During the 1973-74 energy crisis, which brought on a greater demand for smaller cars in place of the larger cars that had been GM's bread and butter profit machine for decades, Mitchell oversaw the styling and design efforts of GM's downsized full-sized and intermediate-sized cars which were introduced in the late 1970s, some of the last designs that he would lead—and all largely based on themes first developed in his 1976 Cadillac Seville.