While North American readers probably (used to) see these every day of the week, Cadillacs have never been common in Australia, and its angular shape stood out among a row of modern cars. I don’t think that they were assembled in Australia when other North American/Canadian cars were, up until 1968, but up to the era of this car they were still imported by third parties in small but consistent numbers.
This car would seem to have been in Australia since it was new, judging by the registration number. The red label in the centre of the plate indicates the car has an LPG conversion, as an advisory to emergency services personnel.
This time I have a photo of the interior, or at least as much of one as I feel comfortable taking in a public street, showing the right-hand drive layout.
It seems that the dashboard is fairly symmetrical which would have made the conversion easier.
Clearly this car has been cherished by its owner and I would not be surprised if it is still owned by the original buyer. A good choice as a car for (not of) a lifetime!
Further Reading:
CC Capsule: 1979 Cadillac Coupe Deville Many A Pensioners Reward
Curbside Classic: 1986 Cadillac Sedan De Ville Resplendent In Sunburst Yellow
Curbside Classic: 1980 Cadillac Sedan Deville Et Tu Brougham
Road Trip Classic: 1978 Cadillac Sedan Deville Across The Great Divide In A Grand Old Lady
Great find. ’79 was a wonderful year for these downsized RWD Cadillacs. 425 CI big block V8, GM400, gigantic rear end. You found a Fleetwood Brougham there with the super cool V-shaped B-pillar. It was a three year only feature, they got rid of it in ’80 when they went to the formal roofline.
I wonder when/where the RHD conversion was done or if it was built that way. The dash was one of the first to be symmetrically shaped at least on US full-sized models. It was very distinctive when it came out, not just for that shape but also for the very short distance to the windshield. That previously dead space went to making the hood look longer and passenger space.
Calibrick,my father ordered a new Buick Skylark,1965,from a firm in Sydney which imported American cars and converted them to right hand drive.The dashboard looked the same as LHD cars but in the conversion,somehow,it was made in gloss black fibreglass in reverse of course..There were several companies which imported US cars into Australia.GM made RHD cars into the 1950s.His black 1948 Buick was fully imported as a RHD car and I think so was the black and white 1955 Buick Special.Prior to 1948 Buicks were built/assembled/bodied in Australia by Holden bodyworks and I believe that arrangement ceased when the first Holden FX appeared.My mother’s 1976 or 7 Ford Fairlane Marquis was converted to run on gas and petrol,so there is a large gas tank in the boot.Many taxis are gas and Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores could be ordered to run on gas.My 1970 Peugeot 404 ute had a glovebox with no lid and it was exactly the same shape as the speedometer/gauges housing,that was to facilitate a simple construction for left or right hand drive.Peugeots,Renaults,Citroens and several other cars were built in Australia.We had a diverse auto manufacturing sector back then and soon there will be none.
I’ve always wondered about that V-shaped B-Pillar on the ’77-79 Fleetwood. Was it actually a different shape from the Sedan DeVille, or did the trim – a nod to the ’71-76 Fleetwood, itself a nod to the original Sixty Special – just make it look that way? I suspect it was different, but haven’t seen good profile pics or the real thing to confirm. If so, it was a pretty expensive mod for a body that was otherwise the same.
Haven’t checked one out in years but from the pic it looks like it was more than just trim. I always thought the same thing, a lot of extra effort on a car that had the same wheelbase as the Sedan deVille. I suppose the idea was to make the rear seat quarters look more separate from the driver’s area. The new roofline for 1980 had that formal limo shape and they probably thought that, plus the small padded rear window, was enough for Fleetwood going forward.
Thanks for the correction. I took a photo of the rear but for some reason it turned out ridiculously blurry and I didn’t notice at the time.
Awesome find! Cadillacs apparently are more common here in the USA than in much of the world. I didn’t know there were any sold in Australia.
LPG conversion? Wow, that would be even rarer. Figure that would take up a lot of trunk or boot space.
Are LPG vehicles relatively common Down Under? In Japan, taxis are generally LPG.
