The thermometer on my dashboard read 9° Fahrenheit this morning in beautiful Omaha, Nebraska (ED: That was actually on the 14th). That didn’t deter this intrepid Cadillac owner, who saw fit to make the morning commute swaddled in the finest sheet metal GM had to offer in ’62. Look at the skegs on that old girl!
Great to see… I hate museum pieces that never see the road.
Saw some nice early Cads at the drags recently in the parking lot dont see too many in traffic though, Shame really
Beautiful, and a nice antidote to all the Brougham stuff we’ve been seeing lately! Skeg fins indeed; my aunt’s ’61 Oldsmobile 88 bubbletop sported them in the rear AND front (bumper ends up front).
Cars like these are the ones I dream of, not the ones with padded vinyl landau roofs, filigreed trim, and “fine Corinthian leather.”
Here’s hoping the old blower motor has at least one more good day left in it. That was one of the things that bit the dust in my old 63. 🙂
Edit – I forgot to hone in on the fact that this car is the spitting image of the white 62 Sedan DeVille that my grandfather had when I was a kid. I really love this car.
More beautiful for being in the wild. These were never meant to live in cages. In these parts it’s impolite to draw attention to a lady’s skegs, I would have thought it equally rude in Omaha.
Pictures like this make me glad I no longer have to suffer through Omaha winters, no matter how nice the car…
(72nd and Farnam?)
Yes sir. (My office is across the street.)
I know the Crossroads area well. My family lived in western Iowa (Mo. Valley) and around Omaha until the early 1990s. My grandparents lived next door to St. Thomas More, I went to Gross (what a name) for my first three years of high school, and I still have an aunt in Papillion.
The first time I drove a car by myself – my dad’s 1990 Accord – I drove up 72nd St. to look at new Probes at Atchley Ford.
Ah Cadillac…
If only you could get back to those bygone classy days. I even have a slogan for you, ahem:
Cadillac, Class – not Euro-trash.
i love the contrast between this fine old tradition of a car, and the starbucks in the background. i really don’t care for the way society has gone
Starbucks may be the ‘GM of coffee’.
Someones got to get to the office to write that ad copy!
If that was mine and resided in my garage ildt would be ca°ged away eight months of the year. The cold(-15centigrade today and -29 tonight)combined with the road salt would wreck that thing as fast as you could get it out of the weather.
That big old V-8 could put out some heat. If the heater core is good, and the blower works, I bet it was toasty warm inside. I have had to put my beast into emergency winter duty. It complains, creaks, and groans, but if the battery can spin the old 472 inch engine over, it gets the job done.
Yessir, I am driving my son’s 89 Grand Marquis this week. The automatic temp system kicked the blower on with heat about 1/2 mile from the driveway this morning (+5 degrees F in Indianapolis). I know what you mean about the creaks and groans until she warms up.
It was 5 F this morning when my wife and I drove to the gym. She doesn’t understand that having the fan set at anything over “Off” simply delays the warmup of the engine. That said, we have an inversion going on and given the fact that we don’t have a defroster by the time we get to the gym, it’s as though we are living in a big can of crap. My Subi with auto climate control doesn’t get the windscreen cleared up any faster, but at least I don’t have to slap my wife’s hand trying to fiddle with the climate control knobs. She has huge casts on her hands and can’t manipulate the controls. Love can be cruel.
Lol, my wife does the same thing, I tried to explain to her not to turn the system on until she sees the temp needle move if she’s jumping into the car cold.
Amazing how few people get that. I’ve had a few cars with heater cores so efficient they could actually take a warmed-up engine below operating temperature in city speeds in cold snaps.
Trick is to put the defroster on, on COLD, to keep the fog buildup off the windshield until the engine gains heat. Then swing the temperature lever over, and there’s all the heat you want. More heat, and gotten faster for the quicker warm-up
Meh. -30C here this morning. I finally plugged the block heater in.
Beautiful ’62 Sedan de “Chill”! I’ve done my share of winter driving in North Dakota in my ’67 Olds Ninety Eight Holiday hardtop sedan…when it gets in the teens and lower, she can get to be quite a chore to start without a block heater. Usually I have to pour a dram of gas down the carburetor (especially if it’s been sitting for some time) when I start it in extremely cold conditions. But, like DeadEd said, it gets the job done. (I did put in a new heater core, though…dreadful job, but it was absolutely necessary for winter driving!)
