General Motors Design has shared a handful of historic Cadillac sketches from its archives – including one from former General Motors VP of Design Irv Rybicki.
These somewhat eerie-looking design sketches appear to be from the late 1950s, based on the Cadillac styling cues on display here. While these sketches don’t appear to reflect any specific Cadillac models that we can identify, the first and third images in the original GM Design Instagram post (above and below) remind us of a more dramatically styled Cadillac Series 62 Convertible. From what we can tell and based on the post description, these two were done by a GM designer by the name of J.R. Schemansky.
The second sketch in the reel shows a car with a more dramatic, space-age style design with a C2 Corvette style split rear window and a rear fin that extends over the roof and into the windshield to create a split windscreen. Cadillac actually had a number of two-seat design studies in the 1950s, such as the 1954 Cadillac El Camino, Cadillac La Espada and Cadillac Cyclone, but none of those have designs that directly reflect this sketch.
Interestingly, the vehicle in the third sketch appears to have been envisioned as having rear jet engines or thrusters, as two flames can be seen trailing from the rear of the vehicle. The vehicle is also joined by a stylized script to the left reading ‘Cadillac Tomorrow’. This sketch was likely the one done by Irv Rybicki, who would go on to replace Bill Mitchell as VP of Design at GM in the 1970s.
These days, the Cadillac design team likely doesn’t spend too much time sketching svelte coupes like these. The automaker has abandoned two-door segments due to shrinking sales, but has said that the flexibility of electric vehicle platforms may open the door for a new Cadillac coupe one day in the future if the demand for them returns.
Comments
Cool pics and I hate to be that guy, but one trend I notice on this site is the lack of attention to detail by the authors. “These somewhat eerie-looking design sketches appear to be from the late 1950s, based on the Cadillac styling cues on display here.” Not only are they obviously cues that were used in the early ’50’s, but three of the four pictures are clearly dated 1949.
only 3 pictures, the first one is a crop of 3rd picture down, used as the banner.
All dated 49.
Indeed !
@ Eric: You’re not the only one to have noticed.
Yeah, even before I saw those dates, I said “late fifties? Not low enough!” Everyone in the big three had moved their headlights to grille level by the early sixties.
Buick ventports??
The boat-tailed one is called the Phaeton, if my eyes are right.
I wonder if we’ll ever see the return of Dagmars in some form that passes safety regulations.
Someone already mentioned the date of 1949 on the sketches…. and as someone who was around and following cars as a youth (my dad loved Cadillac’s) I can attest to the design ideas being “40ish”…… Super to see these memories.
It’s great to see these sketches. Even dated 1949 however, these would be looking forward to the mid to late fifties for actual production implementation, so the email picture caption of “See what Cadillac designers’ dream cars looked like in the fifties” would be accurate. The article statement I take exception to is, “open the door for a new Cadillac coupe one day in the future if the demand for them returns”. The demand is there today, always has been, for a Cadillac coupe. Even in their heyday, they were among the lowest volume built cars, but they built them anyway. Today, I guess they can’t make a triple digit profit on them, i.e. Escalade, so they don’t bother with them. So sad that Cadillac has abandoned the luxury coupe market and handed it over to Mercedes, BMW and others like that.
GM needs to go back to building a Cadillac not using parts from their other products,when my dad was driving cadillacs and I have a El Dorado now the car’s were not a copy of other GM car’s.
An Cadillac VSS-R 2 door and an electric counterpart coupe to Celestiq hopefully is being worked on.
Cadillac had become pure garbage today. Their last good car was the CT6-blackwing. Their new SUVs are getting panned by the press.
In the mid 70’s, the Coupe de Ville outsold the Sedan de Ville handily, 100k+ to 60k+.
I have a 50 62 series Cadillac and enjoyed seeing the similarities.