1978 Cadillac Eldorado - 26 Cents A Pound. Such a Deal.

Here we have what one of the last of the big boys, a super clean, 19,000-mile Cadillac Eldorado from 1978, the year before Cadillac shrink-rayed it. This one here for sale on Marketplace less than an hour southeast of The Old Triple Wide outside Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price is $19,000. Figure a dollar for every mile it's got on it or about 26-cents per pound. Such a deal. 

Poster of the ad claims to be the third owner of this brute and it was in storage for a number of years before they bought it. Sounds like an estate sale or "barn find" to me and they're trying to make some bucks on it. Nothing wrong with that. Unless you're the buyer and you find out afterwards you overpaid for it. Prices on these it what appear to be solid shape pegs this priced fairly. Poster of the ad says it's mostly original and that scares me to some degree. 

Thing is, who'd buy this thing? I'm as "car guy" as they get and a Cadillac man too but even I'd chafe at this thing. It's just too damn big. What's more, I'm past the age of wanting something nostalgic and forgiving its sins. And this car has a lot of sins. It'll handle poorly even if the suspension is up to snuff, be oh-so-difficult to maneuver and families in Kia crossovers will blow by you like you're standing still. Did I mention single-digit gas mileage? It'll run you over a hundred bucks to fill it up. 

To that end, I don't get these cars anymore. I did back in the day, mind you but now I like to have my oldies or weekenders do more for me than just look good. And don't get me wrong, this old boat looks great. I love the color combo. Lovely. That GM grey paint has a tendency to oxidize and turn white, no word if this is a repaint or not. The bumper filler panels are pristine too. 

Under the hood this one has Cadillac's new-for-1977, 425-cubic inch V-8. Making all of 180-net horsepower, again, you're not going anywhere fast in this thing. It'll crank out 320 foot-pounds of torque and with a 2.73:1 drive ratio, it'll pull off the line decently. Thing is that this porker will tilt the scales on the dark side of two-and-a-half tons. Move over, gramps.

Cadillac's first came out with an Eldorado in 1953 to help celebrate their 50th anniversary. More or less a fancied Coupe deVille, in 1967, Cadillac made the Eldorado front-wheel-drive sharing its trick "United Power Plant" with the Oldsmobile Toronado. It was redesigned in 1971, our '78 here is part of that 1971 rebooting. From 1967 to 1970, Cadillac heralded the Eldorado as being a sports-tourer of sorts, the 1971 to 1978 were more like fluffy parade floats. 

 

 

1977 Ford Maverick - The O.G.

This 1977 Ford Maverick popped up on Marketplace recently and is very similar to my 1974 Mercury Comet I had as my first car from February 1982 through June of 1983. The 1971 to 1977 Mercury was a lightly disguised, badge-engineered version of the O.G. Maverick. Here you thought the Ford Maverick was an adorable little trucklet. Nope. Back in my day, this was a Ford Maverick. Now get off my lawn. 

The similarities to my Comet run more than sheet metal deep. The front passenger side floor is rotted out on this car as well, poster of the ad says the driver's side is rotted out too. Imagine my horror when I realized my floors were melting. I first noticed my carpeting would be soaked when it rained, then a friend put his foot through the floor playing air guitar. "Ah, dude, something's wrong with the floor of your car! Yeah. I'll say. Thanks, pal." 

Thing is that my car was all of eight- or nine-years-old when I discovered it was a rust bucket. This thing is knocking on the door of the big five-oh. Good for you, little guy. Although, have to wonder how long those floorboards have been wasted away. Poster of the ad says, euphemistically, "she's rusty but still trusty." 

These fancy cast rims were available on Mavericks and Comets later in the production run, my Comet didn't have them. This car only has them on the front, but he's got two more that don't have tires mounted on them. Speaking of the front, poster of the ad claims the front brake lines need to be replaced. He'll do them for you if you want, no doubt jacking up the already absurd asking price of $3,500 for the whole kit and kaboodle. Good thing the floorboards are rotted out so you can "Fred Flintstone" it if the car won't stop on your way home. 

When Ford first introduced the Maverick in 1969, it was a two-door door only, a four-door built on a chassis with a longer wheelbase was introduced for 1971. Mercury dolled up a Maverick as their Comet starting in 1971 rolling it out with two- and four-doors, there was no Maverick\Comet station wagon. Useful as the four-door was, all the design charms of the two-door went over the proverbial fence. 

Maverick sales were strong at first, Ford moving nearly 600,000 of them in an elongated 1970 model year. Before Ford introduced the similarly sized Granada in 1975, a car built on the same chassis that had DNA in it going back to 1960, they sold more than 250,000 of them each year. Ford sells maybe half that number of the current compact truck Maverick each year these days. 

