1979 Cadillac Le Cabriolet - THE Convertible

With slumping sales and allegedly fearful of ever more stringent safety regulations that never came to be, the Big Three stopped offering convertibles for sale after 1976. However, between 1978 and 1980, well-heeled buyers could order a "Le Cabriolet", french for "The Convertible", from authorized Cadillac dealers. And pay dearly for it. Our stunningly badass deVille here was more than twice the price of a regular Coupe de Ville when new in 1979. Suffice to say, Cadillac didn't sell many of them.

Which was a shame considering what handsome automobiles these are. I'm not the biggest fan of convertibles but I've always liked these. Even if they probably handle like broken up tin cans. My dad had a 1979 Sedan deVille years ago and while it was worlds better than the shuddering mess his '72 deVille was, it still wasn't exactly the most tapped down of automobiles. I can only imagine how much this thing shimmies and shakes. 

All 1978-1980 "Le Cabriolet's" were built by the famed builder of "professional cars" and Presidential limousines, Hess and Eisenhardt of Cincinnati, Ohio. They did a mighty fine job too. 

Now, like most engineering exercises, what we see is only the literal tip of the technical iceberg; there was a lot more to this car than just sawing off the roof and plopping down a folding canvas top.  Since these cars were "pillared coupes" with stationary rear side windows, Hess and Eisenhardt had to retrofit, more like "retro-engineer", windows that would go up and down. That couldn't have been easy and no doubt required a lot of customized parts. Easy to see why these cars cost as much as they did. 

Did "The Big Three" jump the gun dropping convertibles? You could say that seeing how sales of the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado went up 156% when it was announced it was going to be no more. Also based on how popular Chrysler's various iterations of their LeBaron convertible were in the 1980's. Again, the biggest problem with the "Le Cabriolet" was the cost of them. A 1976 Eldorado convertible was only about 10% more expensive than a regular Eldorado. A relative steal compared to the absurd 50% more expensive a "Le Cabriolet" was compared to a regular Coupe de Ville.