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. 

 

1955 Chevrolet Belair - Another Easter Egg

Wowza. Here's another Facebook Marketplace Easter egg with the same asking price, $28,000, as that bucket of bolts of a '56 "Two-Ten. Post" I dented not long ago. The big difference here is that this is a hardtop and not a "post"; I forget how nice these are and I take back most of anything indifferent I may have said over the years towards Tri-Five Chevrolet's. I'm not sure if it's the color scheme and the Cragers helping to make this car even better looking but this thing is awesome. Just shy of thirty-grand sure is a lot for a toy but that appears to be the price of admission for these things these days. And this is in far from showroom condition too. 

The term "Tri-Five Chevrolet" refers to 1955-1957 Chevrolet's that many claim ushered in the modern age of automobile design and, to some degree, engineering. 

These cars came in three trim levels and seven body styles. My indifference towards them borne mostly out of a lack of context since I have little recollection of them when I was young. However, as my quasi-car enthusiast twenty-four year old son points out, there is something to these cars regardless of whether or not you remember them from when you were a kid or not. He likes them all but I, again, love the hardtops which in my opinion trascend whether or not you have any personal connection to them. They're just cool. All other Chevy's of this ilk, through my goggles, might as well be dishwashers. 

Our '55 here is, again, far from perfect. The interior, an older custom job that is pretty worn but still achingly fabulous, could use some sprucing up; cracked leather rocks, ripped does not. The ad claim it comes with a new interior but there are no details as to whether it's a match for this '50's Malt Shop decor. 

The seminal 265 cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8 this was probably born with is long gone having been replaced with this rebuilt "350". There are no other details about this mill other than it just being "rebuilt" but judging by the size of that honker of an intake manifold this thing looks like it has some serious poke. Frankly, I can't remember the last time I saw a "Tri-Five" that was driver that had its original engine so I wouldn't be too concerned about "numbers matching". 

That $28,000 asking price also includes nice upgrades like front discs although no power assist, "modern A-arms" up front and a four-speed manual that replaced the factory floor-mounted three-speed with what was referred to as "Touch-down Overdrive". And of course, the legendary if not iconic although period incorrect Crager S/S rims. For the record, the S/S rims debuted in 1964. The raised white letter tires are completely wrong but if you appreciate such things they work quite well here. Especially with the Cragers. 

Ad claims the car was painted this black and white scheme back in the 1960's and could use a respray. I'd leave everything as is, even the steering wheel, although I might spring for a vacuum booster for the brakes and power steering pump for the steering if it doesn't have one already. Which is doubtful. Pricey upgrades but this stuff comes in kits for "easy" install. Ha. As if. 

Use it as a driver, which is what it should be used as, make the slight mods and flip it in a year or so making a couple of bucks off it as the next person to own her does whatever they want to it. Hopefully they'd feel the same as I do and leave it as is. 

1961 Buick Skylark - The Bottom of The Lake

This 1961 Buick Special "Skylark" is the latest interesting thing to pop up on my Facebook Marketplace feed. For sale in the hinterlands of the west side of Cleveland, Ohio with an asking price a mere $1,500, it's in pretty good shape for a, gulp, sixty-year old, non-muscle car that even in show room condition wouldn't get much attention at a car show. Amazing, then, that it's made it this far without either ending up in the shredder or at the bottom of Lake Erie. 

Yeah. That's a thing up here. Some folks drive cars they don't want anymore out onto The Lake when it's frozen and leave them there. That's my crazy wife and the dog this past February about forty feet out from the shore when The Lake was frozen solid like iron. When the thaw comes, presto. No more car. Not sure why they do that but I guess there's a certain romanticism to it that calling a junk yard to haul away their old bomb just won't suffice. Pollution be damned, they can always look at the mighty lake and muse to those who might be quasi-interested, "you know, my dad's DeSoto is at the bottom of that lake...". 

Back in the olden days, General Motors came out with four-compacts built on what they called the "Y-body" to compete with the import and AMC onslaught of smaller cars that finally gained sales traction in the U.S. in the mid to late 1950's. They started with the rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair in 1960 and followed up with similar but quite different iterations at Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. Pontiac had their Tempest, which was almost as wonky as the Corvair, meanwhile Oldsmobile and Buick had far more conventional approaches with, receptively, the F-85 and Special. Skylark was a trim level of the Special for 1961 before becoming a separate model of it's own for '62 and beyond. 

