1977 Cadillac Eldorado - The Wife Hates Big Old Cars

Came across this 1977 Cadillac Eldorado on, where else? Facebook Marketplace recently. It's posted by the same guy who listed that '71 convertible the other day and he's asking $6,500 for it. I guess he collects these things which is cool. Weird too. It's appears to be in such great shape that it almost seems like a steal. According to Haggerty, 1977 Cadillac Eldorado's in "excellent" shape are valued at nearly $21,000; good condition around half that, "fair" about half of that which is about the asking price of this. NADA values are a different ball of axle grease seeing they list one of these on the high retail end at under $15,000, average retail is around $9,400 which is about right I think. Keep in mind Haggerty is primarily an insurnace carrier and they are very, very generous with their evalutations of classic vehicle worth. Trust me on this one, they make you feel all gooey and warm inside about the value of your classic because the more you insure it for, the higher your payments to them.  

These cars are unique because of what they are and what they aren't. What they are is the last of the gigantic, domestic, premium, personal luxury cars. GM started the great downsizing epoch in 1977 and while they shrunk all their other full-size wares, the front-wheel-drive Eldorado and similar Oldsmobile Toronado were spared the plasma cutter. At least for a couple of model years.

What they aren't was convertibles. Well, in fairness, the front-wheel-drive Eldorado was available as a coupe going back to 1971 as well but 1977 was the first year Eldorado was not offered as a convertible. That make a difference in the value of the fixed-roof models? Not really. More importantly, though, the 1977 Cadillac Eldorado got the "smaller", 425 cubic-inch Cadillac V-8 all the other Cadillac's got save for the Seville that made due with a fuel-injected Oldsmobile 350. 

Still, the Cadillac 425, all but indistinguishable from the Cadillac 500 it was allegedly based on (sorry, no under-hood pictures in the listing) was the largest engine General Motor's put in a passenger car that year, for 1978 as well before Eldorado met the shrink ray for '79. This is of course back in the day when GM's myriad divisions were still manufacturing their own engines. For the most part. That edict was slowly changing in the mid to late '70's and through the '80's as each division came to use the same engines. It's actually only in the last ten years or so that GM hasn't at least made some sort of proprietary engine for Cadillac. 

The 425 may have helped improve mileage on the deVille and Fleetwood, that and their losing a good half-ton of curb weight, but it did little to help the Eldorado at the pump. Rough EPA estimates, which were as generous back then as Haggerty is on evaluating classics today, pegged highway mileage at 9.4 miles-per-gallon. Performance wasn't affected that much which, much like the Cadillac 500 it replaced and the 472 before the 500, is a testament to the engine's monstrous and flat torque curve that peaked at a diesel like 2,000 rpm's. 

So, if you wanted a big car in 1977 but it had to be a GM, this was your only choice. This '77 Eldorado a meaty ten-inches longer than a still gargantuan mid-size "colonnade" Buick Regal, Olds Cutlass, Pontiac Grand Prix or Chevrolet Monte Carlo. That of course changed as GM mid-sized cars became upsized compacts for 1978. The Ford Motor Company didn't start downsizing until 1979 and for a couple of years they wisely attempted to market that fact aggressively; but if you're a GM loyal like yours truly, nothing else will do. And the "little" Coupe deVille couldn't row my boat either. 

The Cadillac Eldorado moniker had been around since 1953 when Cadillac introduced a special two-door convertible model to help commemorate Cadillac's 50th anniversary. Eldorado was a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive model, as all domestic models were back then until the introduction of the rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair for 1960. For 1967, Eldorado became a front-wheel-drive automobile sharing it's power-train configuration with Oldsmobile's Toronado (that debuted in 1966). Starting in 1966 through 1976, the Buick Riviera shared the frame and body-shell of the Eldorado\Toronado but eschewed it's front-wheel-drive. If you've ever thought those Rivera's actually looked like front-wheel-driver's but they weren't, that was why. 

Unlike almost all front-wheel-drive cars manufactured today where the engine is transversely mounted, the Toronado\Eldorado engine was longitudinal, like most cars of the day were, but the gearbox was mounted next to the transmission driven by a heavy-duty chain. The gearbox output shaft pointed forward sending power to a slim planetary differential and then via CV-jointed half shafts to the front wheels. The arrangement was remarkably compact and was referred to as the "Unitized Power Package", or "UPP". In my opinion, it was one of the more remarkable engineering accomplishments for General Motors in the 1960's. Engineering that, unfortunately, was applied to the wrong car at the wrong time. Did Eldorado buyers care that their dreamboat had front-wheel-drive? For sure some did but by and large do you think they did? 

When GM downsized the Eldorado for 1979 they used a similar setup to drive the front wheels. The packaging of the power-train entirely in front of the firewall allowing for a spacious "hump-free" interior same as it did on the previous model but it technically made more sense seeing those cars were for all intents and purposes "intermediate" sized automobiles. The "UPP" going into the GM engineering dumpster come 1986 when they, dare I say, "fatally downsized" the Eldorado complete with a transverse mounted V-8 that in itself was an interesting if not solid effort but was nothing like the UPP.

 

If this guy wasn't so far away, Toledo is a solid ninety-minutes west of where I live, I'd be all over this guy test-driving his Eldorado's and asking him all sorts of questions about why he's got at least two of them. And why each is going so cheap. If you look hard at these photos you'll see that this oh-so-'70's brownish-orange Eldorado is not perfect but it appears to be in real good shape. 

The wife hates big old cars like this so it's not worth my time and aggravation to take the trip to kick the tires. You're reading this for a reason - you're interested in these cars and are tickled by this one, comment below and I'll do my best to hook you guys up. Just swing on by my triple-wide so I can take a big old front-wheel drive in it.