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
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