Our neighborhood is blessed with alleys, although almost all houses in it have driveways from the street. Some are overgrown (but still walkable), others kept open for cars, because there are some alley-access houses, and a few folks keep garages or sheds there. They make a wonderful network of walking paths, and this one leads straight to our house, two blocks up. We were just heading home the other night, when this fine barge deVille comes rolling along. And then he suddenly stopped, as if to give me a chance to whip out my camera and get a nice profile shot. How did he know?
Aha; he cranks it hard left, and oozes slowly up the narrow alley, but not before giving us a thumbs up. It’s not every day a big Caddy ragtop heads up there, but I assume he had a reason to. I’m not going to give him a thumbs up on those chintzy wheel covers, but maybe his got stolen, or something.
It’s kind of like watching a yacht pull into a slip in the harbor, with the burble of a big V8 to add to the effect.
Oops; out of focus.
There’s an alley house half way up that block, so he must have come visiting. Which didn’t leave much room for us to get by, but that’s ok. Which is more than I can say for the quality of Cadillac interiors of this vintage. I didn’t need to look very closely at this one, but I did sit in a ’70 coupe recently, and I’d forgotten how cheap the vinyl and upholstery on the seats is. As well as most everything else. Maybe it got worse since ’67? We’ll save that for another day, since convertibles get a pass, right? Especially a big Cadillac. And white, no less.
All is forgiven, from a safe distance. Mustn’t speak ill about such an icon.
Lovely car, but those plastic Target wheelcovers!
In this DeVille’s day, cars shed their original wheelcovers like lint in hard turns. So their absence here is excusable. But surely, even the grungiest of black steelies would pay greater respect to this barge than caps you’d expect to see on a third- or fourth-hand Sebring…
Anyway, glad to see someone’s clearly enjoying owning it.
Dude’s blocking in two Hondas! Some nerve.
He should just put those Hondas in the trunk and forget about it.
Maybe he was visiting the house with the Hondas.
“I think the Devil drives a Coupe DeVille, I watched them drive away over the hill…”
An interior in color, makes me want to stare…
Dan! You can’t quote Joe Nichols w/o linking the song… 🙂
It’s a shame Cadillac was on their way to jumping the shark in those days, chasing market share and debasing the brand. Seems like they’re finally on their way back to building vehicles worthy of the name.
As for Joe Nichols, “Brokenheartsville” and the album it came from – “Man With A Memory” – set Cadillac-like expectations for fans of Traditional Country. Personal problems got in the way for a few years but he’s back clean and sober…heckuva nice guy, hope he’s got some more hits in the pipeline…
Cadillac wasn’t quite on their way to “jumping the shark” in those days. This began around 1969. 1967 Cadillac’s contained the last of the handcrafted interiors of the highest quality, especially in Fleetwood form.The car pictured above seems to have a very heavily worn and beaten interior, while the seats were, at some point, covered in poor quality cloth. Mind you that the interior in the car above looks nothing like it did from the factory I have attached a factory photo from below, or rather a drawing. I can attest to this because I own a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special in Capri Aqua. However, the introduction of the one piece door panels in 1968 began the mountainous decline in Cadillac interiors. There is however a night and day difference between the use of plastic in the 1969 and 1968 models. 1967 Cadillacs were truly the last of the great Cadillacs, with the details that made the brand the Standard of the World, mind you this was before government regulations took place. Before 1968 the American Auto Industry was moving at its own pace in safety.
Great driving cars. The 429 with the Split-Pitch tranny was really quite quick off the line. And for a land barge, they handled pretty well.
I’d still be driving mine if the exhaust manifolds didn’t keep going bad.
So now she sits in the back yard, next to a 53 Coupe.
Lawn ornaments only a man could love.
These pictures bring back memories of piloting a white 64 Imperial through an alley in and out of the space I rented in a neighbor’s garage. There was always a bit of maneuvering needed to get in in or out, and your nautical reference is an apt one.
These Cads would probably be the last Cad ragtops that I could get excited about. I always liked the lines of these cars. Some relatives had a gold 67 Calais 4 door hardtop – it had crank windows and cloth/vinyl seats. A Cadillac with a Buick LeSabre level of trim, really. I rode with a cousin in it a time or two, he referred to it as “jet powered.”
Heh, reminds me of my landlord back in Terre Haute, who had a big Sedan deVille he somehow got into his garage off the narrow alley behind the house.
This reminds me of how awful the dash on the late sixties/early seventies Cadillacs were. Although I like the 74/5/6 dash, I guess some people don’t care for these either. I guess the ’77 DeVille/Fleetwood downsized dash was a lot more clean and practical.
