What Better Way to Validate Downsizing?
Continue to the next page to read more about how the team used Fast Fourier Analysis to fine-tune the Cadillac Seville. The technology is based on the work of French mathematician and physicist Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830). Fourier worked out a way to analyze harmonics and complex wave forms. Next came the work fine-tuning the 1976 Cadillac Seville. Fast Fourier Analysis is now used routinely in developing new cars, but in the early Seventies, Cadillac was virtually alone in pursuing it. He made it possible to measure the fundamental and harmonic content of vibrations. The 1976 Seville’s design process relied on Fast Fourier Analysis.
Templin, Cadillac’s chief engineer on the Seville project, retired from GM in 1987 and moved to Austin, Texas, where he founded an engineering consulting firm. Pontiac ultimately offered its own versions of all three cars. Chevrolet, for example, had three: the small Vega, compact Nova, and mid-sized Chevelle. Cadillac, though, was the only division that hadn’t already produced a smaller car. In a telephone interview, Templin pointed out that all five GM car divisions, including Cadillac, were already working on downsizing programs when he took over as chief engineer.
Fast Fourier Analysis uses sensors and computers to chase down automotive chassis vibrations so that engineers can damp them out before they get to the driver and passengers. Once they’d located the sources, they could quickly apply fixes. By placing up to 100 little accelerometers all over the X-car subframe, suspension and undercarriage, measuring the oscillations and then running these figures through a computer, Templin’s engineers could pinpoint exactly where vibrations were coming from.
GM’s chairman, Richard C. Gerstenberg, also retired in 1974, to be replaced by Thomas A. Murphy. Cole had been lukewarm on downsizing, Gerstenberg had vigorously championed it, and Estes and Murphy also favored smaller cars. At Cadillac, unofficial downsizing studies had started around 1970 under division general manager George R. Elges. But Elges left on the last day of 1972, before anything came of them. Cadillac’s next general manager was Robert D. Lund, and it was during Lund’s tenure that most of the work on the Seville was done. Should you cherished this short article and also you would like to acquire more details concerning Condo Bangkok for rent generously go to the site. Lund, though, left to head up Chevrolet in November 1974, and was replaced by Edward C. Kennard.
Detroit saw sales drop, and now came the really serious invasion of small imports. For better or worse, the Seville also introduced the “sheer look,” a styling format that car companies around the world promptly copied. Historically, the Seville started several revolutions. It legitimized downsizing for both the American public and U.S. No new American cars appeared in 1975, except one. Today, most of us don’t think of this Seville as being all that significant, but it was. On April 22, Cadillac released the “international-sized” Seville as a 1976 model.
We had the first 10 minutes of the game and then the two-minute drill at the end. After his wife drove the Seville, she wouldn’t give it up. The car took off in California like gangbusters. The thing was just so solid on the West Coast and, of course, it became a financial success very quickly. There were still some people in the marketing department who maintained that smaller’s got to be cheaper. If a customer came into a dealership for regular Cadillac service, they’d let him drive a Seville home as a loaner. They felt the Seville had to come in under the DeVille if it’s going to sell. I only did the kickoff and the final drill. The car was an absolute revolution for a lot of people.
