2000 Cadillac Eldorado ESC - Don't Smoke

Sometimes I write first about a car I've found and add photos after I'm done. Well, when I went to add photos of the 2000 Cadillac Eldorado ESC I had test driven the other day from the dealer site I found the car was gone. My bad for not taking photos when I had the car in my hands. This 2000 Eldorado ESC in the same color scheme but hardly the same condition stands in for it.

I love Cadillac's twelfth and last generation of their storied Eldorado, especially the 1996-2002's with the updated center dash\console design, but I've never driven one. Well, that changed the other afternoon as I got behind a 2000 ESC for sale at a Kia dealership south of Canton, Ohio with an asking price of $4,950 and just 87,000 miles on its digital odometer. Thinking this could be the second coming of our 1995 Lexus SC400 purchase, I saddled up the Monte Carlo for a long afternoon drive south. 

When I first pulled into the dealership, bless their hearts they had it out front waiting for me, it was love at first sight. For about thirty seconds. The front air dam was broken, I didn't notice that in the pictures online but in the flesh it was obvious the photographer finagled it to appear as non-broken as possible. I quickly surmised that it was a five-thousand dollar car. She ain't going to be perfect although finding a replacement for the spoiler wouldn't be cheap. 

Then I saw rust spots on both rear quarter panels and even with both windows down I smelled the kiss-of-death, the interior smelled of stale cigarettes. You know, not to preach since I used to smoke, but smoking in your car is about the worst thing you can do to your car - let alone yourself. The more you smoke in it, the worse the stench and even though there are devices designed to remove car odors, even the best of them running for several days can't remove all remains of someone's smokey treats; that odor will always be there and the car will always be a rolling ashtray.  My bad. I didn't ask if the car was a "smoker" or not and it most certainly was. Still, with the deal gone south for me and more than a good hour and forty-five minutes spent getting there and an even longer traipse back home, I wasn't about to waste the opportunity to drive one of my vehicular idols. Especially with no salesperson accompanying me.  

The big old grand dame fired right up with the flick of her old school (and oh-so-problematic) GM Pass-Key ignition, her 4.6-liter, two-hundred seventy-five horsepower Northstar barking to a life with a manly, guttural growl. Perhaps too guttural - I think there was an exhaust leak in front of the catalytic converter. Cheap fix. No biggie and there was no check engine light on. Or the dealership reset it. Oh, who cares. I wasn't buying the lump anyway. 

I dropped her into drive and tapped the gas to move her away from the dealership and onto the fairly busy main drag of bustling and hustling Alliance, Ohio. The blast of torque she had off idle reminded me of big old yank tanks of yore. Was I driving a 1968 Cadillac with a fairly smog gear free 472?  Let's get this thing on the highway!

Before I did that I tested the air-conditioning - no dice. The compressor clicked on and the fan blew air but it was warmer than the ninety-degree air outside. What's more, a scrolling message on the dash said, "WARNING LOW REFRIGERANT SERVICE SOON". It was followed by another cryptic scroll, "SECURITY SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. CAR MAY NOT RESTART". Damn the torpedo, son. You're driving a twelfth-gen Eldorado.

Sadly, her handling was a mess - even at low speeds. She pulled to the right, brakes were sloppy with very long pedal travel, struts were dead, I could swear the right rear wheel bearing was squeaking too. Still, I could tell that when she was less worn out she must have been everything if not more than I expected her to be. I mean, I had all but convinced myself she'd be much like our '95 Lexus SC400, that being smooth, subdued but at the end of the day sort of dull, but I could tell she was a lot more interesting to drive. There was an edge to her manners, a gritty un-refinement of sorts that I find enthralling and endearing; our '77 Corvette has buckets of that mojo and it's what makes the car so fun. That might be an extreme example of what I'm referring to but the bottom line you have to drive that car as opposed to it all but driving itself. Our beloved Lexus smooths out all edges and while it's a great cruiser, doesn't make for that interesting a ride. Cars are so perfect today the actual fun of driving is all but varnished over. That worn out Eldorado was like an old athlete - they may lose some of their zeal but, thankfully, not all of it. 

