2000 Cadillac Eldorado ETC - Somebody Else's Problem

This 2000 Cadillac Eldorado ETC (Eldorado Touring Coupe) came up in my latest "cheap car search" this past weekend. With 90,000 miles on its twenty-two-year-old digital odometer and with an asking price of just $6,995, on paper at least, this is the car of my dreams. Knowing how an innocent enough find can turn into something, for better or for worse, I made the forty-minute drive to see and test drive it. I did more than kick its tires too. I didn't abuse the car, per se, that would be, ahem, childish, but I did feel like 17-year-old me again standing on a powerful car for the first time. Gosh, do kids beat on their parent's cars anymore? 

Long and short, I wasn't so much disappointed with this car as I found it underwhelming. And it wasn't like the fact the air conditioner compressor was seized up, the power antenna wouldn't go up and the passenger side window wouldn't go down from the driver's door switch had anything to do with my ambivalence towards it either. Nope. While it was a whole lot more put together and sorted out than the Eldorado ESC I drove about a year ago, what a bomb that thing was, I found it "just ok". The ride was rather squishy, the brakes felt vague, steering had minimal feel when I leaned into it on highway on and off ramps too. The car felt enormous and not in a good way; I used to love big cars, what's gotten into me? Even when I tried to put the gas pedal through the firewall, the experience of spooling up the 300-hp Northstar V-8 wasn't as visceral as I thought it would be. This boat weighing in on the dark side of two tons no doubt had a lot to do with that but has speed and power become such a commodity that I'm not impressed by it anymore? 

Maybe the "Magnasteer" Speed Sensitive Steering, Continuously Variable Road Sensing Suspension, Stabiltrack Chassis Control and Electronic Level Control had all seen better days. All that stuff helping to jack up the original MSRP to more than $46,000. Holy smokes. Much like on any car portending to be a high-end luxury car, all that gear is scary expensive to repair. Frankly, I don't think they make for an altogether "better car" or one that's reliable and durable either. I've never seen a Cadillac of this vintage with the kind of miles my 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo has on it: 253,000 and counting.  Seriously, have you? Could it be because stuff like "Stabiltrack" and what not cost too damn much to repair? The owner of the lot where this was said he had about $3,000 into it already and was just trying to recoup some of what he spent. I think it's going to need at least that much more to really get it right. 

Despite it being really soft, the ride was pleasant, though and I wouldn't mind it on my insanely long commute to and from the office. Cross country drives as well. The seats were like thrones and the leather was luscious. I loved the color combination too even if it felt a little too "old man-ish" for me. 

Unlike most people, I can talk myself out of just about anything. And to jump out of my matronly but beloved 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo and into this simply because I could, didn't seem to me like the best use of my time and dollars. Had this sucked my bifocals off perhaps I'd think differently. Besides, I like the way my Dale rides and handles better. I really do. It might want for another fifty to a hundred more horsepower but aside from that, it's a comfy old shoe that gives me just enough steering wheel feedback to keep things somewhat entertaining. 

I'm glad I spent the afternoon with this handsome oldie, though. I got it out of my system, and I'll never be plagued with the dreaded "what if's" or "woulda-shoulda's". If this is about as good as these are these days, best I stick to what I know and keep the Dale around. And when the head gasket finally blows on this big aluminum lump, it'll be someone else's problem. 

This vintage of Eldorado was the last go-round for Cadillac's "personal luxury car" that was first introduced in 1953 as a show car to celebrate Cadillac's fiftieth anniversary. Introduced in 1992, it was based on the E-body chassis that Cadillac rolled out to disastrous results in 1986. Eleven inches longer than the model it replaced, Cadillac welding on three inches to the stubby '86 models in 1989 too, Cadillac made incremental changes to it through 2002. By then, the personal luxury car market had all but dried up. The last vestige of one meeting the grim reaper after model year 2007. That being, ironically enough, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo. 

 

1998 Cadillac Sedan de Ville - Word Association

This 1998 Cadillac Sedan de Ville with only 83,000 miles on it is for sale in Elberfield, Indiana with an asking price of $1,000. Why's a pretty clean car like this with so few miles on it going for so little in this insane used car market? Let's play some word association. I say "Cadillac Northstar" and you say? Ding-ding. "Blown head gasket?"  Correct. 

That's too bad. These last of the K-body DeVille's aren't handsome and have aged terribly but they're super comfy cruisers and are packed with features. These seats are to die for. And when the Northstar isn't breaking your heart and back account, it runs smoothly and provides adequate scoot. And it runs on regular. 