Does your “cold” telltale light work? If it does, how long does it stay on when it’s below 20 degrees outside? Just curious. (I also have a ’67 Ninety-Eight (LS) but it’s afflicted with a blown head gasket).
here in Sacramento the cold light on my 68 electra stays on about 1/2 a mile. After about 2.5 miles the system is blowing out warm but not hot air. My 95 Pathfinder gets warm in about half the time.
Mine’s the opposite, the Explorer takes a couple miles to even think about warm air out of the heater, the Chevelle takes about 1.5 mile to begin putting out warm air in 40 degree weather.
However the Chevelle hates backing up in cold weather, as reverse tends to disappear if the trans is colder than 50 degrees. Let it warm up some, and in 5 minutes on fast idle it’s toasty inside and ready to go.
The Jetaway trans on my 65 Cutlass used to do that too… right before blowing out the front pump. Have you tried exchanging all the fluid with something like maxlife? I am using Dex VI in the st400 in the Buick but have developed a bit of a leak and wished I had used Maxlife instead.
Yes, the “cold” light works. I live on a gravel road 1-1/4 miles from the highway. When it’s, say, 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside, the light stays on almost until I get to the highway; when it’s 80 degrees outside, the light goes out much sooner, probably before the halfway point between my house and the highway. The owner’s manual says that the light stays on until the engine reaches normal operating temperature, but I’d say, if there were a gauge instead of a light, it’d be about the same as when the temp. gauge needle *just* moves off of “C.”
It was 78 here today.
It was 2 degrees yesterday morning, and I actually had to crank my ’74 Dart twice before it started. Speedometer is a little twitchy at that temp, but it’s good to go otherwise. This morning passed a guy in a ’71-73 Olds 88, but it was too dark for pics.
I used to keep a big piece of cardboard in front of the radiator when I regularly drove a 71 Scamp in this kind of weather. Even with a 195 degree thermostat (more than one of them) the thing simply would not get warm enough to make good heat. On the flip side, though, it was virtually impossible to overheat.
What I noticed in the wife’s RAV is that the car starts and drives like it’s 70 degrees. Yesterday, 9 deg and today 8 deg. Not like the old cars, steering and brakes stiff, speedometer jumping, and creaks and moans. The Japanese must be doing something right.
My father’s ’67 Biscayne & ’67 Bel Air beaters always cranked in cold weather & were frequently used to jump-start the “better” cars in the O’hare employee parking lot back in the 80’s. Being equipped with non-maintained, low-compression 250 L6s helped. Both vehicles’ speedometers always worked without flutter so the Americans were doing something right at some point.
My S70 takes about seven to ten minutes before the temp gauge registers any temp and allows tbe climate control to kick in. Im usually about two and a half miles from home when this happens . Also thanks for the heated seats. The swedes knew how to build a cold climate car.
Mike, I first saw this exact 62 DeVille about 2 blocks away at the Playhouse back around October last year. The driver must be a Thespian. Mrs Louie was auditioning for a play and as I sat waiting in the parking lot this car caught my eye. It was quite refreshing to see some eccentricity in that lot as there is usually nothing but CamCords,Smarts and Prius’ parked there. Everybody stares at me with my 80’s dinosaur while I listen to talk radio like I’m some divient who just doesn’t get it. And I don’t! I hate live theater! It looks like it had an Earl Scheib special as there were some sand scratches where the bondo was slapped on the cover up some rust repair. The seats had some cheap sofa covers on them.
After spending the last 10 years in sunny FL I do miss the warm weather. I find these single digit temps refreshing. It gives me time to relax as I have an excuse not to spend time and money on the projects. An old trick we used when something wouldn’t start in the sub zero weather. We had the bottom from one of those old fashioned BBQ grills that were popular back in the 60’s-70’s before propane. You know the ones that sat on a tripod. Anyway you let the charcoal burn like you were grilling steaks and shove it under the engine and let the heat get it up to temp. Works everytime. I can’t recall melting anything although I don’t think I would do it today on anything with EFI and a computer.
Here’s a few pics of that car.
Another pic
Nice pics. Looks pretty good to me!
I’d love to get a Park Avenue, Regency or Bonneville Brougham to freak out all the blandmobile drivers. “Look, an old car in a real color! Is that a red interior?!”
IIRC it was an aqua-teal-turquoise color. Damn hard to take night pics with a real digital camera. All those settings and only the front 3/4 shots worth a darn. Must be the equivalent of RedEye.LOL
I wasn’t referring to the Caddy, just my imagined peoples’ responses to an old car I might someday acquire 🙂
Aqua interior, eh? Nice!