They’re very common. Many older large cars are on LPG, as petrol is so expensive these days. Most service stations sell LPG, and it used to be about a fifth the cost of petrol, but the government has kept raising taxes – now just over half the price.
To add to what Pete said, typically a car like this would be able to operate on both petrol/gasoline or LPG (dual fuel).
In this Cadillac the LPG cylinder probably fits at the back of the boot that is too hard to reach anyway.
I know in some European countries, many classics are converted to LPG due to lower taxes/fuel costs. Not sure if it’s the same way in Australia.
Definitely a nice Caddy, in wonderful condition!
While I like the right-hand drive conversion, I’m not sure I like where the gear selector control is. It’s fine for Left-hand drive cars. But for a Right-hand drive conversion, I would think that the selector should be on the left side of the steering column.
If I remember the column gear lever on the Skylark was on the right hand side also,perhaps too difficult to change when converted.I often wonder when Aussies convert modern American cars to RHD with all the additional equipment and complexity that it must be a challenging task.
I reckon so. I’ve seen Aussie cars (Holdens and Australian made Ford) with the gear selector on the left side of the steering column.
Not really as much of an issue as some might think, for two reasons.
Most American cars likely to be imported are automatics anyway, so you’re not changing gear all the time anyway. So it’s more a matter of where the indicator stalk is, and getting used to that.
Also, most European cars imported here nowadays have the column stalks the ‘wrong’ way round – and we get used to them. My wife’s Mini Cooper, for one.
I had a AL 110 International flat deck truck Aussie built tree shift was on the right of the column it was reminiscent of the old phase one Vanguards bash your knuckles on the quarter light if it was open going for second gear, The next model the AR had floorshift and Standard changed to the left side.
My uncle had a Jeep Cherokee (aka Wagoneer in NA), where the auto shifter was in its original location on the left side of the transmission hump, quite a stretch for the driver. If they had a centre passenger, the shifting duties were delegated.
Keen. Interesting that the gearstick is still on the right side of the steering column.
Can’t see because of the sun reflections, but I’m guessing this car has the export taillamps; another view here, with amber turn signals (required in Australia since ’60).
Daniel when our 65 Skylark finally arrived,I was only a 9yo and Had been looking at the Buick catalogue often and liked that sea of red lights across the back.But when it arrived late one night in the very small country town it had amber sections in it.I was a bit disappointed with that until it was explained to me.So I ask is it difficult in the USA to distinguish between park,brake and turn signal lights when they are all the same red colour?
Whenever the subject comes up there’s no shortage of blowhards who insist the red ones are just fine, but in fact there’s a significant safety difference in favour of amber rear turn signals rather than red ones.
I fail to see how amber turn signals make the red brake lights work better. I understand that there is some data that supports that however. The high mounted brake light was supposed to work too, but I think now too many take advantage of it to tailgate even closer.
The high brake light does work. Its crash-avoidant benefit isn’t as large as it was when it was first introduced and there was a novelty effect, but now that the novelty effect is all gone, the 3rd brake light still makes a 5.3% reduction in your likelihood of being rear-ended. That’s both significant and substantial, and it’s why we measure these effects objectively rather than by hunches and guesses and assumptions (and whether and what the man on the street thinks he does or doesn’t understand).
(…oops, ‘scuze me: the central brake light’s benefit is 4.3%, still significant and substantial — it’s amber turn signals rather than red that have the 5.3% benefit)
I always follow a few car lengths behind the car in front of me, and if someone is too close behind me, I add even more space. But many people are very careless it seems to me. I really like that my cruise control will stay behind the car in front a few car lengths too.
No. I don’t find it difficult at all. One is regular, one flashes, and one is very bright.
But it takes a second before you know whether it is a brake light or turn signal that has come on, until the light flashes off. No such confusion with separate lights for stop & turn.
It would have to have amber turn signals to comply with the Australian Design Rule requirements before it could be registered.
No. It doesn’t. Both turn signals would not come on. Two bright lights: brake llight. One: turn signal.