I'd figure $2,500 to $3,000 to swap the head gasket on this. Hopefully with the fix it won't eat another one. Get a good warranty too. I wouldn't use a cheapie garage and it's certainly not something shade tree hacks like me should do either. What might be fun is to swap in a 3800 V-6. Certainly, more than doable and could be less expensive. It won't have near the punch of the Northstar but it would be far more reliable. However, you're going to have look hard to find a shop that will do it if you can't do it yourself. 

Problem with the Northstar engine was the head bolts didn't stay seated in the block. They became "loose" and compromised the head gasket causing overheating. Problems arising usually on engines that would have these issues between 80,000 and 110,000 miles and 1996-1999 Cadillac's were the most notorious. This '98 here is like a case study. 

Problems with these engines wasn't allegedly rectified until 2005 so that means there's a lot of Cadillac's with the Northstar that have gone to an early crusher. I can't tell you how many Eldorado's with the Northstar I've swooned over but passed on because of it. Damn shame. Personally, I wouldn't buy this car or any Cadillac with the Northstar even if the head gasket was good or had been replaced. Just too risky. 

Cadillac switched the DeVille to the K-body chassis in 1994 that underpinned the Seville. 1994-1996 models have pseudo fender skirted rear quarter panels that they eliminated on the 1997-1999 models. Made for an awkward look akin to what GM did with the Chevrolet Caprice starting in 1993; it wasn't meant to look like this from the start. Combine wonky styling with the Northstar issues and it's no wonder Lexus got such a foothold in this county as quickly as they did.  

Elberfeld, Indiana is a tiny town on the Indiana-Kentucky border less than an hour from Evansville and roughly 90 minutes or so west of Louisville. Population as of 2010 was 625. 
 

1995 Oldsmobile Aurora - The Last Oldsmobile

The latest jalopy my chief engineer is "storing" in the lot in the back of our compound is his father's 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora. Yes, this is literally and figuratively his father's Oldsmobile. 

Seeing how covered in tree sap it is and nests for various vermin safe to say it doesn't look like it's been running for quite some time. 

In many ways the Aurora was the last "real Oldsmobile" in that it no body panels would fit any other GM make or model and, just like back in the olden days, it was powered by a proprietary, division specific V-8 engine. 

In this case a Cadillac "Northstar" DOHC V-8 with a smaller bore; making the bore smaller actually made the engine heavier. It also suffered from the Northstar's penchant for blowing head gaskets. My chief attempted to get at the heads and gave up. Just as well. By the way, this car has just over 153,000 on its twenty-six year old ticket. Oldsmobile also built a V-6 engine based on the Northstar V-8 that blew up just as often. 

I remember seeing one for the first time at a new-car show back on Long Island in the mid-'90's and the feelings I had for it must have been what many felt when they saw GM's fabulously futuristic designs at Motorama's back in the 1950's. 

Darn thing looked like it could fly to the Mars and beyond! Still does. Ha. As if. 

Based on General Motors new-for-1995 GMX690 chassis or what became known as the "G-body", the Oldsmobile Aurora was supposed to be what the doctor ordered - a vehicle that could reinvigorate what had not twenty-years prior been a bastion of General Motors design and engineering prowess. 

Well, sales and marketing prowess. Let's be real. It wasn't as if Oldsmobile in the 1970's was shifting paradigms of what an automobile was; like they had done in the fifteen to twenty years or so after World War II. 

These only came in four-door guise; if you wanted a coupe you could buy a "G-body" Buick Riviera starting in 1996. 

Oldsmobile was once favored by 40-something's but by the mid-90''s, they wanted nothing to do with the brand. Only folks who did were those former 40-somethings who now in their 60's who were still faithful to the brand.

 

So bright did the Oldsmobile Aurora seem at its introduction that there were rumblings that GM was going to rename Oldsmobile "Aurora". 

Save for being a most interesting looking appliance, still is a photogenic beast, it wasn't that good of an automobile either. Too soft, too heavy and too slow, it wasn't much of a compelling option up against similarly priced options from Europe and Asia. Throw in an unreliable engine and it was just another nail in the coffin for Oldsmobile. 

Once we're back in the office full-time, right now that's slated to be October 11th, I'll bust his chops to get his junk out of our yard. Until then I'll let sleeping dogs lie and look forward to the next clunker he drags back here. 

