to the tilt/telescoping wheel and lack of a center console in cars of that era.
I've owned several cars with trip computers, and I've never known how to use them!
You should do a video on GM’s Computer Command Control engine management system which became OBD1. GM literally invented the Check Engine light.
I didn't realize that, I thought it arrived the moment the first digital engine computer arrived.
@@skylinefeverGM had better diagnostic software than most, they managed to do their diagnostics while driving, not just during a specific self-test mode like Ford did. GM/Delco was also a huge customer of Motorola. They used truckloads of a custom version of a 6801 in the early 1980s and a custom version of the 68HC11 in the later 1980s through around 1996 when OBD-Ii came out.
GM owned Hughes Aircraft at this time and Hughes was a world leader in electronics. Some of Hughes electronics know-how trickled down into GM's cars. BTW, the 4100HT (Hook & Tow) was a POS as far as the engine was concerned, but the ODB I electronics that were included with that engine were quite sophisticated for the time. I had the 4.9 version of the HT engine and diagnostics (bi-directional) could be entered by pressing the buttons on the climate control and the results displayed on the dashboard. Today it's impossible to repair a car without thousands of dollars worth of electronic test gear and very expensive subscriptions to software.
GM didn't purchase Hughes until 1985, this was developed by AC and Delco Divisions.
No. GM purchased that company in 1985
@@kevinbarry71 You're right. They didn't buy Hughes until 1985. For some reason I recall GM either doing business with Hughes or some other aerospace company at the time. Or my old brain is starting to go. One or the other.
@@MrSloika these things happen. After a while all the years begin to run together
@@MrSloika it was another one of the supremely idiotic ideas of Roger Smith.
When I was a kid we pulled a pop up camper from Columbus Oh to Gatlinburg with one of these. You could feel the heat from the transmission coming from the tunnel.
A Really Nice-Looking Car back in '78 & with the First Electronic Trip Computer; which makes it A Special Vehicle, Adam😎🤘
Adam, looking at the trip computer I thought that NASA landed on the Moon with much less tecnology. Man, that was awesome!
Hi Adam, we need a video on the Fleetwood 75's 😉
I remember when this feature was first introduced -- I thought it was so futuristic!
I miss the '70s! Great video, great car, great Arnold Palmer ad!
Hello.
Hello.
Тhe best riding car of the 70’s!
Modern nav systems have really revolutionized all these systems.
My Aunts husband had a 77 model back in the 80's. First car I ever saw someone start without using the gas pedal.
This car was probably the best luxury car you could buy in the 70s. Way better than Mercedes of the era.
Indeed, I entered the auto repair business when carb engines were next to extinct outside of collector cars. I would turn the key and expect a start. I would write notes about what it needed, until one of the older guys reminded me to work the accelarator pedal.
5:00 The Oldsmobile 350-cubic inch V8 with multi-port fuel injection has the same 180 horsepower as the carbureted Cadillac 500-cubic inch V8.
Beautiful car.
I need to find one
I do like the electrical system plus it being fully mechanical so for sale at the electronics break you can just use it mechanically 180 horsepower is pretty good my 1988 Lincoln Town car only had 150 hp at the crankshaft
Looks like that one has an 8 track tape player too
My '80 Eldorado had a digital MPG sentinel in place of where that computer would have been. It had MPG average, a trip mode, and one of the first (that I'm aware) instant MPG mode! We had fun as kids watching that mode quite honestly display it's horrible city mileage as we drove around. To this day in my modern cars -out of habit- I always select that mode as default if they have it.
7:40 Ford Aerospace designed a trip computer for Lincoln Town Car a year later, with a similar button count. Over time they reduced the button count to only (3) while retaining all functionality. This improved customer acceptance, safety in operation and usability.
That interior color of that era Cadillac was GORGEOUS !
Since 1990 Every Automaker has been shoving Gloomy Grey and Boring Black down everyone’s throats for 34 years.
It doesn’t cost the automakers any more money to put classy interior colors like Light Tan, Cream, Brown, Blue or Red than it does for the Outdated, Drab, Putrid, Depressing Grey or Black that the Dictators of the interior designers.
After almost 35 years of those colors being shoved down everyone’s throats is Pathetic.
We REFUSE to buy another vehicle with Grey or Black interior colors.
The interior color designers can go 🖕🏽Themselves !
Since the automakers have priced themselves out of the market, one would think that they would actually ask their “Valued Customers” what they be want instead of taking away their own decisions
It most certainly does cost them money, which is why they offer a very limited selection these days.