Dean Martin and his Stutz Blackhawks - You Want Fries with That?

A Stutz Blackhawk owned by Dean Martin was in the news recently when Bing Crosby's grandson, Philip Crosby Jr., claimed Dean damaged it driving through a McDonald's drive thru in Santa Monica, California buying food for him. Crosby told the anecdote to media outlets while promoting his involvement with the Bing Crosby estate. He didn't personally remember the incident as he was only four- or five-years-old at the time in happened in either 1976 or 1977.

Story goes that one-day Phillip, his mother and Martin were out in Martin's Stutz when young Phil complained he was hungry. Martin found an open McDonald's with a drive thru but had difficulty maneuvering the very wide car through it. Philip didn't elaborate on the extent of the damage, but he did intimate it was rather severe. 

Phillip's mother, Peggy, met Dean Martin shortly after divo0rcing Phil's father in 1972. Despite the twenty-three-year age gap, they dated for a number of years. Phillip Crosby Sr. was the third son born to Bing Crosby and his first wife, Dixie Lee. 

                                     

Before we drive up to the next window, what in the name of Ronald McDonald was, or is, a Stutz Blackhawk? 

To being with, the Stutz Motor Car Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, was the result of the 1913 merger of the Ideal Motor Car Company and Stutz Auto Parts Company. Stutz specialized in building expensive sports and luxury cars like this 1914 Stutz Bearcat. The low-volume manufacturer built less than 40,000 cars before going out of business in 1937. 

Fast forward to December 1963 to when famed automobile designer Virgil Exner wrote an article for Esquire magazine imagining what dormant automobile brands like Stutz, Pierce-Arrow and Duesenberg would look like as "modern cars". New York investment banker James O'Donnel, who had always wanted to get into the car business, helped bankroll Exner's vision. 

The, umm, end result...was the Stutz Blackhawk which debuted at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan in January 1970. Keep in mind that at the time, the 1930's, what some refer to as the "Golden Age of the Automobile", was only forty-years hence. Nostalgia is nothing new. It's also never been inexpensive. 

At $27,000 each, Blackhawks were the most expensive cars in the world at the time and deep pocketed celebrities bought them in droves. Dean Martin bought three, fellow Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra had theirs. Elvis Presley purportedly had five and was allegedly seen driving one the day he died. Evil Knievel, Johnny Cash, Lucille Ball, Robert Goulet, Jerry Lewis, Tom Jones, Billy Joel, Elton John bought them, even the Shah of Iran couldn't resist its, ahem, charms. If you're familiar with Liberace, should come as no surprise he had one. 

Blackhawks cost so much because they were hand built by artisans and craftsman at Carrozeria Pardane in Modena, Italy; those guys don't work cheap. They began by using the chassis of a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix. The Grand Prix' were shipped overseas where Pardane removed their bodies and interior and hand built new ones. 

While there's a familial resemblance to the exterior of the Pontiac Grand Prix' the Blackhawk was based on, the interior was so completely overhauled that it has no likeness to the injection molded plastic insides the Grand Prix donor would have had. Disparate parts from different manufacturers were used to help make it "luxurious". 

The door handles, seats and gauges were from Maserati, the rear glass from Ferrari and the switch gear was supposedly custom made in France. The stereo was built by the Leer Jet corporation; the interior gold is 24K gold plating, the dashboard is solid wood. The trunk is lined with mink; the carpet is real fur. The wheels were the first 17-inch rims ever fitted to a production car, Firestone making specific tires for them as well. Most surviving Blackhawks today have aftermarket wheels because there are no tires made today that fit the tall but narrow rims. (This Stutz Blackhawk interior is not from a Blackhawk owned by Dean Martin as the shot above was. I used for illustrative purposes.)

All Blackhawks were made with side pipes, but they were ornamental. The pipes making an already very wide car even more so, no doubt making it difficult for a driver of a Blackhawk to nestle closely to the clown face at a drive thru. This 1972 Blackhawk is the one Martin sold to Buck Owens in 1974; given the timeline of the incident, this couldn't be the "drive thru" Blackhawk. Most likely it's the one Martin is standing next to in the faded older photos.

Nor is it this 1974 Blackhawk Martin wrecked while driving, sorry, "drunky" sometime in the mid-1970's. After this accident, Martin transferred the DRUNKY plates to his Rolls-Royce. 

The car Phillip Crosby Jr. is referring is probably this 1976 Blackhawk, sold recently at auction for an undisclosed amount. We see on this car the ornamental side pipes are even more of an appendage than on the '72. The "exhaust pipe" is all but tucked under the door reducing ground clearance significantly. 

All Blackhawks came from the factory with a plaque on the dash denoting their original owner, here's the one from the '76 Blackhawk. "Umm, sorry about your car, Mr. Martin. Would you like fries with that?" 

