Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/20/land-yacht-the-66-caddy-el-dorado.html
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I briefly worked for a classic car dealer in MD who sold two of these, sequentially numbered(!), as a his-and-her set. And where I live now, there are two of these (not sequential, nor related) within a mile of my house. As you can imagine, they get (got) hauled out for every event!
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It’s so strange looking at these juggernauts now despite the fact that many of us grew up riding in or driving them. How will people 50 years from now regard these opulent and wasteful relics of the Post-War Economic Anomaly?
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I owned a 1973 Cadillac El Dorado. Seats 7, comfortably! It was front wheel drive, so there was no hump in the middle of the car. The gas pedal had a little stop, once you pushed beyond, the all 4 barrels of the carburetor (I’m like old, huh) opened, and you got pushed backed into the seat… Mine had an 8 track tape player, and automatic lights that came on when it got dark. My power seat worked. Don’t forget the tilting telescoping steering wheel, probably the best feature.
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Is that the stock suspension? It looks pretty low
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I have relatives in Salt Lake who had a Buick Electra 225 back in the day. It was every bit the gigantic land yacht that could get up and move when the gas pedal was punched. That extremely thirsty 455 CID V-8 insisted on premium fuel, as well. Not something I’d want to take on a long trip from the fuel consumption standpoint, however comfortable it might be otherwise.
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I have fond memories of riding in one of those (the 77-84 series) in the mid-80s. It had the 403 and towing package. It was crazy fast and had a suspension made of half-melted marshmallows. Going around sweeping turns on the four-lane highway, you’d get some mildly alarming squealing from the tires as it dully considered flipping the hell over and killing us all.
I also had a friend with a firebird that had a 454. Oh my, that thing was fast. And I’m pretty sure I could see the gas needle move.
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My dad happened to have a '73 with the massive 502 engine when I was in college (80’s). I seem to recall it was the largest engine put in a passenger car up to that time. Did you know you could spin the front wheels with enough sudden throttle? Shhh, not something my dad ever knew! I recall roughly 8 MPG. But that machine was an amazing ride for a date, so cushy, and that bench front seat!
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I think I was in a Cadillac thirty years ago. A friend needed to move some things, and her uncle showed up in his car. I sat in the backseat, and the isolation was incredible.
I didn’t feel luxury, I felt punished, sent to the corner away from others.
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Yup, Chris would call it a Tuna Clipper!
Grew up on family vacations in the back seat of a Buick Electra 225. Learned to drive in one too.
LA in the late 60s. Fun times.
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Got my first driver’s license in one of these. It was majestic. Ours was white like this one, but a four-door hardtop. 383-ci V8…
…and the most amazing dashboard. The buttons to the left of the steering wheel were for the automatic transmission.
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15" wheels make every car from those days look like a low-rider.
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I expect much the same way we think back to a time when you could smoke indoors but i certainly don’t think it’ll take 50 years, even now these old cars look like heavily polluting murder mobiles responsible for horrific injuries during accidents.
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DAYUM!!1!!! That’s rolling artwork!
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I had a close friend in high school whose father had a mid-60s Buick Electra 225 and a '64 Olds Toronado. We used to drive the crap out of them.
My uncle used to lend me his '67 Buick Wildcat. All of these cars had the biggest engines available (I lived in a GM town). In the early 1970s gas mileage was not yet an issue.
My cousin (one of the uncle’s sons) got a '69 Camaro directly from GM Experimental. My uncle was a GM foreman and knew a lot of management. When the cousin picked up the car, the engineer handed him the keys and told him,“We’ve had this car do over 140 mph on the test track. If it can’t do that, bring it back and I’ll make sure it will.” He never had to take it back.
The car was green with the big white racing stripes. It had a balanced, blueprinted, ported and polished 302 with a Holly 4500 carb but looked stock from the outside. He’d come up to visit his aunt, my mom, and leave the car idling in the driveway. You could literally see the picture window shake on the house across the street.
Edit: Our next door neighbor was the head of GM Canada Experimental. He used to bring test cars home. One was the very first Toronado 455 I ever saw, but the best was a 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 with a 215 CID aluminum block and turbocharger. The neighbor had to fly to Detroit so my father and I rode to the airport in this little beast; my dad drove it home! The turbo boost was a problem because it would slowly inch the mph up as you drove down the highway, so you’d have to back off the throttle and reapply your foot.
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That video is great. For a long time it was a conservative and Libertarian talking point that the old landcruisers were safer in a crash than newer cars with government-mandated safety features. As usual, the claim was utter BS, as this and other videos show.
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I suppose a lot of that change for auto safety started with the Signal 30 short film but if you haven’t seen it i would put a huge disclaimer here because it’s extremely graphic so be warned. This is all very US-centric anyway as the UK never really had a desire for V8 land barges that weigh a ton or more, not that our roads have ever really been large enough to accommodate them anyway.
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The predecessor to this staple of Gen X driver’s ed.
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