1992 Oldsmobile Achieva SC - Check the Head Gasket

My wife and I leased one of these shortly after we were married in the early summer of 1992. Flush with extra cash from a job promotion, I jumped at the chance to ditch the wretched 1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT she had bought straight out of graduate school three years prior. That dreadful lump deserves a diatribe of it's own but for today, I'll wax-nostalgic about that little coupe that was, save for the white paint and "High Output" version of the Quad4, all but identical to our subject here which I found for sale recently during one of my cheap car searches. This car was listed, and I kid you not, at just under twelve-thousand dollars. That's an absurd amount of money for this non-descript, oh-so-1990's-piece of Oldsmobilia. Yes, it has only forty-three thousand some odd miles on the odometer but still, twelve grand for this??

While the idea of getting rid of the Sunbird was my idea, it was my wife who chose an Achieva because she liked the looks of it. For an an early 1990's GM anything it was a good if not terrific design with a cohesiveness that bespoke of a singular designer versus a car drawn by committee. With the sports-tuned suspension ours had, after all, "SC" denotes sports coupe, it had a compliant ride and handled quite well. While I preferred the Buick built 3.3 liter V-6 that was optional, we skipped it to save some a couple of bucks for one with the one-hundred and sixty horsepower version of the Quad4. 

I had bought into the mystique of the Quad4 lock, stock and barrel going back to its introduction on the Achieva's predecessor, the Oldsmobile Calais. Supposedly a world-class power-plant that was GM's first dual-overhead-camshaft, sixteen-valve four-cylinder engine since the Cosworth Vega's little twin-cammer back in the mid 1970's, on the test drive it didn't disappoint. Our Achieva weighed less than three-thousand pounds and seemingly didn't want for power but, then again, we tend to test drive cars differently than we drive them when we own them. Our Quad4 powered Achieva felt brisk compared to the ninety-horsepower Sunbird and while it didn't have quite the snap off the line my 3.1-liter V-6 powered 1990 Chevrolet Lumina Euro had, it made up for it by being far more responsive on the highway. 

Of course I did the copious research I do now prior to purchasing a car after we got it and found that while critics applauded the Quad4"s robust power-to-displacement ratio, they panned the noise it made and the tractor-engine like thrashing and vibrations that came when revved near its redline. Yup, totally agree with that although it wasn't quite as obvious as they'd made it out to be. There was a "bomminess" to the Quad4 when you really got on it, that noise exacerbated by our Achieva's lacking-an-drive three-speed automatic transmission. Yes, a three-speed automatic on an early '90's car. Consumer Reports also noted it had a dubious reputation for blowing head-gaskets. Head-gaskets? The hell is a head-gasket? Isn't that something that only old-timey cars have? Surely modern cars don't have anything as archaic and colloquial sounding as a "head gasket". Well, they do.  

Near the end of interminably long, forty-eight month "Smart Lease", my wife called me to tell me that there was a plume of white smoke trailing her while she drove the Achieva to and from her job. Her commute was maybe ten miles each way. To make matters worse, she said the temperature gauge was "in-the-red" and that the usually peppy car had "no-pickup". Seeing it was a lease and still under warranty, I called the dealership where we got it and a tow-truck showed up the next morning to haul it away. 

Couple of days later I got the ominous call that the "head-gasket was blown" and worse yet, the head was warped and there was a possibility the block was cracked. The first all-in estimate for repairs was around twenty-seven hundred dollars. Worse case with a total engine replacement was north of five-grand. Suffice to say, my wife and I were beside ourselves. All this on a car with about fifty-five thousand miles on that that was under a lease that was about to expire. While we were under the mileage allowance for the lease, the damn car itself was out-of-warranty with it having run out at forty-eight thousand miles. 

Fortunately, what with the Quad4 having the aforementioned propensity to "blow head gaskets", the service department was able to work with us and covered the cost of the repairs which was approximately twenty-two hundred dollars. Turned out they were able to machine the head and the block was fine. Pretty remarkable considering that my wife drove the car more than twenty miles with a the blown head gasket. We rode out the remaining six months or so of the lease without any further drama, the head gasket was the only trouble we had with it, but we gladly "gave it back" to dealership at the end of the term. 

What with my wife expecting our first son at the time, the dealership did a yeoman's job of attempting to get us into a four-door, now 3100 V-6 powered Achieva that had none of the elan of the coupe. We didn't bite. I much preferred the lines and the power of an Eighty-Eight, but after the head gasket thing, despite the dealership's accommodations, we went with a thirty-six month lease on a flashy 1996 Nissan Maxima. A car that was absolutely flawless from the start of the lease right through the end. And perhaps one of only a car or two that I wish I had never gotten rid of. Can't say that about the Achieva. 

All of which makes the asking price for this one all the more eye brow raising. Here's the listing. Bet you can talk 'em down a bunch. Check the head gasket.