For the money, were it not for the cigarette smell, I may have done enough mental gymnastics to maybe negotiate the price down further. The brakes, shocks and handling issues I can handle myself. I've got an exhaust shop in Cleveland that could fix the barking exhaust on the cheap. The A/C and the blasted PASS-KEY issues? I'd take that kick to the wallet. Fixing the rust wouldn't be cheap either. The front air dam? Ok. That too. 

But the gross cigarette smell killed the deal for me and that was too bad. I gave the sales kid a rundown after I told him I thought the car was a little too "rough for me" and I implied "rough", in that context, was not a good thing. Car was gone the next day, though. Sold or sent to auction? Who knows but I'm more vexed by these cars than ever. Our stand in might be a possibility; she has but 29,000 on her and has an asking price of $16,500. That's a lot of car for the money especially if the Northstar's head gasket issues have been sorted out. But the wife would kill me. 

1966 Plymouth Barracuda - How Far will it Sink?

Here's proof the classic car market is completely bonkers. While the 1972 Chrysler New Yorker I recently blogged about, that's in remarkable condition, has an asking price of just $5,000, this 1966 Plymouth Barracuda that's literally being swallowed up by Mother Earth has an asking price of $12,000. Say that slowly so it sinks in more like this car is sinking into the ground. Twelve-Thousand Dollars. Bonus, though, that price does include what appears to be a homemade hood scoop.

Several years ago and seemingly ions before The Pandemic, I found this 1970 Dodge Challenger around the corner from my home here on Cleveland's west side that was not only partially submerged in Cleveland muck but was  completed rotted out. I still get comments from people asking me if the car is still available. Remarkably, no. It is not. It was hauled out of the yard by someone who paid over $5,000 for it. With that in mind, this '66 Barracuda is quite the value seeing that it appears to be still in tact. 

Well, that car was a 1970 Dodge Challenger - one of the most sought after and valuable of all muscle cars meanwhile this thing here is all but a Plymouth Valiant with a funky rear window. Read more of about these cars here. 

Another bonus with this car, in addition to the hood scoop and floor pans looking remarkably intact, is that after market air conditioner under the passenger side of the dash board. I'd venture to guess it's a Sears unit not unlike the knee breaker I had in my 1974 Mercury Comet. Mine, of course, didn't work but it did blow air albeit as noisily as a freight train running through your backyard. Imagine trying to get that serviced. That clunker would be the first thing to go if I was doing the resto on this thing. That said, interior does look to be in pretty neat shape all things considered. 

If you've shopped for a used car recently you'd find used car lots are selling anything they can get their hands on and that means a lot of garbage; the used car market is molten hot because new cars are obscenely priced. The collector car market is running out of old bombs to restore so that's probably why this person thinks they're sitting on a pot-o'-gold. Geez, I'd have trouble forking over twentlve-grand for a Barracuda that was in decent shape. You'd also think if the owner was really serious about selling they'd at least pull it out of the ground. Which begs the question - I wonder how far down a car would sink? 

1972 Chrysler New Yorker - Gotta Hand it to Chrysler

Another day and another Facebook Marketplace gem. Although I rank Chrysler's 1969-1973 "fuselage" designs far below even Ford's of this era, this 1972 Chrysler New Yorker is worth a minute or two of our time. After all she's a hardtop (!) in great condition, it's for sale in Detroit - one of my favoirte cities on earth and the owner is asking just $5,000 for it.  Is that bargain basement asking price enough for me to see past its slab-sided awfulness and that it's a four-door? Of course not...but let's kick the tires anyway 'cause that's what we do here. 

Chrysler referred to their 1969-1973 full-size cars as "fuselage" because the body was meant to emulate that of an aircraft; as if John Doe "buying public" knew what that meant or gave a hoot.  The chrome trim on the bottom of our '72 here and the vinyl top mask the subtle cylindrical shape of the car but it's there if you look hard enough. I only see it when it's pointed out to me and I still think it, meh. 

