I had the pleasure of spending the week of this past Thanksgiving with my older brother and his family in the greater Washington, D.C. area. It’s not a guarantee that siblings will like each other, either while growing up or in adulthood, so I’m thankful for those relationships. I have watched their kids grow from infancy to where they are now, which is to say officially beyond elementary school.
Their oldest son, who has been in college for a little while now, had also returned to partake in the Thanksgiving festivities. He’s the one with whom I had once had so much fun playing with Matchbox cars on the floor, with him choosing a purple Gremlin X as his favorite over the other selections I had brought him that included a Mustang Sportsroof fastback and a Dodge Challenger. I actually loved that the Gremmie was his favorite.
The WMATA Metro Center subway station.
Now, here we were in 2022, with both of us being adults, visiting my brother’s and sister-in-law’s house during the week of a holiday. I had expressed at breakfast that I wanted to go into the city from their suburb before Thanksgiving Day and explore the National Mall and its landmarks in and around that area. My nephew volunteered to come with me, so instead of exploring on my own, this trek became an adventure the two of us would embark upon together. We talked about anything and everything while taking public transportation there and back, and throughout the afternoon. Being the uncle is such a great place to be, as I felt that his and my conversation was frank and unfiltered (and hilarious) in ways it might not have been either if he was younger or if I was his parent or guardian.
Wandering from our restaurant in Chinatown toward the National Mall, this ’79 Eldorado seemed to magically materialize not far from Mount Vernon Square. The combination of grille pattern and clear turning signals on this example were specific to the first year of this generation’s redesign, which I’ll admit wasn’t something I knew before looking it up. My nephew instinctively and gamely moved out of the way as I got a few shots of this beautifully preserved, Colonial Yellow example before we continued on our walk.
1954 Cadillac Series 60 Special. Chicago, Illinois. Saturday, May 28, 2011.
It wasn’t until later that something else had occurred to me. My very first entry here at CC from January 2015 was a Curbside Outtake featuring a couple of pictures of a ’54 Cadillac Series Sixty Special I had photographed back in May of 2011. The main thrust of that piece was that I had found it fascinating that this gentleman, according to him, had owned this car for what was then fifty years. That ’54 Cadillac was manufactured just over twenty years before I, myself, had rolled off the Dennis family assembly line. While I greatly respected this Cadillac in 2011, specifically its artistic styling, presence, and pristine condition, it was still a really old car which, to be clear, I’m not saying was a liability.
The Carousel on the Mall.
Fast forwarding from then to just a few weeks ago, my nephew and I had come across a ’79 Eldorado which was a new car just over two decades before he was born, representing roughly the same age span between me and the ’54 Cadillac. By ’79, I was already identifying the makes and models of cars concurrent with learning to ride my bike with the training wheels off. My question, then, was whether my nephew perceived this Eldorado as being as archaic as the Sixty Special had seemed to me.
I realize that automotive design and technology has progressed at an accelerated pace during certain stretches of time, and that there was a greater difference, at least superficially, between the cars of 1954 and their lower-longer-wider counterparts of ’64. But for someone born after the turn of the new millennium, and with current technological advances involving power that doesn’t involve the burning of fossil fuels, how does a car like this ’79 Eldorado register with someone around the age of 20?
“Delta Solar” by Alejandro Otero, 1977, near the National Air and Space Museum.
There are only a handful of coupes left that one may purchase as new cars. While I’m sure there are yellow cars for sale in 2022 (I’m being careful not to say anything definite after this summer’s goof in which I learned that new, orange Cadillacs are still available for purchase), I can’t recall having seen any lately. My brother and his wife have a minivan and a family sedan, both Hondas and the furthest things from a car like this luscious, lemony Eldorado. There’s no way my nephew couldn’t have seen the ’79 as being as much an anachronism as I had seen the ’54, even if both are beautiful Cadillacs.
The front-drive, E-Body Eldorado lost literally over 1,000 pounds with the crisp, ’79 redesign, going from a dry weight of about 4,900 pounds to just under 3,800. Its wheelbase shrank by over a foot, going from 126.3 inches to 114.0″, with its overall length dropping by twenty inches to 204″. There was only a marginal loss in interior room despite the drastic reduction in exterior dimensions. Its $14,700 starting price represented an 18% increase over the ’78, though sales were up an impressive 44%, to 67,400 from 46,800. Power came from a modified Oldsmobile 350 V8 with 170 horsepower, which was down just ten horses from the previous year’s Cadillac 425.
My nephew and I walked past the Carousel on the Mall, where it seems like only a handful of years ago he and his siblings had sat atop one of these horses and enjoyed this ride as young children. It felt a bit haunting to see it closed for the season, with a few weeds popping up through the asphalt underneath. Purposefully flipping through pictures on my phone as he and I continued to talk, I found a shot of the two of us from the mid-2000s when I was holding him up as a preschooler while we were at a fishing pier. What he told me will serve as yet another memory of this afternoon: “Uncle Joe, you look the same.” Indeed, I looked similar on the outside that day, but with a decade and a half of more wisdom and personal growth on the inside. I liked the idea of my appearance providing him with a sense of continuity within our shared history.