GM should have stuck with that fuel injection system and improved upon it.
Thank you Adam. I recall seeing photos of this generation with digital gauges and was shocked. It was some years ago. I was impressed. Cadillac put a lot of technology in this car. They really thought this car out. I can tell you it was not until few years later you saw digital gauges in Lincoln Mercury products in 1980 I think. So Cadillac was first with digital gauges in American cars. I know the Aston Martin Lagonda had them in 1976. A lot of the features on this Seville made their way to other GM cars. My 1992 Toronado has keyholes that light up. This car impacted so many GM cars on so many levels. My Oldsmobiles have trip computers too. I see this car I instantly think 1982-1986 G Body Pontiac Bonneville. This is how they should have invested in the Cimarron. It is interesting how competitive this car was at the time and had a Cadillac flair. It is interesting this international sized car became full sized by today's definition in length. Hard to believe the 1986-1991 Seville was a smaller car because of the downsizing era at GM. Thank you for confirming the Nova chassis basis as well.
The mirror temp gauge filled up with water and broke two seconds after you drove off the lot.
Cadillac seville also known as Cadillac Iran, It was made in Iran too before revolution
I love these videos.
BMW targeted the Sevlle in their sales brochures. They even included pictures pointing out fit and finish issues. Also the BMW trip computer has many of the same features and a similar square button lay out that persisted well into the 90's. Bottom line GM invented the 4 door sports car BMW ran with it.
BMW New Class Sedans from the early 1960s preceded those from GM, no?
Nissan named it in the 1989 Maxima. They had 4DSC emblems on it.
@@randyfitz8310 First BMW dealership opened in 1975 In the 60's there was had the Oldsmobile F-85. Those were the sporty hot American Sedans of the 60's. By the late 70 BMW was trying to go upmarket and hit back against the Cadillac Seville with the E21's higher build quality and bigger engines.
An awesome video Adam! Thank you.
when you pushed “mpg” the display read “bad” every time.
Ha!
Adam, have you already highlighted the Seville Gucci edition? I automatically think of the Cadillac Madeline Kahn drove in the movie High Anxiety when I see one of those tarted-up Cadillacs. They also came with a set of Gucci luggage.
Do you own one?
Sweet ride. Great color combo. These seemed so modern when new. Hard to envision today as so many cars’ later styling was influenced by.
I’m a GM fan but the malaise era stuff was terrible. However these have grown on me. It’s a fairly decent looking car for the time.
0:42 0:51
🥝✔️
Nice 😊
Cadillac's most overpriced model of all time. What a rip-off!
IF it were truly "overpriced" nobody would have bought them.. They sold like hotcakes, and were popular at the finest country clubs.
Did the 78 have chime tones for the seat belts?
All Sevilles had chimes starting from 1976.
Debuting in late 1975 as early ‘76 models!
@@randyfitz8310 I think the first were even sold AS 1975 models, as they came out in Spring of 1975.
That chime was an actual brass bell, a tiny one, inside the dashboard.
Were there any Cadillacs besides the Cimarron that sourced Chevrolet engines?
CTS-V has Corvette engine, plus the Escalades have GM/Chevy V8s, but I don't know of any others
90-92 Brougham, 93-96 Fleetwood.
@@TeeroyHammermillI've owned and driven both an '87 Cimarron with the 2.8 liter Chevy V6 under hood as well as a 1994 Fleetwood and its LT1 350 mill. Each had pluses and minuses to say nothing of the fact that deer leapt into the road while driving mine.
Interesting - I always thought these were related to the third generation Caprice (mostly based on body styling cues).
How difficult could it have been to color match digital readouts?
I can never get past that unbelievably ugly, in my opinion, vertical backlight. It makes me want to vomit. General Motors would inflict that awful design element on Americans for quite a while afterwards. And don't forget, this car has leaf springs just like a pickup truck.
The Versailles had leaf springs in the back as well. Ford bolted a 9inch with discs to the those leaf springs. For years the only to get disc brake on the back of an early Mustang was to find a Versailles donor.
Beauty but that offset entry light offends mine eye. Those thermometer on the side view mirror was great - better than the currently typical intake temp taken from the ECM data.
Switching out the speedo to the digital most likely a disincentive to the option. Litres/100Km is the inverse of MPG, not sure why that is a good thing.
*laughs in stutz bearcat*
Eaugh the Elegante was ghetto