Give me a Brougham with Brougham and extra Broughams on top! Big beautiful Brougham! Con Brio!
Do you like big old land yachts? Perhaps the red one shot in the wild was not quite factory fresh enough for you? Perhaps, like me, you enjoy green cars? With green leather? And a white landau top? Well step right up son! Come on! Don’t be shy, dagnabit! I’ve got the finest little-old-lady owned cream puff you ever did see. I guaran-damn-tee it!
Beauty, eh? Oops, wrong post. I mean, ain’t that one fine American automobile? I shed a tear ever’ time a classic old Caddy passes by.
Yes, this light green 1975 Coupe is one fine example of over-the-top Brougham. Oh, the Broughamanity! Isn’t it nice to see one that survived being trashed, customized or blown up in a Hollywood movie? While most folks would think of this color as “hospital green,” I like it. You will too. And another thing son, you’ll NEVER see yourself in traffic–unlike those namby-pamby folks with no style, drivin’ silver Corollas! Ooh, THAT’S original!!
I mean, Just look at this old gal. So sharp! So imposing! And, if you can afford to feed the 500 CID V8, wouldn’t it be fun to go around scaring Prius and Fit drivers? Note: do not mess with any white Fits in Indiana, as that might be one of our honored CC Editors. Thank you!
That’s right; body by Fisher. It’s Fisher flavor, or it’s just plain nuts! And you can be driving Cadillac luxury for peanuts–bada-bing!
The best part? Even the interior is green. And finished in plush Sierra grain leather. You can get lost in this car, pal–I have myself on a couple of occasions! And not only can you drive this car from Montana to Miami, it will also comfortably sleep a family of five.
Yum. Fake wood, green leather, green carpet, green steering wheel, comfort control, power blitherin’ everything. And courtesy lights! Remember courtesy lights? And did I mention fake wood?
Strictly first cabin, sir! Now, some of the plastic bits are, ahem, perhaps a bit less than Cadillac quality. But never fear, for this car has all of its little trim bits fully intact. And you’re not going to be driving this thing to work and in the winter anyway. Perish the thought! No this is a nice-day car. And in that capacity, the Coupe will serve you just fine.
So, in closing, you need this car. They don’t make them any more, and the ones that didn’t dissolve in the Midwest were mostly driven into the scrapyard by their fourth, fifth and sixth owners. Are you convinced? Good! Then come on down to You Auto Own It Motors and ask for Tom! He’s the guy with the plaid sportcoat and Town Car tie clip! Now what are you waiting for son?
And then I woke up. Man, I shouldn’t have watched Used Cars so late last night! (Note: some of the language in the movie clip is a little “blue.”)
Full eBay auction with lots more pics can be found here. Video is, of course, from Youtube!
Thanks Tom, great way to start the day… love to see this Cadillac. Beautiful.
If memory serves, and w/o looking anything up, I recall this color being Jasper Green. At least it was in 1974 because the local Marathon station owner drove a ’74 Jasper Green Fleetwood Brougham and I dreamed of owning it.
I still love the ’75/ ’76 DeVilles and Fleetwoods, inside and out.
That’s a lot of green, man. I think I’d prefer white leather. And I remember a different hood ornament in these years – looks like a late 70’s hood ornament to me, but I could be wrong. Still, I’m a total sucker for these overall. At some point in my life I really want to own one of these…
The see-thru Cadillac crest was part of the Cabriolet roof option package, which was the half rear landau. If this was a base Coupe, it would have the V and crest on the bow…er, front of the hood.
It’s missing cruise control.
I would need a matching green suit with some white shoes to properly rock this Coupe de Ville.
I remember these new see-through hood ornaments, but I didn’t know it was connected to the Cabriolet package. I always wondered why some cars had them and some didn’t.
I actually have one of those hood ornaments. My uncle took it off of one the used car lot he worked at (as a mechanic) was sending to the junk yard.
Looks to be in very nice condition. If I was looking to buy a Caddy, this would too new for my tastes though.
Lovely…although I’m of the opinion that the ’71-’73 hard tops were more handsome. This is real nice, though.
I’ve burned rubber in a 500 cube Caddy in my day too. I found these things more than adequate in the giddy up department.