I suppose I could have chosen to wrap this essay by reflecting that I hope he sees me more the way I see the ’79 Eldorado than the way he probably does, but I have observed over the years that he is something of an old soul with a gift for memory and an unusually heightened sense of awareness of himself and others. Also, the more I thought about it, the less it seemed to matter whether or not he sees (or will eventually see) me as “old”. I am a middle aged man, and even if he’s technically a young adult now, I still have responsibilities toward him as his uncle with my all of my additional years of life experience. I suppose I could text him now to ask what he actually thought of the Eldorado, but part of me just doesn’t want to know. What I do know is that I’ll probably always cherish that afternoon, and that life keeps moving.
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022.
Cars of the 1950s always seemed like relics to me – I remember occasionally seeing them when I was a kid but most of the time they seemed to be rusting away in someone’s back yard; I don’t recall seeing them on the road almost ever. The few times I did, I thought it must be embarrassing being seen driving such gaudy, out-of-style cars. 1960s cars by contrast were still fairly common on the streets and were just old cars to me, like driving a 20 year old Corolla or Accord today.
It’s interesting how Cadillac got the look of the downsized Eldorado so right whereas Lincoln botched the shrunken Mark VI coupe a year later; this despite the Eldo riding on a FWD platform which nowadays is considered not conducive to good proportions. Cadillac even went out of their way to make the front overhang longer than it needed to be with those sharply bladed fenders and bumper. It’s telling that the 1967 Eldorado seemed to be more of a reference point for the 79’s styling than the 1978 model did.
The contrast between the ’79 Eldorado and the ’80 Mark VI is stunning, and a great point you make. The Mark V, by comparison, is probably the style pinnacle, for me, of the large PLC.
The ’67 Eldorado was and remains a gorgeous machine, and GM was wise to reference it on the ’79.
Agreed. Lincoln made the mistake of trying to make the smaller 1980 car retain every styling element of the 77-79 cars, only squashed a foot and a half, and it just didn’t work.
The ’79 through ’85 Eldorados are shockingly handsome to me. Very crisp and daring, in a conservative way. No wonder the just as shockingly uninspiring ’86 model kept potential buyers away in droves.
This generation has only appealed to me more and more with the passage of time! I agree. Never my favorite car when new, I have such an appreciation for them now. They are genuinely great: styling, size, etc.
Those wheels on that yellow Eldorado look like they were extended outward from the sides somehow…not in a bad way, mind you, but I wonder what kind of modification was made?
Definitely an offset there. It can be done “correctly” with aftermarket wheels, but in this case (based on the memory of my grandparents’ 79 Eldo) it looks like maybe they are the originals, which means spacers. The Internet has widely varied opinions about spacers…
Incidentally, that grandparents’ car was their replacement for the ’66 New Yorker from which my handle derives. You can’t say they didn’t get good service out of that one.
I noticed that straight away too. Perhaps spaced out a bit too far for my liking. It looks like someone was going for the maximum amount that would fit under the fenders.
I’m actually a fan of the slightly wider stance that the spacers afford this example. Something about it just looks so right to me.
1979 Laramie Beige, Cadillac Paint CODE 62, Interior: Sierra Grain Leather CODE 603 Antique Saddle
Definitely looked more Colonial Yellow than Laramie Beige, at least in person, unless the former wasn’t available on the Eldorado.
Thank you Joseph for the very interesting piece. I really like the setup here of thinking about how a young person would view a 40 year old car that once seemed novel, but is now “just” possibly an old car. Likewise, it’s fascinating to think about what your nephew will see in say a model year 2000 car when he’s 40. How might he connect that vehicle (and I wonder what that vehicle might be?) with whatever is rolling around in 2040?
Yes, “rolling”…because I’m quite sure that in 2040, we STILL won’t have our flying cars. Which is fine with me since at 80, I won’t want any sky traffic to get in the way of the clouds I’ll be yelling at.
Thank goodness there are no flying cars. I cannot imagine what Chicago traffic would be like should that happen.
In terms of the shift in perspective between how different generations view the same era of cars, it took me a while to understand when I was an adolescent / teenager that some of the muscle cars of the ’60s with what I considered to have wonky proportions (i.e. didn’t have the long-hood / short-deck look popularized by the Mustang) had looks that were genuinely hot to people of my mom’s age group. I’m thinking of the GM A-bodies of, say, 1964 – ’67.
My stepson is around the age of your nephew…last Christmas we went to an outdoor light display in our 88 Brougham as is the family tradition to look at holiday lights in a Cadillac (or at least my family tradition).
He and his girlfriend were in the backseat, and wanted to roll down the windows…and I heard him looking for the crank! Apparently the car was so old, it might not have power windows…
When we got home, I dug out some late 1950’s advertisements comparing Cadillac to fine jewelry…another time, another place.