This is a great shot posted by the seller and shows off just how big these things are in front of the dashboard.  In addition to their ungodly length, they're also impossibly wide; I learned to drive in frieghters like this and I was terrified by them. If you've ever driven a car this big you know they're a handful. The tips of the front and rear passenger side fenders are so far away from the driver they might as well be across the river in Canada. 

The engine in our '72 here ginormous as well. And ineffecient. This is Chrysler's famed although smogged up 440 cubic-inch V-8. Combine this beast with the car's barn-door aerodynamics,  two-ton plus curb weight and a final drive ratio perhaps as low as 3.23:1, more like 2.94:1, and you got an old fashioned gas guzzler here. Hauling this back to Cleveland from Detroit might run me more than hundred bucks seeing that it might get nine, ten miles per gallon highway. That would be with the air-conditioning off. 

But who needs air conditioning when you have a hardtop? Drop all four windows and you have mother nature's evervesnance cascading through the cabin. Well, more like ripping through it. Better have everything including the baby strapped down since with the windows open, note the rear door windows go all-the-way-down, the gael force winds swirling through the car will blast anything not velcroed right onto the interstate. 

Oh, domestic dashboards of the '70's. Just like GM and Ford, Chrylser really cheaped out on interior detials with these cars. The switchgear is garbage; hollow, life-less knobs that feel like they're going to pop off in your hand as you use them. You'd find more engaging button "snick-snack" on light switches from Home Depot. Any wonder why luxury car buyers were so enthralled by the imports back then? 

Chrysler's reboot for 1974 resulted in some of my favorite designs of the era although they were derivatively styled; Chrysler making better looking Cadillac's Ford or GM for that matter did. Poor, scandel ridden Chrysler's timing was horrendous. Longer, wider, heavier and even thirstier cars launched to replace this leviathan just as the first gas-crisis hit. This thing is bad enough on gas - the cars that replaced these were even worse. 

Gotta hand it to Chrysler, though. As polarizing as these designs were, while Ford chased after GM designs with varying degrees of failure, Chrysler's of this vintage looked like nothing else available at the time. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Cheapo asking price and all. I know if I sprung the five-grand or so for it I'd be kicking myself that that money would have been better spent on a Cadillac of the same vintage. Coupe deVille of course. 

1956 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz - Congratulations, Mary-Ann

You ever see a celebrity in public and not believe it was really them? I felt that way the other night when I picked up pierogies at the supermarket down the street from my home on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio and stumbled across that big old white Cadillac. 

At first I didn't think it was that big of a deal. While you don't see 65-year old cars every day, not to mention 65-year old Cadillac's, when I obligingly crept closer to it I almost dropped my precious dumplings when I saw this wasn't just any 65-year old Cadillac but a 65-year old Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. 

I can't recall ever seeing one of these before in person before let alone at a car show. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen one at a show either. Cars like this are usually seen in museums, books or brochures - they don't really exist, do they? Well, apparently they do and in a most ordinary of settings and not even tucked away in a far off corner of the lot. I wonder what the owner was  picking up? Standing rib roast? Lobster tails? Dom Perignon? A suitcase of Miller Lite and a family size bag of Frito's? 

Cadillac's first "El Dorado", in Spanish it's actually two-words and translates to "the gilded one", was a 1952 GM Motorama showcase car meant to celebrate Cadillac's fiftieth or "golden" anniversary. For a limited production run of convertibles starting in 1953, "El Dorado" was shortened to "Eldorado". The use of either "El Dorado" or Eldorado was suggested in an in-house competition by Mary-Ann Marini who was working in Cadilliac's merchandising department. Congratulations, Mary-Ann, you named a freakin' legend. 

Cadillac did so well with the initial run of Eldorado's that they kept building the range topping coupes and charging a king's ransom for them; as much as a one-hundred percent stipend above a comparable Coupe deVille which, surprise, it shared a lot with. 