I know Science says amber is better and that’s fine.
But the question was: is it confusing without amber? Answer: not to me.
I remember FE Holden Specials (’57-8) back in the day had the US-style setup with a flashing tail light. The facelifted ’59 FC had separate amber indicators in place of the clear reversing lights. Dad said that was because the law changed. The ’58 Chevy (Biscayne only here) had US-style all-red lights; the ’59 got a little amber light hanging from the underside of the fin.
Orrin for clarity I was thinking of situations where you can see only one light such as a couple of cars ahead on the highway
A bit newer and better kept than the one I found at an auction yard recently, still LHD here the requirement to convert them changed constantly but seems to have been dropped now judging by the sheer numbers of LHD Mustangs and other late model US cars on out roads now, yes that is a 15K asking price.
Kiwi bryce-was the same in Australia.You couldn’t register a LHD car for the road before,but now I see many US imports registered for road use which are LHD.Both these Caddies are good looking cars.
Roderick, pre-89/90/91 (can’t remember the exact year) cars can go LHD. For cars built after the new 1989 Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act, conversion to RHD and compliance with ADRs is mandatory.
That car looks pretty sweet Bryce. The leather interiors with the most buttons (D’Elegance) tend to have the most cracks in the leather, it’s a trade-off. How much is $15,000 in USD do you know?
One godzone peso= 71 c US $10,650 in US currency not sure if thats good or bad, its quite a tidy car but theres a 50s Dodge lancer on the same lot I’d grab in preference, Both cars are at Turners car auctions Napier more pics on the cohort.
It looks like a nice one and has the D’Elegance package but pics in the Cohort suggest a repaint. If so $10,650 would be a pretty steep asking price in the states.
Love the steering wheel lock. I guess Detroit and Chicago aren’t so bad after all!
By today’s standards a car of this era is pretty simple to steal, not many still use a steering lock but it is still a good alternative to move a thief on to an easier target. Probably something the owner has been in the habit of using for 30 years or so.
No crap. I had 3 cars stolen “of that era”. The last one had a quite expensive alarm system with ignition kill, the iron collar around the steering column with the padlock AND the steering wheel bar/lock as in the picture and it was STILL stolen. They simply pick it up with a flat-bed. I just didn’t think people stole cars in Australia like they do in Chicago or Detroit.
That depends where you are. You don’t want to be driving an expensive European car in Melbourne these days. Or a Commodore anywhere.
Is there anywhere that cars aren’t stolen? If an area gets too remote stuff still gets stolen because there isn’t anybody to see/stop it.
As Pete says, there has been a recent wave of car-jackings here, the easiest way to steal a modern car. From what I have heard, to insure a bobcat you have to have a satellite tracker hidden in it.
Up until the late 1940’s many GM brands were available through official GM dealers throughout Australia. These were mostly assembled here using mechanical components imported from Canada and locally built bodies. Indeed Holden, the local GM brand, started out as a coach builder and made many bodies for GM brands, so much so that GM bought them. Before WW2 USA brands were the best sellers here. Mechanical components were sourced from Canada because they received preferential import tax and duty arrangements because Canada was a fellow Empire country. These cars were engineered to be right hand drive (RHD).
After WW2 things changed, local cars were being developed and in an effort to assist the UK’s war torn economy, everyone was encouraged to buy UK sourced cars. Many, my fathers family included, found English cars a disastrous proposition – small, overstressed engines, poor engine cooling and fragile construction were vastly inferior to the more robust USA/Canadian cars which were much more suited to local conditions.
Still, a limited range of Chev, Pontiac and even fewer Buick models continued to be sourced from Canada and sold by dealers well into the 1960’s. Ford and Chrysler also offered models to compete. All if these were large, premium offerings and by 1970 they all seemed to stop with the exception of the Ford Galaxie LTD which was available until 1973 when it was replaced by a local car which used the LTD name.