1974 Cadillac dash:
1977 Cadillac dash:
For many people the problem with the 77 dash was the fact that I recognize that dash from my Grandmother’s 1979 Oldsmobile 98. I remember thinking as a Kindergartener that I could likely climb into that glovebox, oh and that I couldn’t see out of the car but it sure was exciting to ride in when you couldn’t see over the dash or door-sills! 😛
Really? I dont think it looks like the Oldsmobile dash at all, there are shared themes as they both are GM cars from the same era, but the Olds dash is pretty different.
i very much like the ’74-‘8? Cadillac dashes with the lonnnng strip of tell-tale lights spanning the top left side.
They go half way across the dash, never seen a car with more.
And there is one in every spot, aside from the standard “oil, temp, gen, brakes, belts” there is one for “trunk” “washer fluid” “fuel economy” “level ride” “security”
And the eternal, enigmatic Check Engine light on the ’80 model, the mystery of which we never solved.
My main beef with Cadillac then was that they were too cheap, apparently, to put more of the customary gauges in their cars (e.g. temp, oil-pressure, charging). I thought luxury was about indulging the driver’s every whim, & mine include knowing how the engine’s doing. Even a Valiant driver is better informed.
People actually liked warning lights though, it wasn’t that Cadillac was cheap, it was that Cadillac customers never cared.
Chrysler products were for engineers and geeks, Cadillacs were for people who only had the vaguest notion there was an engine up ahead somewhere. One was a mission control center, the other a cocoon. (I like gauges, myself.)
Yet that 1950 Cadillac featured on CC before (the one with the 3 on the Tree) evidently had full instrumentation. Maybe their market research indicated buyers didn’t care, or else they tolerated a unilateral cost-cutting measure.
Lincoln gets a little credit for including a temperature gauge even in the Panther Town Cars.
I’d donate a set if I had them just to rid that car of those chinatown eyesores. If the car is not wearing its original Cadillac rims, the original covers would not attach correctly anyway. Their retaining clips attach to the outermost lip of the rim where the balancing weights attach. Cadillac rims had a more pronounced outer lip to accept these clips.
Cadillac didn’t invest much in their wheelcovers after the mid-sixties. They’re weren’t as lavish as what what the Imperials and Lincolns were wearing at the time. Heck, full-sized Dodges, Plymouths, Pontiacs & Buicks offered higher-class wheel decoration for that matter.
Needs full aluminum disc wheel covers OR baby moons with trim rings and the rims painted the same color as the interior. That would be SWEET.
An older guy I worked with in 1981 had a ’70 Sedan DeVille that he had purchased new. When I told him that I had just acquired a ’69 Hardtop Sedan DeVille, his comment was “You know, you don’t really drive these cars. You just turn the wheel and wait for the stern to come ’round”. I found that the sooner you forget about the quaint concept of “handling”, the happier you will be driving these cars. “Oozing up the narrow alley” indeed.
On the other hand, these cars were remarkably maneuverable at low speeds, mostly due to the variable-ratio power steering. I frightened passengers more than once whipping into parking spots. Come to think of it, I frightened myself a few times.
I have commented elsewhere on this site about the shameful quality of the dashboards and interiors in these cars, particularly ’67-’70. Styling was lovely, materials and execution miserable. They cleaned up their act somewhat after that.
I’ve had to correct so many on the interior quality of a 1967/1968 and 1969/1970 Cadillacs. Interior quality really took a dive beginning in 1969. 1968 marked the beginning of one-piece molded door panels, cheap compared to its predecessors. A 1967 Cadillac’s dash and door panels are of the highest quality, many of the materials were simply carry overs from the 1966s. And the execution was always top notch until the union strikes beginning in early 1970s. And Cadillac never did clean up their act. The decline turned into an avalance from 1971 and up. The 1966s contained exposed hard plastics spanning the entire lower half of the dash and the arm rests of the door panels. This was replaced by padded armrests and a dash covered entirely in highly textured vinyl by 1967. Many point to the 1967 models as a sign of cheapening, but it was a sign of refinement until 1969. 1968 was the first year that Cadillac began to cut corners. 1967 was a golden year at GM and Cadillac. Please, Please, Please do your research on interior quality. I own a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special, and I can attest that the interior of the entire 1967 line was of a much higher quailty than those of the 1969-1976 interior. The impending government regulations forced Cadillac to reduce the amount of bright work throughout the interior, resulting in rather bland instrument and door panels. You MUST sit in these cars to examine the interior quality for yourself, NOONE can simply judge quality via a picture.
bjc,
Actually, no they didn’t. The interior on the ’76 Eldorado convertible (my first new car) was so cheap…contact paper for wood, or baroque plasticwood moldings with the die marks visible, really cheap vinyl on the door panels, it was a real disappointment. The various Lincolns I’ve owned generally looked far better inside through the ’60s-’70s.
