(image source stationwagonforums.com)
(first posted 12/8/2011) And no, that’s not photoshopped, but a genuine GM Design concept/clay. Some serious consideration must have been given to it. Or did the guys have too much time on their hands? There must have been something very compelling about an Eldo wagon, because quite a few of them ended up being built, although non quite as polished as this one.
(image source stationwagonforums.com)
First, a frontal view. Then onto the real things.
(image source hemmingsblog)
That price is triple of what the Eldorado coupe cost in 1975. Exclusivity does not come cheap.
(image source motivemagazine.com)
I can’t tell for sure, but this looks like it might be a genuine Eldorado Coachman.
(image source stationwagonforums)
Here’s one with a very unfortunate rear end. I guess they didn’t get a chance to see the GM concept.
(image source stationwagon.com)
This on has a decidedly Nomad-esque feel. I guess that wsa inevitable.
(image source cars-on-line.com)
This version is a bit less ambitious.
(image source hemmingsblog)
Unlike whoever built this. Yowza! There’s probably more out there, but I’m calling it quits. I guess the there’s something to being a pro designer after all.
You can tell when they switched from grafting a 1968-1972 A-body wagon on the rear and started grafting a Colonade wagon rear on after 1973. I think Dean Martin may have had one of these for his ski lodge with a full bar in the rear(no sh*t).
That’s what I was thinking. If you ignore the fiberglass continental kit, the hatch on the green ’74 has got to be from a Colonnade wagon. The rear quarter glass might be from one too. And both ’74s look like they have a Coupe de Ville side window, not the smaller Eldorado opera window.
Martin’s Eldo wagon was a 1970 (customized by George Barris, if I remember correctly). I’ve actually seen that car, although sadly my photos all turned out kind of blurry.
There’s some photos of Dean Martin’s wagon and customized by George Barris at http://cadillacdatabase.com/dbas_txt/Drm70-74.htm
The problem with most of these jobs is that they tend to be very confused at the B/C/D pillars. The angles are usually all wrong.
Actually, the last one is the best. Too bad it’s spoiled by the crappy side trim, tacked-on oversize grill and those bumps pretending to be side-mounts. Whad’ya wanna bet it also has a phony continental spare?
Its based on a 1st gen 67-70 Eldorado, which didn’t have the opera window, which makes the wagon body a little more easy on the eyes.
Woulda made better utes than wagons the coachman is passable……..just. The concept has shades of the current Holden/Cadillac sports wagon
Actually there were Eldorado/Utes El Dorminos?
http://www.streetlegaltv.com/news/turns-out-1970's-cadillacs-make-pretty-sweet-pickups/
Also do a search for: Cadillac Caribou (Fleetwood/DeVille based pickups)
or this is pretty interesting:
http://cadillacdatabase.com/Dbas_lit/lit76trad.jpg
I wouldn’t be caught dead in that…er, let me put it another way.
None of these looks right without the longhorns mounted on the hood.
Yes, I know what you are saying. Wealthy Texas ranchers or oilmen.
Father forgive me… but I like it.
I must confess that I do too.
For nearly everyone in the real world of 1971, the idea of a Cadillac station wagon was unthinkable. What could be less classy than a station wagon? If you had told me that in the year 2000 there would be Cadillac trucks I would not have believed you.
By the way, “Escalade is the act of scaling defensive walls or ramparts with the aid of ladders, and was a prominent feature of siege warfare in medieval times.” What’s classier than that?
I had a similar reaction. Not only was the idea of building a Cadillac wagon pretty “out there” in 1971, but if they had somehow decided to build one, it would have made far more sense to build it off the C-Body (a platform that came as a sedan and was used by other GM divisions to build wagons) rather than the Eldorado (a personal luxury coupe whose image and design would seem to be all wrong for a wagon).
Two ideas as to what GM may have been thinking:
1) Same idea as the 1955-57 Chevy Nomad, but re-cast as a (then) modern-day personal luxury vehicle.
2) If you’re gonna consider building a Cadillac wagon, you don’t want to build it off the C-Body, because that would be too much like a hearse.
The reason they contemplated an Eldorado wagon may well have been its front-wheel drive. For a personal luxury car, FWD didn’t offer a lot in the way of packaging advantages (people didn’t buy big hardtop coupes for their space utilization), but for wagon duty, the Unitized Power Package was usefully compact — allowing a flat floor and no drivetrain intrusion on the load area — and certainly rugged. I seem to recall that Oldsmobile toyed with a Toronado wagon for about the same reasons, although as you note, it didn’t make much marketing sense, and got no farther.
Yes, there was at least one Toronado wagon engineering test mule. From the photo it looks like a ’66 Pontiac Catalina wagon body, with modifications, was mated to the Toronado front clip and chassis (Olds did not build a full size wagon at the time).
FWD chassis would have made a great platform for a hearse. It would also be cool to incorporate the clam shell tailgate of the 1971 and later GM B-body station wagons.
My comment at the bottom of this thread was made before I read yours. Today there actually is a market for people who will buy a customized hearse -which even
non-customized has forever been a work of beauty for me despite what it represents. XoXo ?✌
That’s always been my thought with these coachbuilt Caddy wagons-who the hell would actually want one let alone pay extra for that? If I wanted a people hauler with some nicer appointments, I’d get a Buick or and Olds.
