All images by canadiancatgreen at the Cohort.
It’s time for a second visit to the ‘Little Lot’ in Alberta. If you missed the first one, the link is here. We’ll start with this, which must be a 1965 Pontiac Parisienne. As mentioned in previous posts, these are often called Cheviacs, since they carry Pontiac genes modified to fit Chevrolet drivetrains and engines.
A 1961 Oldsmobile. A bit hard to tell from this distance, but could be a Super 88.
A 1970 Cadillac. Is it a Calais or a Deville?
And for the closing, let’s switch decades with this ’70s Corvette. Also, we have a Marlin photobombing.
Further reading:
Cohort Outtake: Why It’s An Acadian Canso Sport Obviously, Along With Other Cheviacs.
I’m digging the ’70 Caddy in blue and the ’61 Olds and ’65 Pontiac, though without the white letter tires. To me, white letter tires never look good on a four door sedan. Give me either narrow stripe whitewalls, redwalls or blackwalls instead on four door cars.
This lot has many interesting old cars. Would love to visit it in person, but too far away! Thanks for the pictures.
I guess someone bought that Chevy (?) truck in the back.
The Calais had a steel roof. It was slightly less $$ than the DeVille.
I don’t believe a vinyl roof was a factory option for Calais in ’70 (but it was in ’75), and an aftermarket one wouldn’t be a halo type. 76,000 Coupes de Ville were sold versus 4,700 Calais coupes.
The vinyl roof was a $153 option on both the DeVille and the Calais series. Fairly few DeVilles came without it though.
In any case, one can see the “Coupe DeVille” script on this one’s rear fender.
I think the Calais model was available through ’75. I never quite understood its purpose. If a person was shopping at the Cadillac store, they most likely had Cadillac money. It’s no surprise to me that Calais sales were under 10% of Caddy sales. But I suppose that in some circles, a stripped (relatively) Cadillac had more panache than a loaded-up Buick.
The Calais was the direct successor to the Series 62. At one time, the Sixty Special was the next step up from the Series 62, if one was looking at 4-door cars. All that was probably upended in 1956, when the 4-door Sedan de Ville came along. Still, the Series 62/Calais presented solidly as a Cadillac, just with slightly simpler trim and power windows and seats made optional rather than standard. There were people to whom that would appeal; a couple fewer things to possibly go wrong. My dad would have been one of those.
Nice tour. Thanks.
I wish we could see the Marlin a little closer. I have always liked those with the 2 tone paint.
The 1961 Olds 88 could be a Super or a Dynamic. I believe all Supers had dual exhaust but that was also optional on a Dynamic. So – no way to tell with photo like this. The color looks like Oldsmobile “autumn mist”.
Nice, from the era when GM was still king among the domestics. My aunt had a 1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 bubble top, loved that car.
The Calais vs. DeVille comments remind me that my great uncle bought a 1967 Calais Coupe as his first new Cadillac, after trading in his 58 Fleetwood 60 Special which was purchased used.
I suspect that he got the Calais only because his wife, my maternal grandmother’s sister, did not like drafts and was not a fan of air conditioning in cars. Did the Calais of that year come standard without A/C, unlike the DeVille?
Only the Fleetwood 75 limo had standard A/C before 1975. At the dealer where my grandmother bought her ’72 Calais, I remember a ’72 Coupe de Ville without it, which must have been a hard sell in North Carolina. Small wonder they were bought out a year or two later.
I would never have guessed that A/C didn’t become standard until 1975 in Cadillacs (except for the Fleetlwood 75 limo). Then, I suppose my great uncle was more likely to have found a ’67 Calais without the optional A/C than a Coupe deVille. (This would have been in the Wheeling, WV area at the time.)
It is fun to see the 61 Olds. My parents had a 61 Dynamic 88 (no whitewalls) in 1965 when I got my licence, so a lot of my early driving was in one of these. The colour was similar (nondescript).
I love looking at all the variety .
-Nate
The Pontiac: make it a sedan instead of a 4 door hardtop and this is the spitting image of the one my Uncle Bob bought about 1969, and became the family’s “good car”. I loved that color.
The Oldsmobile – That same Uncle Bob owned a white 61 88 bubbletop several years earlier.
The Cadillac – I think the Calais was the “bang for the buck” Cadillac. It took a sharp eye to distinguish a Calais (or a Series 62) from a DeVille, and all most people ever saw was just “a Cadillac”, Other relatives bought a 67 Calais – just for the air conditioning, because the car had few-to-no other options. No vinyl roof, crank windows, manual locks and seat. It was years before I noticed that it was “the cheap Cadillac”.