I would love to have this car, I think the green is refreshing although a white interior would work just as well. You would need your own personal oil well to drive this car daily but, as someone already pointed out, it is more likely this would be the nice day car. Years ago my brother and his wife had a ’73 Eldorado with the 500 CID engine and if provoked it would smoke the front tires. That was out of character for these cars as they was more suited to cruising down the open road. The Eldorado was a fine vehicle for road trips and I’m sure this Coupe de Ville would be as well.
I doubt anyone is smoking tires (or even chirping them) in a 75 with all the newly added emissions equipment – choked a lot of horsepower out of those big engines. It basically took 30 years to regain all of the horsepower in the emission controlled era.
” It basically took 30 years to regain all of the horsepower in the emission controlled era.” and not to mention well surpass it.
Oooof… that color. I like green, but… bile grey-green ain’t gonna cut it.
A true Brougham Goddess..but a bit big for my taste as I preferred the GM intermediates…but talk about a car for a road trip! I use my 80 Olds Cutluss Brougham as long as there is no snow…and besides the wonderful ride-it beats my Honda Civic…I get a lot of respect in that car especially tail gaters in little Silver Corolla’s who always seem to get too close before they notice my big chrome bumpers…
This color was always a head scratcher, Lima Bean, Pea soup…Linda Blair’s vomit.
I Love it’s uniqueness though. Watching the Mecum auctions there is nothing I enjoy more than seeing these rarely picked original colors on models you don’t usually see at these auctions.
Nice as they are Watching Corvette after Corvette, and Shelby Mustangs just reminds me of how everyone often has to see the same blockbuster movie with non-stop action and little over familiar plot. It’s more for the followers than someone with a mind of their own. Silver and black cars for instance. “Idon’t want anyone to question my purchase” . I will never understand people who miss having their own life worrying about not fitting in, or what someone else has to say about their own taste.
One of the only things that will get me excited about a 70s land barge is if it’s painted one of these goofy “designer” factory colors that were available back then. Since this one has that, and a money green leather sofa inside, plus 500 cubic inches under the hood, I think it’s pretty sweet.
This color on old Volvos and Mercedes was called goat-vomit green, and on those cars it didn’t include the seats, headliner, carpet, and steering wheel.
I remember the grille being fixed to the bumper and when GM showed the bumper in use at 5mp, the entire grille would move with the bumper into the front clip. Insane.
I remember that GM became enamored of these non-metallic retro-colors in 1975. Buick offered this color too, and a neighbor had a 75 LeSabre sedan painted this shade. I remember it well because I spent the 1976 or 77 Indy 500 detailing waxing and detailing that car while the race was on the radio.
Clearly too much time has passed, wiping my memory banks of how awful these were, but I am starting to want one for its sheer audacity. Just so that I can say “500 cubic inches” to people.
Retro is right. I have a 1/18th scale model of a ’51 Studebaker Champion Starliner that is in a near-identical color.
All five divisions offered this color in 1974 and 1975. I’ve always disliked it, but it wasn’t all that uncommon.
Why yes, I DO remember courtesy lights! I saw some on my 2011 Prius just this morning!
While this car in no way represents the pinnacle of Cadillac in either prestige or build quality allow me to say that this Cadillac is still 2 times the Cadillac that the XTS will ever be to me. Hell its more of a Cadillac than the Escalade will ever be to me.
I completely agree with every word you posted.
Oh yeah!!!!
This is my least-liked shade of green but I still like it. I wish I could buy this car.
My late step-grandmother showed me first-hand that a smog-strangled 500 cubic inch V8 is capable of smoking the tires when she borrowed my father’s ’76 Eldo Convertible. Admittedly she also remarked that it “didn’t have near as much pickup as my ’76 Bonnie-Ville” though.
Ayup. The smog controls didn’t affect the low end torque anywhere as much as the upper end HP. Once GM swapped the points for HEI and made a few other changes, they didn’t stumble on tip-in. So, you still got a satisfying result when you put your foot down from a standstill.
Well, it LITERALLY is 2 x’s the XTS….
You sound like stereotypical old guys, I’ll bet you go back to the 50’s and some duffers would be knocking the 1959’s saying that the 1934’s were the last “good ones”.
I like the XTS, it fits well within the modern Cadillac line up.
So, Carmine, how many old guys does it take to replace a light bulb?
Easy, it’s ten.