But nobody ever bought these because they needed a “people hauler”. That’s where you’re mistaken. These are lifestyle vehicles, and I’d be very surprised if they ever hauled anything heavier than a couple of golf bags. Or in Dean Martins case, perhaps two crates of whisky and gin. Besides, they didn’t want it because they “needed” it from some kind of objective sense. They wanted it because they could afford an Eldorado at three times the price, which meant they would be pretty much alone in having one. When people can afford whatever they want, they want that which nobody else have…
No, not a matter of need of a people hauler but rather of mucking up a personal luxury coupe to look like a people hauler regardless of what you are going to use it for, that is what I’m questioning. Its like buying a mansion with a quonset stuck to it. Sure, pretty much no one is going to have one and it will be more expensive than the mansion by itself but its all wrong in the design language.
If a person wants to show how much cash they have, there were Mercedes or Porches or Bentley or Rolls. A coach built wagon, even if it costs three times as much, is not impressive.
Now if all you clowns are through putting down the wagons, let me give you the scoop. The green one is a 1974. They made 7 of them. They were made for the celebrities, and yes, that one was made for Glen Campbell at a cost of $32k, which back in 74 was 3x the amount of a regular one. Also, the continental kit is pure metal, not fiberglass. More people like it than not, but to each their own! P.S.
The Eldo truck was cool too!
That initial GM study bears a strong resemblance to the current CTS Sportwagon (which, regardless of your view of the idea of Cadillac wagons, is a very sharp (in a couple of senses of the word) vehicle).
Do you think the first concept has traditional split upper and lower tailgates? That would be painful, you would have to place items approx 5′ forward of the lowered tailgate end so the didn’t get squashed when it closed due to its angle. On the actual wagons there is of course the easy way out of a vinyl roof to hide the joins etc – after all the OEM’s did that when it suited too.
Not the silliest thing I’ve seen done with Cadillacs, that would be the 1980’s craze of 6/8/10 wheel additions to stretch limousines with complete with swimming pools
My favorite (not) is the Eldorado-car hauler. Lop an Eldo off at the C pillars and weld a 20-25 foot tandem-axle car trailer to the floor pan/unibody. I’ve seen pics of a couple done really well, where the rear fenders were extended and the rear bumper moved back to look like it all belonged there, but all the ones I’ve seen live looked like an Eldorado with a car trailer shoved up its ass.
There used to be one of those near where I used to live. This era Eldo had a full frame so you didn’t have to get to crazy in joining the two.
In the same vein there used to be a company that made low flat bed tow trucks. They used the same concept with a full size 4wd pickup and then locked the transfer case in 4wd. There are also the drop floor pickups that used the same concept but kept the bed sides. The floor of the bed would drop to the ground so you could roll your cargo directly into the bed. The local county had a few of them back in the day.
I still think Sbarro’s Cadillac Function Car is cool.
There were Cadillac wagons in 1971, but used as hearses or ambulances. And the funeral ‘flower cars’ were virtual Caddy ‘Utes”, too. ;=)
I have a 71 fleetwood wagon with the third seat . It looks nothing like a hearse. It’s here in Chicago and will be for Sale soon. It has the clam shell rear end.
Did they reshape the wheel wells in the 4th picture???
Yes, the wheel wells were re-shaped. See more photos at my Photobucket link: http://s888.photobucket.com/albums/ac81/rmwoodside/1972%20Cadillac%20Eldorado%20Wagon/
The brown one second from the bottom looks a bit like it’s got the rear 1/4s from a Catalina wagon. Wonder if it’s got a clamshell gate? Looks it.
It’s unfortunate but Cadillac/GM thought/still think there is nothing wrong with diluting the Cadillac image with station wagons and trucks. In my view, an Eldorado station wagon would have been about as “useful” as a 4 door Corvette. Not that the Cadillac and Corvette are comparable, just that it’s not a good idea to stray WAY far away from your core market.
It doesn’t help that the proposals and the finished cars look like “regular” old GM wagons but with only 2 doors and “exciting” color combinations.
Talk about diluting their image, there is a first generation Escalade in my area. The one that is a barely disguised GMC and it has swing out barn doors on the back. Every time I see it I wonder why GM hasn’t bought it back and crushed it.
It’s 2015. Exactly what image does Cadillac have now?
No image,especially regarding those “Soho” commercials that try to peddle these vehicles to hipsters. They ain`t buying.
Out here, a few people have grafted the first-generation Escalade front end onto Chevrolet and GMC trucks.
I have no clue why- to the naked eye, it doesn’t look that much different!
Four door Corvette:
http://jalopnik.com/5715484/for-300000-its-the-four-vette
The bit I find jarring is the trapezoidal quarter window on the Coachman, which looks like a Lincoln Continental piece. The Colonnade wagon rears look a little bit better, with a hint of Vista Cruiser in the raised roofline.
I’ve always thought of a Cadillac station wagon as a hearse. Why not customise one of those? They come with a lot of the work already done. Rosewood interiors, Conveyor for loading luggage, Superior suspension and TERRIFIC air conditioning …. LoL … truth. I worked in a funeral home in the 70’s (playing organ) and have long considered Cadillac hearses the ultimate station wagon. Discovered this site by chance. Very cool!!?✌