Lincolns of the 70’s are just full of cheap Ford hardware with more wood trim, same wheel from a Pinto to a Mark VI? Hows that upscale?
Lincoln certainly fell down using the corporate steering wheel and switches, but in the dash panel, door panels, and most other parts of the inside, Lincoln provided a car with a substantially higher quality interior. I spent a fair amount of time in both back then. The Cadillac door panels were pathetic. The foam-filled thin vinyl parts would crack as soon as you leaned against them in cold weather. Also, the wood “contact paper” slathered all over looked awful. Cadillac mechanicals of the 1970s were first rate, but their bodies and interiors (particularly 1971-76) were just horrid for a car of that price class.
You’re right, of course. But given the choice, I’d rather have gaudy crap than the utterly plain crap in my ’69. I mean, why not go all the way? After all, it was the era of the brougham.
Its true, I never liked the minimal feel of the 1969-1970 interior, I like the baroque lounge interior of the 70’s Cadillacs.
Amazing how the wheel covers can make or ruin a car’s look. In this case, it ruins it. The rest of the car is so nice, but then you see those hideous covers. Why commit such a terrible sin…
Don’t worry, I fixed it…
I’d forgotten about all the alleys in Eugene. It makes me wonder about their original purpose. They’re great places to hide garbage cans, but then, why is there only one alley per block?
While I’m not familiar with Eugene in particular, older neighborhoods, such as probably here, were not designed with cars as a priority. Carriagehouses/garages (and access to them) were kept in back, against the alley, so, I suppose, not to spoil the frontal aspect of the house. Over the years however, garages moved to the front, added room for a 2nd car & pavement for both, & are now visually dominant. It’s just a matter of shifting cultural priorities.
I’ve heard that it’s related to fire suppression/public safety kinda thing. But yeah, I love crawling the alleys of Eugene. I even promised Paul I’d do a short series but then real life interfered. Someday! I have dozens of pics already.
I would certainly run that with the wheels bare rather than put wheel covers like that on it. At least they aren’t fake wire-wheel covers….
I think the 67-68 CDV and convertibles were the sportiest looking full-size Cadillacs.
The windshield wipers went from exposed on the 67s to hidden on the 68s. You don’t see that kind of major, one year effort anymore. Lincoln made the same change to the Mark III in 70.
Now I’m on a roll here with pet peeves: The opening for hidden wipers collects debris. And I wish modern designers would stop filling that area with black plastic, which doesn’t look so great after many years of solar exposure.
I figure if airplane designers don’t need hidden wipers, then neither do cars.
Nope. Although I DID like the articulated design of the driver’s-side wipers…on Pontiacs and Cadillacs, both sides, as the wipers met at the center of the windshield.
Hidden wipers were…like, hidden headlights. A styling fad. Lasted too long. Painted flat black (a tremendous improvement in stopping glare!) and mounted low on glass that continues below the dash line, is almost as good and much more practical. More practical yet, was the Chrysler Minivan practice of putting electrical defrost-gridwires in that area, where the wipers park. Melt the ice that gathers there.
The flat black cover there, is of course a replacement for the slotted metal cowl vent opening. A cost saver; and a lot easier to repair if damaged (hood flying open, etc). I like it; you don’t; but it does save money; and if for no other reason, it’s a reasonable approach.
+1000. The Panther cars may have been one of the last with hidden or semi-hidden wipers, and I am perpetually cleaning dried leaves and other assorted tree trash out of those areas.
The 67/68s are one of favorite years though Ive never had one. My only Cad convertible was a gold 64. Bought it 1974 for 325 bucks. It was straight and clean. I bought it because I really couldn’t get behind the 66 Mustang which was my first car. The Mustang was a 289 four speed car and the Caddy didn’t feel underpowered in comparison. At the time I had no complaints about the handling. Ive always felt that my big Devilles were always great road cars. These were my 64,70,and especially my 77. My 56 and 57 were pretty barge like but the “cool” factor outweighed everything else. I really miss that 77 coupe it was my first good used late model car. When they were released in 76 I really wanted one badly. I got mine in 1980 as college graduation present to myself. The last Cad that I was excited to own was my 94 STS.