One replace the bulb.
Nine to complain how the old one was better.
Carmine, I suspect I am younger than you and have better taste:)
+1 Bigtime, I don’t get the XTS hate at all. The current Cadillac lineup is probably more impressive as both cars and products than anything they’ve offered since before this Coupe deVille was built.
I made mention of this somewhere else before, but I think it’s worth sharing here as well…
Last year when I was at the North American International Auto Show, I got to sit in a new XTS. My thoughts were that it was nicely styled inside, but it honestly didn’t feel any more luxurious than an Impala LTZ, and for those of you that know me, you KNOW I take the time to notice differences and look for the positives in a car!
While I was sitting inside the car, a number of people walked up to the car, and every single one of them said, and I quote: “This is a Cadillac? This isn’t a Cadillac!!!”
+1 and not to mention it’s blander than skim milk. And if that fits well within the whole Cadillac line up it’s because that characterizes the lineup as well. Doesn’t take an old man to see that.
+2
I’m not arguing with fools, because at a distance, you can’t tell which is which. Have fun.
I love old Cadillacs, and old cars in general, I’ve had several Cadillacs and own several old cars(too many but hey its a sickness), so I put my money where my mouth is considering old cars, I LOVE them, but all that being said, new cars are fu**ing AWESOME, the technology, the features, they are amazing, new cars are really really fantastic, so please don’t sit there crying about the XTS “isn’t a Cadillac” and then get a fat chubby for a Oldsmobile engined 140hp 307 Brougham which is more or less a stretched Caprice with a LOT of jewelry, if that’s you’re thing, cool, I like them too, but you either move with the times, or you become Packard.
I personally like the XTS a lot, in fact it is my favorite new Cadillac model. Before I got my Town Car, I was thinking of getting a pre-owned one in a couple years. They look especially sharp in White Diamond with the light beige leather.
I think the new CTS is really sharp too. Cadillac is coming back, but in a modern way. As much as many of us love landau tops, hood ornaments and opera windows, they would go over like a lead balloon on any 2014 car, Cadillac or whatever.
I grabbed a brochure for the new CTS a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been looking over the CTS’s lovely lines for weeks now.
Carmine, Don’t get all bent out of shape and calling people names, just doing a little kidding. I think we are just making the point today’s Cadillac is alright for what it is but no longer is it an upper end luxury car, but instead is more of an entry level luxury car equal to Buick and depreciates 50% of the sticker value the first year; which eliminates me as a possible buyer above all the other reasons. Is the new Cadillac a better and safer car than the older ones? Without a doubt. Is it what it once was in the domestic car food chain? Absolutely not. Although I would not walk across the street to own a new Cadillac they must be doing something right because they attracted you enough to grab one of their brochures. Now if they can just get you to buy one. Happy shopping as it is a buyer’s market for one who is considering a new Cadillac at this time.
Carmine,
Do I understand where you’re coming from? Yes.
Do I agree with you that Cadillac would have become Packard if it kept selling what some of us consider to be real Cadillacs? Yes, yes, yes, though I supposed it might have sold in limited numbers a specialized “real Cadillac” like the big Toyota profiled a few weeks back.
Part of me thinks that, on the whole, out and out discontinuance might have been okay. For Cadillac to disappear, that is. Bowing out selling what made it distinct. And it is interesting that it is you who have routinely argued in other places that the C-Bodies from the 80s really are different than a “Caprice with jewelry”. I thought Mr. Peters had taken over your account for a minute. Having recently (as in, about 2 hours ago) driven an Electra of same vintage, I would add that the C-Body Cadillacs weren’t even Electras with extra jewelry. It really was a cut above, even in the 80s, even with that craptastic 140HP 307. The leather is nicer. The coat hooks are nicer. There is more “there” there.
Today it’s an objectively (in terms of data and safety) better car but it has nothing to offer me that I can’t get anywhere else.
That’s fine. That’s evolution. But it begs the question: Why does it still exist? Why does it exist and Mercury doesn’t? There was no longer any need for Mercury. Is there really a need, given what people want today, for a Cadillac? Does it really mean what it used to mean, to anyone under 70?