The Eldorado's price curve flattened somewhat by the mid 1960's before Cadillac switched the nameplate to GM's front-wheel-drive E-body chassis in 1967. For a while in the 1950's Cadillac Eldorado's where the most expensive cars made in the United States and "the rich"  and folks wanting to appear rich gobbled them up. Gobbled them up even if year after year, they became less exclusive and harder and harder to decipher from a Coupe deVille. All that changed in 1967 when Eldorado became an entirely different automobile. 

For 1956, along with the first major overhaul of Cadillac's vaunted overhead-valve V-8 engine that debuted in 1949, Cadillac also introduced a hardtop Eldorado they called Eldorado Seville. The convertibles like this were re-rechristened Eldorado Biarrtiz. 

Incidentally, Biarritz is a city in southwest France meanwhile Seville is a city an hour south of Cleveland. Supposedly there's also a Seville in southwest Spain the Eldo Seville was named after instead. Who knows. Such the stuff automobile historians quibble over. Cadillac used "Seville" on a series of mid-sized models from 1975 through 2004. Biarrtiz was exclusive to Eldorado. 

In my opinion, style-wise, Cadillac topped out with their 1956 models. Anything after this, with some exception, was a half-hearted attempt to out-do these elegant, somewhat understated beauties. That's saying something considering how extravagant they are but compared to the Cadillac's of 1957-1959, especially the star-crossed and utterly ridiculous '59's, these gorgeous thick-as-a-brick brutes are out and out conservative looking.  Note the expired temp tag. When you're rich you can get away with such things. 

I didn't take any pictures of the interior, folks tend to frown on that, but it's hysterical to see just how small and cramped it is compared to how huge the exterior of the car is.  This crazy pointless bumper doo-dad was called a "dagmar" and legend has it it was meant to denote...err, sorry. This is a family friendly blog. 

Back in the late 1970's, my mother insisted my father trade in the 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon he'd been driving for the better part of a decade and get a Cadillac. Much to my mild protest and filibustering that a Buick and an Oldsmobile where the equal if not superior to a Cadillac at that time, my mother could not be swayed - she insisted that there was nothing like a Cadillac and only a Cadillac would do. 

It's crystal clear to me now that what she wanted was a vehicle celebrity like our '56 Eldorado here and not the wannabee 1972 deVille she got instead. That broken down lump eventually replaced by a 1979 deVille that was an even bigger poser

1982 Ford Durango - Pickup Car

I grew up on Long Island thisclose to Manhattan so I contribute my most-urban upbringing to my lacking any appreciation for pickup trucks as anything more than appliances. Even more so, I've never "gotten" pickup cars like the Chevrolet El Camino and Ford Ranchero. Yes. Pickup cars; what else to call them? What then do I make of Ford's 1979-1982 Durango? Our pristine subject here hails from model year 1982. 

Well, frankly, I don't get this thing anymore than I do an El Camino or Ranchero but seeing how unique, different and rare these are, this begs a closer look. Let's drop the tailgate and pretend to do whatever folks do with these things. 

Legend has it Ford didn't want to commit to jumping back into the pickup car market after they pulled the plug on their Ranchero after model year 1978. So, to not leave General Motors having a market niche all to themselves, they partnered with National Coachworks in Los Angeles on a series of pickup cars based on Ford's then new for 1978 Fairmont Futura two-door. 

Ford Durango's, of course these are not to be confused with Dodge's Durango which is an SUV, have a fiberglass bed and a tail-gate that folds-down just like a pickup truck (and the Ranchero and El Camino) but the difference is the tailgate on the Durango is a custom built job made from the rear end of the Futura coupe. Ranchero's and El Camino's, including the new for 1978 downsized El Camino,  used a station wagon tailgate instead. That means on the Ford Durango, the taillights and what not fold down with the tailgate; unlike station wagons where the taillights are tucked into the back of the rear quarter-panels. So, dang it, you can't ride around with the tailgate down or remove it for improved aerodynamics lest run the possibility of Smokey citing you. 

 

Ford built a Faimont wagon so you'd think they could have used the tailgate from those cars but that would have complicated matters. Ford, technically, didn't build these things therefore making the Durango from a Fairmont coupe and a Fairmont wagon would have been logistically challenging. Also would have made Duragno's more expensive.  