1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am - Cool Like Fonzie

 

Back when I was at Oceanside High School on Long Island, New York in the early 1980's, you drove something like this 1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, you were cooler than Fonzie. If you were a junior you looked like a senior; if you were a senior, you looked like you were in college. Just being seen in one validated you and made you look like someone going places. Even if mommy and daddy or your friend's parents wrote the check for it.

Although Oceanside was (and is) a fairly affluent community that rubs elbows with some of the wealthiest communities in the country, no kid at Oceanside drove a Corvette to school; there were some things out of reach for even the coolest and richest kids. Firebirds, Camaros and Mustangs were far less expensive, could be had with less powerful engines thus cheaper to insure. Explains why personal luxury cars were so popular as first-cars back then. Naturally, I drove a four-door, 1974 Mercury Comet. Oh, the pain. The pain. 

I lived on the literal "other side of the tracks" in a part of neighboring Baldwin that happened to be in the Oceanside School District. Had my parents bought a house another couple of hundred yards to the east I would have gone to Baldwin schools. Nothing wrong with that, just that Baldwin wasn't nearly as monied as Oceanside was or appeared to be. 

Good news is, if you weren't "cool" back in high school or want to return to those halcyon days of yore when you were or thought you were, just fork over $54,575 for this redhead for sale outside Columbus, Ohio and you can be like Fonzie again. Or be as cool as Fonzie since no one could've have worn Arthur Fonzarelli's t-shirt back in the day. 

Yeah, fifty-four-thousand, five-hundred-seventy-dollars. The kicker is, it's not unreasonably priced. Meanwhile, a 1976 Corvette in similar shape would sell for roughly half that, a 1976 Camaro would go for similar money to the Corvette. 

How and why is that? Well, as us older Gen X'ers get on in age, some long for the trappings of our youth. Since no kid drove a Corvette, it makes sense, well sort of, that the cars the cool kids drove, or we aspired to drive would command top dollar. 

That would explain, to some degree, why mid-'70's Corvettes go for as little as they do, and Chevrolet did not sell a version of the Camaro in 1975 and 1976 comparable to the Trans Am. Still, $55,000? 

No doubt, in addition to nostalgia and this car's relatively pristine condition, it's not museum quality incidentally as we see here that something's not quite right, what's driving the price on this through the T-Tops is it has a 455-cubic inch Pontiac V-8. 

1976 was the last year the big engine was available in any Firebird although the big mill was down a good hundred net horsepower from what it had just a couple of years prior. Chevrolet had discontinued offering the Camaro with their 454-cubic inch V-8 after 1973, on the Corvette it was dropped after 1974. 

Us car guys and gals, who never really grew up, like big engines. Even if they are emasculated shadows of what they had been. This is the best picture of the engine they posted. 

Even with a four-speed manual and 3.23:1 rear end, Road and Track recorded a 1976 Trans Am going from zero-to-sixty in 8.4-seconds, that, friend-oh, is far from fast. Your turbocharged, three-cylinder crossover today would smoke this thing. A 310-net horsepower, 1973 SD-455 powered Firebird Formula or Trans Am might give you a run for the money. Personally, I prefer more from my "oldies" than just a nostalgia piece, hence, my weekender is a 1991 Corvette convertible. Not only could it run circles around this car, but it also cost me a fraction of what the asking price is for this. 

General Motors late and sometimes great Pontiac division built four-generations of Firebirds from 1967 through 2002, and a "Trans Am" from 1969 through 2002. The cars were very similar to Chevrolet's Camaro although marketed as being somewhat more upscale. Trans Am's were named after the Trans Am racing series. 

Seems nostalgia, which is nothing new, can be very expensive. 

1955 Buick Special Riviera - Riviera Special?

 

I do my best to keep my New Year's Resolutions. Mine this year is to blog more about cars before 1960, or, generally speaking, cars I have little or less interest in. Today, let's take a look at this 1955 Buick Special I found and on Marketplace for sale outside Kansas City, Missouri. Asking price is $14,000. If this car had seat belts I'd say, "buckle up, let's go". So just hang on. 

From 1936 through 1958, the Buick "Special" was Buick's least expensive model and rode on General Motor's "B-body" platform all Chevrolet's, Pontiac's and Oldsmobile's 80 series did. Buick's "Century" model did too, the difference between a Century and a Special was the Century had the bigger engine from the Buick Roadmaster; the Buick Roadmaster and Super, Oldsmobile 90 series and Cadillac's were built on GM's larger and heavier "C-body" chassis. When GM updated the B-body for 1955, the Buick Special was as well. The C-body was redone in 1954. 

