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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Cadillacs sold pretty well, even after most of a decade of Malaise-y gas prices and general sense of diminished expectations, so you could still buy a great big angular slab of rear-wheel-drive Fleetwood as late as 1984. Here we've got a raggedy '79 Fleetwood that's been sitting on a major commercial strip for a couple of weeks now. This stretch of road is a popular spot to park cars for sale, since the traffic is so heavy. This Caddy, however, has no For Sale sign in sight; it may belong to the resident of a nearby apartment building, or it may be abandoned (this car has the telltale purple window tint, indicating that it is probably on its last owner). The APD is vigilant about this sort of thing, so a date with a tow truck may be in the offing. These things listed at $21,735 from the factory, or about 65 grand in 2008 dollars. Power...
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today we're going to look at one of the many reasons that Cadillac has had to struggle so mightily to build a coherent brand image- ideally, one that attracts buyers who might otherwise buy European machinery- in the Post Malaise Era: the 1984 Eldorado Biarritz. These cars weren't built for the long haul, but The General built them in sufficient numbers that you still see one now and then. This example parks near the high school, just down the street from the '69 Lincoln and the '76 Buick Donk ; while it rarely leaves its parking place, the current registration tags indicate that it has moved under its own power in the not-too-distant past. In '84, the base engine in the Eldorado was the 135-horse 4.1 liter V8, which was good enough to haul the car's 3,748 pounds. The disastrous Oldsmobile 350 diesel engine was also available...
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. With all the cool cars and trucks we've seen in this series, it may come as a shock to some that the first-ever DOTS car- that is, the first use of "Down On The Street" as the name- was this Cadillac Cimarron d'Oro , shot with a seriously crappy cellphone camera. Since that time, I've been packing better photographic hardware and keeping an eye open for another Cimarron… and now I've got one! What's the difference between the '85 Chevy Cavalier and the '85 Cadillac Cimarron? Some emblems, some leather… oh, and an extra $7,045- more than twice the cost of the $6,477 Cavalier (though the $560 cost of the optional V6 pushed the Chevy's price up to just about exactly half that of the Cad). The General's management, already reeling from relentless Japanese competition, the Fiero fiasco, and a bad case of Cerebral...
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1969 was a great year for Cadillac sales (and 1970 was better still), so it's no surprise that we're now looking at the third '69 Cadillac in this series. That's as good a reason as any to have a poll to determine the readers' favorite street-parked Alameda Cad on this fine Friday morning. I found this '69 parked just down the street from the Checker Marathon , and it has the look of a low-mileage original-owner car: solid, some rough spots but overall pretty nice. This may well be one of those old cars that only rarely ventures off the island. High sales figures or not, at $5,924 the '69 Sedan de Ville wasn't cheap. In fact, for just $3,776 the big-car buyer could pick up a '69 Impala sedan with the 425-horse 427 and 4-speed manual transmission. So let's say it's 1969, you're an up-and-coming strip-club owner in Dallas, and you're car shopping. Do you get the Cadillac with 375 horsepower or the cheaper Impala with 425 horsepower and a...
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While the "entry-level" Cadillac 2-door for '69, the Calais, was pretty slick, the one we saw in this series has clearly seen better days. But when you're talking serious Cadillac sporty luxury for 1969, you really need to think more in terms of the Coupe de Ville convertible. This example, spotted mere yards from the very rough '69 Volvo 144 , is in very nice condition, which is impressive for a convertible that parks on the street every day. Although Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was set in 1971, it's possible that the Great White Whale Cadillac rented by Raoul Duke and his 300 Pound Samoan Attorney was in fact a '69 just like this one. I should have checked the power windows to see if they jumped like frogs in a dynamite pond. I could tell that the tires were too soft just by looking at them- the fronts are supposed to be tight as snare drums. All the Iggy Pop ads in the world can't make up for the fact that GM no longer gives that special Cadillac...
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Since I couldn't find a DOTS car in Christmas-centric red and green, here's a solid red car to admire on our hard-earned day off from The Man's salt mines. We saw a somewhat rougher '60 Cadillac a while back, so I've been saving this car for a special occasion. Not only is it in excellent condition, it's the extra-slick two-door hardtop. Some folks like the convertible better, but I prefer the smoother lines of the hardtop; in fact, since 1960 is my favorite year for Cadillacs, the '60 2-door hardtop is my all-time favorite Cadillac (though I might select a more subdued color, were I shopping for my own). This car doesn't always park on the street, but it definitely lives on the island. It's so big and red that I figured I'd be able to see it from space; sure enough, when the Google Maps satellite passed overhead... parked outside that day! And, while we're in space, you can also see the gold '60 Cad from low earth orbit! Sometimes my favorite...
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Since it's been nearly a month since we last saw a 1950s Detroit DOTS car , and even longer since our most recent DOTS Cadillac , today we're going to look at two-and-a-half tons of Cadillac style: a 1957 Sedan de Ville. This car lives on the island's east side, quite close to the '72 Mercedes 280SEL , and it's parked on a busy street every day. No garage for this survivor! The '59 Cadillac is the one everyone thinks of when they imagine a hyper-ornamented befinned Cad, but the '57 was no slouch in the Tons-O-Chrome department. Check out this space-age taillight and bumper treatment! The twin-blade hood ornament is a winner, too. You got a 300-horse 365 under the hood of this baby. The fins were to get bigger every year until '59, and then shrink as the 60s progressed. They're still somewhat restrained here. Later front-wheel-drive Eldorados had a variation on the side-trim theme you see here. This is the car driven by mid-level mob attorneys back in...
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We've been a little light on Cadillacs in this series, having seen only a '37 , a '60 , and a '78 so far. This wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact that we've missed out on the Caddies from the era of maximum horsepower out of those great big 472- and 500-cube engines. So here's a 472-packin' 1969 Calais for this fine Friday morning. There's just something so perfect about a gigantic two-door hardtop- you roll up, drop anchor, and swing out this door that's longer than a Datsun and weighs about as much. Of course, this car might look nicer with a door that, like, matched the rest of the car... This particular Cad registers a pretty high reading on the Beater-O-Meter; note the inevitable GM rear-window rust and fuzztastic 6x9 speaker. Still, it has style like crazy. The Calais was the lowest-priced Cadillac for 1969; you got the 375-horse 472 engine and all the standard luxury goodies the Cadillac owner expected, but at a price a few hundred bucks lower than the DeVille. Of course...
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We sometimes forget that you could still get enormous freakin' Detroit land yachts well into the Malaise Era, gas lines and Middle East unrest be damned. This 1978 Cadillac Eldorado is an excellent example of such a car; the '77 Continental we saw a few...
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