Post war, I dont think Cadillac was offered locally as a regular model but as another reader mentioned, one could arrange if through select GM dealers at a signicant cost. I recall there was a Ford dealer in Brusbane who would bring in Thunderbirds and Lincolns in minute order-only numbers as well. All of these were brought here as LHD cars and were converted to RHD, a complex and expensive process and there were some firms that did these conversions exceptionally well.
From the 1970’s on, most US cars were privately imported with the owner making conversion arrangements. In Brisbane had the famous Chappel Conversions, who were known to be very good and no doubt their business was well supported by the notorious Dean family. The Dean Brothers had a demolition business and a very large collection of Cadillacs.
In the late 1980’s a large and long established Brisbane dealer with multiple brands including Holden, Eagers, set up a Cadillac showroom in Windsor. It did not stay open long though as after import duties and conversion costs, these cars were very expensive and by then the market for large prestige cars was owned by the Germans, notably S Class Mercedes.
It is now legal here (in the state of Queensland at least) to import an LHD car and not convert it, provided it is a classic car. This accounts for all the Mustangs and old Chev’s and others all of a sudden to be seen in LHD. I recently even saw a US spec Mercedes Pagoda 280 SL for sale here, for $75k; the price of a top condition locally delivered 280 SL is double that.
A very similar situation to New Zealand but we lacked the large coach building industry Aussie had, ours was on a much smaller scale so most US car were just CKD assembled but oddly enough NZ got more variety pre war, there was a busy export to Aussie industry in the 60s and 70s sending our tudor and Coupe Fords to OZ same with Chevies we got em OZ body building stuck with sedans and slopers, post war we got mostly UK cars to preserve dollars and US cars though still assembled went up in price and down in availability.
Great summary Ashley. GM-H imported CKD kits of the Chevrolets and Pontiacs (and possibly others) and assembled them locally up until 1968, I think in Adelaide. It was after that that third-party importers/converters took over. On that note I think Chapel conversions was based in Richmond in Melbourne, but they may have had a ‘branch’ in Brisbane?
It varies from state to state, but left hand drive cars can now be registered in Victoria once the car is 30 years old.
When I visited Australia for the first time in 1987, only Canberra, Northern Territory, and South Australia allowed the LHD vehicles to be registered. The LHD vehicles had to carry large LEFT HAND DRIVE stickers on the rear bumpers.
I eventually found out that there was (and still is) large American military presence in South Australia (think Pine Gap). When our tour bus alighted in a town, I noticed so many LHD American vehicles with badly mounted numberplates. I asked the tour guide whether there was a military base nearby. He was taken aback and replied with a question, ‘How do you know? It’s supposed to be secret!’
Northern Territory is popular with manufacturers putting their prototypes through the high performance, long distance tests.
Why would they allow left-hand drive cars to be sold in a country that drives on the left side of the road?
The cars would have been imported by US expats, not sold ‘here’. I don’t think locals would have been allowed to register LHD cars unless perhaps they had been bought from one of the said expats. Note that the sites Oliver Twist refers to are pretty remote, so there wouldn’t be any traffic issues unless they made a trip to Adelaide.
One Aussie prime minister asked questions about Pine Gap, elements from across the Pacific effected regime change and a more friendly local puppet was installed.
indeed Kiwi bryce,on the occasion of the 90th birthday of our most intellectual prime minister one reporter congratulated Gough on his 90th birthday,Gough went humph.The same reporter then asked Gough,a man known not to tolerate fools, “now that you are 90 I suppose it won’t be long before you get to meet your maker,how do you think that meeting will go”.Gough sat even more upright in his chair,eyeballed his questioner,and in his inimitable and eloquent style,replied “rest assured I shall treat him as an equal”.I almost fell off the chair laughing.Such a wise and witty man sadly now departed.
I had a similar 1977 Cadillac in the UK – sold it in 2009 for more than I paid in 2006.
Wow what a beautiful car. The 77-79 Fleetwood Broughams are pretty rare and I believe that emblem on the front fender is for the fuel injection option, also rare and somewhat troublesome. Any regrets in selling it? How are the values in the UK these days?