So, these things boil down to all but custom jobs you could buy directly from Ford although they were never officially part of the Ford lineup between 1979 and 1982. Neither Ford nor National Coachworks kept tabs on how many were actually produced although most accounts have it that as few as little more than two-hundred were manufactured in total. 

All Durango's were powered by Ford's 3.3-liter inline six and a three-speed automatic. A dull if not dutiful power train pairing. Not that Ford's 302 cubic-inch V-8 of the vintage was that much more of a performer; keep in mind the era this thing comes from. Since these are, at the end of the day, Ford Fox-bodies, there are scores of after-market parts available to improve performance although I don't know how much you can hop up this chuffer of a smog-era clogged six. Personally, I find there is something to be said for keeping this thing as close to original as possible. Our children and grand children need to appreicate just how bad we had it back then. 

Oh, for the record, in most states in this country, El Camino's, Ranchero's and these things are classified as trucks.

 

1981 Pontiac Firebird 4.3 LITER V-8 - You Had to Be There

I'd love to talk to the planning team that baked up this 1981 Pontiac Firebird - I believe it's a base model seeing there's no badging on it denoting it's an Esprit or Formula and because it has, best I can tell, little luxury accoutrement.

It also has Pontiac's off-the-shelf steering wheel of the era you would have found on everything from a Bonneville to a Grand Prix to a god damn front-wheel-drive Phoenix. This is a bone-stripper; at least it has a console, buckets and a floor shiter but then again these only came that way. 

It may not be the actual product planners themselves whom I like to have a discussion with but rather the wonks who came up with not so much the "4.3 LITER" engine in our '81 here but the idea behind it in the first place. 

I had heard these things were in 1980 and 1981 Firebird's but until I actually saw this one here in a Firebird I didn't think Pontiac did this. This, friends, is in fact one rare bird. Mind you, rare does not always mean "good". 

You don't see these engines everyday. Actually, you didn't see many of these back in the day either in anything. Pontiac's 4.3-liter V-8 engine, which displaced some 265 cubic-inches, was part of a gaggle of small bore and or stroke stroke "economy" V-8 engines that General Motors myriad divisions put out in the darkest days of the "Malaise Era" of automobile-dom.

Lest we forget, as part of each of GM's division's brand essence back in the day, each division was repsonsible for making their own engines. Models shared a considerable amount of other parts like transmissions, drive shafts, body shells, stampings, rear ends and what not but engines were unqiue commodities. 

A Chevrolet 350, for instance, as different from a Oldsmobile 350 as a Pontiac engine was different from a Ford engine. Seeing that GM Powertrain builds all engines for GM wares these days this practice seems as foreign as a typewriter or VCR but that's the way GM did things back then. 

None of these tiny engines from the Chevrolet 262 to their 267, yes, Chevrolet had two "micro engines" back then, the Olds 260 and our Pontiac 4.3\265 here made any real power. One-hundred twenty brake horsepower at most and maybe two-hundred ten foot-pounds of torque. Certainly not enough "go" to offset the weight of a V-8 and also approximately the same amount of poke Buick's smaller and lighter 3.8-liter V-6 made back then. Chevrolet built a similarly sized V-6 engine to the Buick for a spell back then as well that put out all but the same power. 

Cadillac didn't build a small V-8 until 1982 but that's a whole other story and a blog for a different day. 

Seeing that Buick's spilt-pin crankshaft had smoothened out most of the vibrations their 90 degree V-6 had, and that was available as the base engine on 1980 and 1981 Firebird's, driving a V-6 Firebird back to to back with a Firebird with the 4.3 V-8, you have to wonder why someone would opt for this engine in a Firebird rather than the V-6. Personally, if I had to have a V-8, I'd have taken the kick in the wallet the 301 V-8 would have been. And it probably wouldn't have been that much worse than the mileage this engine gave the owner. 

Then again, I have to adjust my perspective - back then, even if a V-8 offered less performance than an available V-6, "V-8" still really meant something. And if you don't "get that", well...you simply had to be there.