Knowing that I'm much the same way that I usually opt for either the longest way around the block, the most complicated or the most interesting to me, GM engineers couldn't leave well enough with eschewing the Corvair's rear-engine and the Tempest's rear-transaxle, complete with "rope-drive", and leaving the F-85 and Special to be simply small, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive designs. Nope. They had to go where GM had never gone before and develop a cast aluminum, small bore and stroke, V-8 engine. 

Somewhat surprisingly, our '61 here comes with not one but two of those engines. Something tells me that one of these suckers, let's take a wild guess and say it's the one here still mounted in the car, is no longer running. 

On paper, at least, if not theory, these "little" V-8's made sense. Seeing that Chevrolet's overhead-valve, inline six-cylinder was too long to fit in the short engine compartment of the Tempest, F-85 and Special, Buick built these little V-8's instead for them. Again, on paper, it works. And works quite well, actually. Incidentally, Pontiac "halved" their 389 cubic-inch V-8 for a 195 cubic-inch four that was the base engine in 1961-1963 Tempest's. Note to self, find one of those and blog on it as soon as possible. 

Displacing all of 215 cubic-inches and making up to 215 brake-horsepower in the Oldsmobile F-85 "Jetfire" that had a turbocharger (!), the problem with the "215" was that, the early ones in particular, it had block-casting porosity issues that caused oil leaks. Another and more problem issue was that if vehicle owners used anti-freeze incompatible with aluminum, the cooling channels and radiators would clog causing overheating. What's more, and probably most importantly, building these engines was expensive and cut into profit margins. 

Buick based a far more cost effective iron-block and head V-6 on the 215 for 1962 and the rest, as the cliche goes, was history. The "little" V-6, despite inherent teething and growing pains, going on to become known as GM's legendary if not deathless "3800" V-6. Meanwhile GM gave up on the 215 V-8 selling the tooling for it to Rover of England, which later became British Leyland, whom refined it and used it in various forms through the mid 1990's. 

So, there's quite a bit of history to this Facebook Marketplace find. Perhaps the poster of the ad has just gotten sick of all the inherent issues with attempting to restore what it many regards is an automobile with as dated engineering as a typewriter. Have to applaud the effort even if it appears they've given up on it. 

I like the design of these 1961 and 1962 Buick Specials and Skylarks, they look like little LeSabre's of this vintage, don't they? But in my opinion Buick ruined it for '63 before moving the entire line to GM's new for '64 and wholly conventional intermediate "A-body". Do I like this enough to call on it and finish the project? Oh, hell no. I don't even like enough to drop a small-block Chevy into it. That would make it a '61 Skylark with a Chevy V-8 and who'd care. Certainly would be cheaper and easier than fixing what's ever wrong with the Buick V-8 in this thing. 

Certainly, if this was a '64 Special or Skylark in this shape it would have been gobbled up by now. As this is, who knows. Perhaps in the end it will end up at the bottom of The Lake. If you're interested, comment below and I'll try and dig up the ad. 

 

1988 Pontiac Fiero - Italian Pride

Decades before the "C8" Corvette, there was the mid engine Pontiac Fiero

This 1988 Pontiac Fiero could be the perfect little fuel efficient commuter for me to make my two-hundred mile per day round trip to and from my office. 

A mid-engine car is one that has its engine literally in the middle of the car. 

It would replace my 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS that I've been using to make my elongated traipse to work and back since I took my current job two years ago. With almost 225,000 on it, the poor old boy is pretty long in tooth. It's rusting to the point the front fenders are loose because their bolt points on the body have melted away, the struts are shot, the check engine light is on "permanently" because the catalytic converter doesn't work any more and the air conditioning has stopped blowing cold again. It could use rear brakes and a tire or two as well. 

Mid-engine cars purportedly have near perfect 50/50 weight distribution 

It's not all bad. The engine still pulls well, the transmission shifts smoothly, it's very comfortable and its gas mileage is decent with an honest and consistent twenty-five to twenty-seven miles per gallon. Problem is, with the amount I drive, despite the good mileage my gas bills are steep and when the time comes to replace it, fuel economy is paramount. Covid has, ironically, has been a boom to my bank account but as we gear up to head back to the office, I'm facing gas pains once again. 

Handling for the '88's was much improved becayse Pontiac ditched the Chevette derived for front suspension. 

I've always liked Pontiac Fiero's - especially the older one's like this that GM had sorted out pretty well just before they stopped making them. With only 63,000 miles on our redhead here and what appears to be extraordinary condition, the only thing that stops me from calling on it is it's asking price of $7,900. If it was two or three grand less I might consider it. Might. These cars have stiff rides, no power-steering, sit low and are pretty noisy. I liken to commuting with a Fiero akin to a weekend afternoon jaunt with my wife in out '77 Corvette; fun at first but the drama gets old very quickly. The most stressful part of my day shouldn't be the drive to and from the office. 