GM nearly went under (and would have done, had it not been bailed out). This isn’t a political argument, I’m just saying if there’s no real distinction to the brand I don’t see what the point is. Why modernize something that isn’t as good as the modern things it wants to compete with. Make a new flagship brand at GM. Don’t try to put little bumps on the back end of an “XTS” in some kind of faux nod to the Sixty Special. It’s not like the person choosing between that and an A7 is like “ooh wow, it’s still got fins, I’ll buy the Cadillac due to its continuity with the past”.
Part of me wishes Cadillac, and the whole GM show, had just died. Like the wooly mammoth it was…due for extinction. If you aren’t going to make American cars with the American marque because there’s no market for them, maybe that’s okay. Maybe they should be consigned to the past with the Pierce Arrow and the Packard. Nobody seems angry that they aren’t making those anymore. The time for marques comes and goes.
I remember this color, it was often matched with the darker green vinyl roof. In spite of this Caddy’s nice condition, I couldn’t live with that green, inside or out.
The green on the Ranger in the third pic, is a matter of taste as well.
Syke, your car has arrived.
What’s better than the courtesy lights, of course, are the fiber-optic turn signal and brake indicators.
It’s interesting that these cars did come with many advanced features for the time, including the fiber optics, optional FI, air bag suspension, variable rate PS, optional air bags, HEI, etc.
In unrelated news, it’s easy to tell when these are owned by collectors. All have had re sprays, but easy tell-tale items include period-correct WIDE whitewalls (either original to the car or the expensive Coker repros), all of the “wood” trim still on the steering wheel, no dashboard and/ steering wheel center hub color fade, and all 4 headlights are properly aimed.
In my opinion, these things can only be had if the car has, roughly, less than 75k miles on the odo. After that, it all goes to hell…
The FI’s were early throttle body units and were notoriously unreliable. Most were retrofitted with Quadrajets . . .
They were port injected from what I’ve seen, with a central 2bbl throttle body.
I know this as a friend has a 78 Impala that we swapped a 500 into, and I so want to convert it EFI if I can find the intake for it. It’s not a high priority project but something fun to do.
I love elegant low-tech solutions to high-tech problems. Those fiber optic lamp monitors were deliciously simple and worked forever unless the fiber got cut somehow. Nowadays the same task is done by electronics which are probably not that fancy compared to other electronics but surely have more failure points.
I know these biggies have some fans around here, but if I’m honest with myself I’d rather have a ’78 or even an ’88 version over this battleship.
When I was a kid we had a ’75 Pontiac Catalina with a white vinyl top and same color green inside and out. I didn’t like it then, and I still don’t. Although I will admit that color is far more interesting than gray.
This shade of green was also offered on big Chevys.
A car this color was in 1975 movie ‘Walking Tall Part II’, a brand new Impala Custom Coupe is crashed head on into a semi.
Beautiful car, although being a ’75 model, it would be even better with the so-tacky-it’s-awesome Maharajah cloth interior.
Wow…I can’t bring myself to consider that awesome…just awful.
Let’s see, what is the best adjective: broughamacious, broughamtastic, broughamíssimo, broughamalicious, the broughamiest, broughamgusting, or broughamatronic?
Anyway, this is very interesting information. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Come visit me at Facebook’s The Brougham Society and see how many ways we can say Brougham!
Disagree, Gary. The Calais had the tackiest Caddy upholstery in ’75 and ’76. Rodney Dangerfield’s plaid pants from Caddyshack or 70’s Midwestern Gospel Singers group style.
Anybody can do plaid. Plaid is the easy way out for tacky. To get something as boughamtastically tacky as Maharajah takes some effort.
I’ll see your Maharajah cloth and raise you with some Monticello Velour, another 1975-only delight. Truly a great year to be a Cadillac buyer.
Yep, the Monticello velour was pretty much the pinnacle of over-the-top patterns. You wonder what the living rooms of those who selected looked like! Take a look at that Monticello and suddenly the Jasper green leather seems downright restrained!
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Beat me to it, Monticello is the ace of spades of this combination, it trumps all others, though the Calais plaid does look like something from Caddyshack.
Oldsmobile resurrected some funky pattern interiors on the 78 Cutlass with a couple of indian blanket numbers.
Ooooohhhhh. Very much like!
+1 on the maharajah cloth. My dads 75 SDV had it in blue. It may look crazy now, but it seemed perfectly normal to me as a kid.