For clarity's sake, a Buick "Super" was a Roadmaster with the smaller engine from the Special. Buick covering all their bases back then in ways only General Motors could. You wanted a Special with more scoot, you got a Century. You wanted to look like you were money but do so on a budget, you got a Super. 

On the Special for 1955, Buick continued the sweep spear styling motif they introduced in 1949 on the Roadmaster and Super Riviera's, more than you bargained for on Riviera's in a minute, which had trickled down to the Special and Century in 1951. It's a look you either love or hate or at least find somewhat interesting like I do. If anything, it's distinctive. I think it works better on the leaner flanks of these cars versus the pudgier, doughier somewhat pre-war like lines on the 1951 to 1954 Special's and Century's.  What's a car blog without opinion anyway? 

Buick kept the sweep spear theme on all their cars through 1958, they kept a vestige of it on some models well into the 1990's. Along with all new and debatably insane designs for 1959, Buick rebooted their model nomenclature replacing the Roadmaster with the Electra, the Special with the LeSabre and the Century with the Invicta. The Special would return in 1961 on Buick's first ever compact, "Super" would return only as a trim option on 2008 to 2011 LaCrosse and Lucerne's. Hats off to the old-school GM marketing executive for digging it up back then. 

I hate to be "that guy", but the poster for the Facebook Marketplace ad for this 1955 Buick Special misidentifies it as a Buick Riviera Special. It's not. It's a Buick Special Riviera. Can't blame them for mislabeling this, though. Buick's use of the Riviera moniker prior to their introduction of the series of personal luxury cars they named as such from 1963 to 1993 is inconsistent if not confusing. For certain, from 1949 to 1962, any Buick designated as a "Riviera" was not a stand-alone model. In the case of this '55, "Riviera" denoted a Buick hardtop.

To keep this soliloquy all about this Buick Special, I put everything I know about Buick's use of "Riviera" prior to 1963 below, 

Under the hood, we have Buick's 264-cubic inch, overhead-valve "Nailhead" V-8 they introduced in 1953. Making 188-gross horsepower, figure 110 or so net, the emphasis was on smoothness of operation rather than stoplight to stoplight acceleration. You wanted a Special with more scoot, buyers got a Century with the 236-gross horsepower, 322-cubic inch V-8 from the Roadmaster. figure 140-net horsepower. Still no powerhouse but more is more. Officially, Buick marketed their new V-8's as "Fireball", car wonks nicknamed the engines "Nailhead" due to their narrow intake and exhaust valves that resembled nails.  

With some exceptions, I'm not the biggest fan of cars made before 1960. 1954-1957 Buicks grab my attention because they're an interesting blend of pre- and post-War General Motors design. They're longer, lower and wider than GM's first models after the War but are restrained in ways their late '50's most certainly were not. 

For, your ahem, green, you get a 1955 Buick two-door hard top with flawed, mismatched paint that in no way can be original. You also get sagging shocks, dry-rotting tires and a cracked windshield. You do get a new battery and fuel pump. Poster of the ad claims the car is priced accordingly. Well, if they say so; the top-notch paint job this car deserves will run more than the asking price for it. If you have a jones for a one of these, I'd rather you drop $25,000 on a more complete car. The era incorrect paint would have me passing on this ten-fold. 

As promised, more on Buick's use of "Riviera" prior to 1963....

In 1949 and 1950, Buick's denoted as a "Riviera" were two-door hardtops, or cars with no center post emulating the look of a convertible with its top up. Actually, they were convertibles with steel roofs welded on them. From 1951 to 1953, Buick used "Riviera" as a top-of-the-line trim option on their four-door Roadmaster and Super. 

Throwing the Twin-Turbine Super Dynaflow into reverse at 40-miles-an-hour, from 1954 through 1958, "Riviera" became a body style designation once more denoting hardtops; in 1955, a four-door hardtop joined the fray. 

But wait, there's more. 1959 through 1962, "Riviera" was only used on top-of-the-line Buick Electra's regardless of their body type. Blurring the definition of a "Buick Riviera" even further, in 1963, Buick sold a four-door "Electra Riviera" alongside their new for '63, two-door Riviera personal luxury car. To lessen the "two-Riviera" confusion, there was no Riviera badging on the Electra.

Read the entire ad. Yes it’s available. Clean title in hand. NO TRADES. Just out of long term ownership. New battery and fuel pump. I would call it good driver condition. Paint has flaws and some mismatch. Windshield is cracked. All the gauges and lights work. Runs and drives great. Rear shocks are getting weak. Older tires. I have priced it accordingly. When your ready to come see/purchase just call me. Too many time wasters on here I’m not messaging back and forth. I’m offering it this final time then I will take it to another level and raise the price. Location is Harrisonville MO 64701. Figure out your shipping cost before you call me. Thanks for looking. AJ 816//604//8094