There was a black Caddy like that in a Midsomer Murder episode (maybe “The Axeman Cometh”?). But it was found in a pool, with a corpse in back of course!
They’ve become a lot more valuable than when I had the car – I bought it it for £1800 and sold it for £1900 . Only needed a starter motor and an alternator during my ownership – and an awful lot of petrol at UK prices…
Cool adaptation for right/wrong side driving! And good looking Sedan DeVille.
Although I often enjoyed my ’87, and even to some extent my ’93, Cadillacs on this 121.5 in wheelbase chassis, the ’77-’79 versions probably came with the most solid equipment–TH400 and 425 cid Cadillac V8, though I suppose the 1980 wasn’t bad either.
The ’79 comes to mind, however, because when I owned that ’87, and later the ’93, mechanics of a certain age would always be highly critical of them (the ’87 and ’93) when I brought them in for service. This relates somewhat to GN’s contribution earlier today but both mechanics, I distinctly recall, claimed “the last good ones were the ’79s”. They seemed to think I was wasting my money driving any newer Cadillac as it was, in their view, automatically junk if made after ’79.
Certainly these, and to some extent the ’80 model, were the last ones anyone cross-shopped with imports. After 1980, Mr. UpperMiddleClass Everyman likely picked one or the other, no cross-shopping.
Even as a kid it was clear to me these were never cross-shopped much with the imports. They were too big in size and too yesteryear in style. The 77-79 Seville was the Cadillac that was heavily cross-shopped with the imports.
The 77-79 was all new at the time, along with all of the other downsized big GM cars. Even David E. Davis raved about it. So, I would quibble with the notion the 77-79 DeVille as at all “yesteryear” in style. It was not that differently styled from the 75-79 Seville. By the mid 80s, yes, of course, these big square cars were passe.
David E. Davis liked the Coupe deVille for what it was, a big ol’ American luxury car done right. That was the whole point of the article. He didn’t like it because it was a good import fighter.
The styling with its fins and long hood was plenty yesteryear even in ’77. For crissakes if the rear wheel openings were any lower and flatter they’d be fender skirts!
The Seville did not have fins, the first Cadillac since ’48 to go without them. The wheel openings were oversized and round. The magic was that it looked small and contemporary and at the same time still like a Cadillac ($$$).
The Rolls-Royce roofline further linked the Seville to the Europeans and was so successful that it became part of what it meant to be a Cadillac.
Though the ’77 deVille was smaller than its predecessors it was still a very large and traditionally styled car, not exactly what import shoppers were looking for.
Luxury buyers would have cross shopped it as is abundantly clear from that article that compliments its handling and build quality in an era when some had been drawn away from its larger predecessors and their domestic competitors for lack of both.
Or a Lincoln
I have a book on Cadillac’s of the 60’s and one of the articles is on an Australian road test of a 61 series 62. it was supplied by an Australian dealer and according to the article had been converted to RHD by them as well.
Each capital city had a dealer or two who were authorized to supply the American GM brands that weren’t normally sold here (Olds, Buick, Cadillac). I remember seeing the adverts in the evening paper when I was a kid.
Bought it for $500 last year. 55k original miles.
It’s a money pit in every sense of the word. Everything breaks… even if you just breath heavily onto the paint job, it will need to be waxed and detailed two days later.
I wish I could say it’s worth the money. But to compare a Mercedes from this era to a Cadillac would be like comparing a 1995 Honda to a 1995 Hyundai.
Anything good I can say about it? Well, it still attracts the geezers!
Cool. And for the economists, the value is bound to be on the rise – especially with what you paid for it!
This car was purchased new by Ansett Transport Industries (ATI) and was the personal chauffer driven vehicle of Sir Reginald Ansett. The 767 was to represent Ansett’s foray into Boeing 767 aircraft. There were also 2 identical Ford LTD’s for Sir Peter Abeles & Rupert Murdoch with numbers ATI 727 & ATI 737 respectively.