I love this photo by Eric Clem, shot in Seydisfjordur, Iceland. What a study in contrasts, the little red vintage cottage with that big barge of a Cadillac. Perfect!
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: 1974 Cadillac Sedan DeSeydisfjordur – Bigger Than The House?
– Posted on August 13, 2021
Bigger than the house? Bigger than the island! 🙂
This got me imagining the cost of fuel for this thing, since Iceland is known for being extremely expensive for a lot of things. So I looked up which countries in the world have the most expensive fuel and it turns out Iceland has only the 10th most expensive fuel in the world. The most expensive European country for fuel is…the Netherlands, which is the 2nd most expensive in the world after the Central African Republic. Goes to show why there are so many Toyota Aygos and Yaris Hybrids in the NL.
Aha! But notice the sign in the background here — CHEAP FUEL IN ICELAND!
I bet the Cadillac owner is appreciative of that!
Lol, I didn’t see that! Good catch. Handy for both the Caddy and the F150.
You also must have noticed the rather rapid transition to EV’s in NL. And, at the other end of the spectrum, the fact that LPG is still readily available everywhere. At not even half the liter price of gasoline. Otherwise there would never be such an armada of recent and new models V8 US pickups around here. Not to mention all the ol’ land yachts, like this article’s Caddy.
We are paying $2.20 PL and up for petrol here EVs are becoming popular but hybrids have really taken off, to counter that there are plenty of old classics around
You can imagine how surprised I was to see so many Ram pickups rolling around Noord Holland when I first arrived a few years ago. But it makes sense, between LPG and the “business vehicle” tax loophole.
Speaking of LPG, my brother and his wife just bought a new Dacia with a factory bi-fuel system. In practice, that means it starts on gasoline and runs on LPG while rolling down the road. Cheaper to drive as soon as you hit 5,000 km a year. So that was that, since they do around 15,000 km a year.
I took these pictures while on a week-long trip driving Iceland’s Ring Road in late June-early July. I rented a small “camper” based on a Dacia Dokker minivan, staying in campsites each night. I was surprised to see a lot of Ford F150s and Ram pickups towing large trailers (not fifth wheels though). It appears Iceland has a sizable RV community because I saw a lot of substantial sized trailers being towed by Volvos and Subarus.
As much as I do like, enjoy and admire American luxury cars; I must say: This one is just too dayum big.
What’s he doing back there, filling up the tank?
I think it’s a statue. Of what, I’m not sure.
Prefect?
This is so funny! Thanks for the laugh!
Perfect for me! All the house I’d need, and all the car I’d want!
I guess he’s calling a Prefect to help with moving it. Only a Brazilian-tagged one showed up
Enough time has passed since I have been in one of these that the looks of this big 4 door hardtop are alluring. Give me a half hour inside of it and I am sure I will be cured.
The 74 was the last of the sedans that looked really good in my eyes (if we can forgive the bumpers). Every Cadillac sedan since has suffered from design compromise.
I was about to say something similar. Smoothing out the rear fender was a big improvement. It’s too bad about the rear bumper and the fillers, but some were worse. The ’75 took out the headlight “eyebrow” line for the rectangular headlights, but that made the car look fatter, and the opera windows on the 4 door were yucky.
I had a well-used ’74 Fleetwood in the early 80’s. The rough cold starting from the emissions equipment broke two exhaust manifold bolts, so there was a noisy gap until the engine got hot. When it was running well, you couldn’t hear the engine at idle.
This and the article about the Mustang II in Hungary had me wondering, again, why would anybody in Europe import a new American car back in the 60s/70s, even with a good exchange rate? Wouldn’t fuel costs make ownership more expensive than it was worth? Or were American cars in those days simply toys for the rich?
American cars are imported to other countries for the same reasons that Americans want cars that were never sold here. They’re rare and they’re conversation pieces. It doesn’t always have to make economic sense.
Post-1970: toys for bad boys. Eyebrow raisers. Generalizing a bit now, but they simply had a sleazy, crook ‘n pimp image-problem. The cars were often called a “hoerensloep”, a whores-barge. Get the picture?
Pre-1965/1970: what else could you buy in Europe when you made it in life? And that included our Royal Family. And Hub van Doorne (DAF), who drove a Buick in the fifties and loved its automatic transmission (and developed the Variomatic, an automatic for the small, affordable family car he dreamed of).
That about wraps it up.
The car could’ve been brought to Europe by an American military serviceman in the 1970s or 1980s and never left.
The U.S. Navy had an air station located at Keflavik (site of Reykjavik’s international airport) until 2006. My guess is this car was brought in by a naval officer. There is an interest in classic American cars in Europe.
I took these photos of the Cadillac. Close by I found a T-Bird (83-84?) and a Fox body Mustang… all in a town with under 1,000 residents.