Rear suspension was the front, yes, front suspension from a Chevrolet Citation

Pontiac advertised these cars getting as much as forty-eight miles per gallon so this would more than fit the bill in that regard. Although, that kind of mileage is high even by today's standards, hybrids notwithstanding of course. Let's remember that back in the day, the Big Three hyped gas-mileage estimates like they pushed horsepower numbers in the 1950's and 1960's. I'd peg this at thirty-miles per gallon tops. Anything more and I could spring for a frozen Coke and some roller meat at one of the myrad gas stations I frequent between Cleveland and the Pennsylvania border.. 

1984 and 1985 Fiero's came with four-speed manuals; a much welcomed five-speed became available for 1986

Who's kidding who, though. Driving a thirty-three year old Pontiac Fiero back and forth to my office might sound good on paper and be quasi-romantic but in reality, at the end of the day, it's still a thirty-three year old Fiero. And a chugging and huffing four-cylinder Fiero at that. The minute I find myself rationalizing I know that I'm going to easily talk my way out of whatever it is I'm wasting my time on. 

Fiero is Italian slang for "pride"

I guess for the time being I'll have to be comfortable with getting punched in the wallet over and over. Rest assured, though, I'll keep digging. If you're interested in this comment below and I'll try and dig up the actual posting. 

1956 Chevrolet Two-Ten - Hold Onto Your Bobby Socks

1955-1957 Chevrolet's, save for the Corvette, are referred to by some as "Tri-Fives" and I believe my apathy towards them stems from a lack of context seeing that I saw very few of them when I was growing up. Although, my first cousin, who's twenty-four years older than I am, had a '57. However, by the time I became even somewhat aware of it, it seemed woefully ancient; blame planned obsolescence for that.  She replaced it with a 1969 Buick LeSabre that seemed space-age modern whereas the old Chevy seemed like something out of an old, boring, black and white movie. 

This '56 popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed recently and to overstate the obvious, there's apparently something to these cars seeing this non-number's matching, pillared, "Two-Ten", that needs at least a paint job and pricey interior work, has an asking price of, hold onto your bobby socks, baby, $28,000. And, get this, this car is priced fairly well. A Buick LeSabre convertible in "Concours" condition couldn't grab twenty-grand. My cousin's LeSabre was a four-door. 

The "Tri-Fives" were Chevrolet's first all-new automobile since 1936 and everything, save for the famed Chevy "Blue Flame" six-cylinder engine and it's transmission options which carried over, was new. Styling was evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, you don't really notice how different the previous models were from the newer ones. The subtle but not so subtle changes in appearances had to have been part of the plan seeing that GM had a lot to lose if their cash cow laid an egg. And not a golden one at that. Lest we forget that not all new post war designs were guaranteed hits as Ford found out a scant three model years later when they launched the Edsel. 

Under the hood, the "Tri-Five's" are almost as famous for having Chevrolet's first V-8 engine since 1918 as they are for anything else. Whatever our '56 came from the factory with, however, is long gone. The ad makes no reference to what the car had originally but they do note that this engine here is a 327 cubic-inch "Chevy" from a 1964 Corvette. Yum. I'm not into resto-mod's per se but a period correct engine swap, 327's were quite the common engine swap before the Chevrolet 350 came along, that would improve drive-ability is more than welcome. The fact it came from a Corvette adds a dollop of extra cool to this whip as well. Although, what appears to be no power steering or brakes would make this car a handful to drive. 

That floor-mounted shifter is attached to a Muncie four-speed manual transmission. That's a real nice touch but the lack of power steering is a real deal killer for me. As if I would be serious about this thing in the first place. 

"Tri-Fives" came in three lines in seven different body styles. There was the "150", that name derived from shortening the car's "1500" production series name. The mid-level "Two-Ten" was named the same way although in sales brochures the car was known as "Two-Ten" where as the "150" was "150". The Bel Air was the top-of-the-line Chevrolet as it had been going back to 1950. 

Like I said, there is something to these cars as even my twenty-four year old, quasi car enthusiast son, who has impeccable fashion sense, adores these things. The '55 and '56 models even more so than the tail-finned '57's. That's saying a lot too since he won't give most older car's a second glance. He says they're too bubbly, too swoopy. I just think they're too damn ugly and all look alike. Like father, like son I guess.