Ha, yep so bad it’s good.
My Grandparents had a living room sofa that looked just like this, (or the interior looked just like 1000’s of people’s ’70s living room sofas)
“Never in the field of human engineering has so much metal been devoted to so little interior space.”
-Winston Churchill
I would take this in a heartbeat. 500 smogger and all. In high school, an acquaintance’s Mom had one exactly like this. We’d sit in it at lunch, power windows and sunroof down and open listening to Chicago on the factory 8-track. That was living!
This was still during the time that there were at least some small changes to the exterior design pretty much every single year, and maybe it’s because I was a kid then, but there was something that I thought was really exciting every time I’d see a new one right at the model year change over. I can still literally remember the exact time I saw one of these CDV models, in late 1973, when the ’74s came out.
I love a green car, but this is just ain’t good. The sharp metallic limey green from ’74 was much better. Wasn’t there an Eldo on here in that color just a few weeks ago?
I had no use for this shade of green until the past few years. Now it has sort of grown on me – I guess green things do that.
Cadillac had some of the worst plastic wood in the industry on these cars. And GM had done some of the best just years earlier. Olds and Buick had better stuff in these years. Never could figure what was going through the product planners minds.
While these look impressive in some respects, the Olds and Buick models were better balanced, had better materials, and were generally just more reasonable all around.
An article in Road Test magazine, Battle of the Silken Giants, pitted a ’75 Coupe de Ville against a Lincoln Continental and Imperial. While not particularly complimentary of any of the three, they were particularly harsh in criticizing the Cadillac. One area where I think they were spot on was what they called contact paper fake wood. It was embarrassingly bad on what Cadillac still liked to call the Standard of the World.
I recall having the same reaction. A family friend bought a 74 Coupe deVille. I remember the contact paper wood on the side panels in the rear passenger area, going places and following curves where no wood could ever be in a car. And it looked like contact paper. Other than the seats in these cars, the rest of the interiors were chock full of unforced errors.
All I can say is WOW, what a car!!!
I love it. I’m too lazy to look it up and surely someone here knows: is this Jasper green? I too thought it was a 1974 color, but maybe it was offered both years. A friend has a 1974 Coupe DeVille in Jasper that’s almost a twin to this, and as nice or nicer. I’m partial to Persian Lime, but there is something about this color that makes it hard to look away!
Living in the deep south back in mid ’70s, I remember admiring the people who drove around in these caddies and promised to work towards owning one. That being said, to me the pinnacle of Cadillac would be ’59 Eldorado convertible ~ land yacht, big fin, what else can one ask for?
The cool part for me was the photos of the sedan version, which were truly huge in the back. When I was a kid, my uncle had a used 1973 it it was about the best car to be a passenger in that I can remember. Totally smooth and huge interior space. It had some really weird brocade cloth that would get stained when wet, so we had to sit on dry towels when we got picked up at the lake on hot summer days. My aunt would blast the a/c and we’d love that!
The car stayed in the extended family until about 1990 when a clan member wrecked it while road tripping drunk in Mexico which landed him in jail for a week until he was bailed out.
What movie is that video clip from?
Used Cars, a 1980 movie with Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. Great movie as long as you don’t take it too seriously…lots of CC spotting as well!
What a great looking old Cadillac. I look at this and I ask why Cadillac even bothered making cars after 1992. If I wanted a European luxury sedan, I’d buy one. If there’s no market for a real Cadillac, just exit stage left, don’t place Cadillac badges on a big Malibu.
Roger: “Used Cars”
On “Fast & Loud”, one of Gas Monkey Garage’s shop cars is a 1975 Caprice in this same green shade. Has big tires and a light bar. They rode in it on dirt recently, but most of the time it’s in background of scenes. I want to know its story.
I approve of the reference to the Fisher nuts commercial. I can’t believe anyone else on this Earth remembers that!
The fact that these cars were 8 inches longer in overall length and wheelbase, and a whopping 4 inches wider than our cherished 80-92 Fleetwood Brougham, is truly mind boggling.
That car is in beautiful shape, but the color is truly unfortunate. Cadillac copied it from Mercedes Benz. Either make looked horrid in that tonality.
I have one of these in the uk but the white landau too has been taken off and the maharaja interior is tired now .parts are fairly easy to come by though