Just another old car…
Tom, I’m now thinking about what was the last model year that crank windows could be had on a Cadillac. Or even what decade… Did the Cimarron come with crank windows standard? I’m too spent after the workday to look it up. 🙂
I have seen them in fleet cars like hearses as late as 1976.
After looking to verify, the last manual windows I could find were in the entry level Calais and Commercial Chassis in 1976.
Excellent – thank you for this, Anthony.
Great article and way of looking at things. I often (but still not enough) get to spend time with some of my nephews and/or nieces. Just last summer my kids and I spent 4 days staying with my oldest nephew, his wife and 4 kids. It was quite fun as he was busy making hay (NW part of IL) and so I helped him by driving his heavy duty truck and puling loads of big round bales of hay. It was very special and nice to have that time with nobody else around and to have great conversations. Precious moments still.
There were no beautiful yellow Cadillac Eldo’s out in those fields though!
Dan, that sounds like such a great experience. And nothing beats those kinds of conversations.
That is one of my favorite things as I slowly advance in years – getting to know young adults I formerly knew as kids, whether they be my own offspring or their friends or other relatives. Some one-on-one time with a young adult is a great gift, especially when you share a bond from earlier years.
I will confess that I still think of anything from around 1980 as a relatively new car. Yeah. And these may be my favorite Cadillacs from that era, especially these early ones with the “real” engine.
JP, you’ve got me thinking about around what model year of car I would still think of as new-ish. I did reflect to myself earlier today that there seems to be much, much fewer differences, at least where appearances are concerned, between a 2000 Camry and a 2023 and the two featured Cadillacs.
I once worked with a lawyer who said that a “recent case” is anything published after you got out of law school. Therefore, in my world a “relatively new” car is anything that was built after I started working as an adult. 🙂
My best friends mom actually had a 79-85 Eldorado(I don’t know the year) in brown(another seldom seen color now) when we were in elementary school in the 90s, and it seemed like a really old car to me then, because there just weren’t many around to gain that familiarity. I think it depends on exposure, looking back on my perceptions at a young age most 1970s and early 80s cars looked absolutely archaic to me, yet cars like Tri-five Chevys were(are) so prolific as collector cars that their familiarity made them seem as timeless as a pair of Levi’s jeans, I didn’t see them as old even though I knew they were.
I think what really matters is whether whether age repels someone or not, this Eldorado still looks old to me but I like it, just as I liked my friends Mom’s example despite my perception of its age. She replaced it with a then-new Chrysler Sebring coupe which I never liked yet that car still(from my perspective) seems “modern”.
It’s interesting about the Tri-Fives, as I also remember them being pretty much omnipresent for as long as I can remember – especially during the neon-lit ’80s when there was all this ’50s nostalgia, right on down to Trapper Keepers we’d take to school.
I seem to remember many of these Eldorados in brown, but I think the color suited the car’s styling well.
I remember many in “burgundy””, as well. Can apply that to “Rivera’s” of that era as well. “Toronado’s were often “blue”.
That neon lit 50s nostalgia craze seemed to last into a point in the 90s, I’m pretty sure I had a trapper keeper among some other swag that fit that bill haha.
What is/was a “tapper keeper”?
This is a Trapper Keeper.
I see I owe you an “r”. ((and t/y)) I guess as I was done with college in Dec 1983, that’s one commercial I ignored or never looked at.
Another interesting and thoughtful piece. I like the two featured Cadillacs and they are so different to anything ever seen on the roads in northern England.
Car design and technology changed radically between when I was born in 1957 and when I passed my driving test in 1974. My parents and Grandparents changed their cars with the times and went to fwd cars from BMC and Renault; for my first three cars I went for Morris Minor, MG Midget and Citroen 2CV, all old fashioned even in the 1970s and 80s.
Of my nephews and neice, in their 20s and 30s, only the eldest, born in 1987, is interested in cars and has learnt to drive. He currently has a VW T4 (Eurovan) the same as my brother and myself. The others don’t see the need, like yourself they take advantage of the city public transport network.
Thank you so much. I have to wonder if your parents and grandparents had felt any trepidation in moving to FWD designs, or if they were just ready to embrace the new technology. I suppose it’s not that far removed from people moving from gas-powered vehicles to hybrids or electrics.
I am so thankful for Chicago’s comprehensive public transit system. I give thanks for it regularly.
Some of use were lucky enough to have grown up riding PCC trolleys and electric trolley buses too .
I think every place should have good, clean, SAFE low co$t public transportation .
-Nate
Nice to hear about Uncles & Nephews getting to know each other .
I’m the weird uncle Way Out West who still drives old vehicles, sadly I don’t get to see them but they love my family letters and bent sense of humor .
Your being ‘Middle Age’ scares me…..
I remember riding in mid 50’s Cadillacs that were just old cars, less than ten years old at the time ~ anything older than five years in the salt belt was considered junk .
-Nate
Everybody should appreciate your humor as much as I enjoy reading your comments and insights, Nate.
Wow, thank you Sir ! .
That’s quite a compliment .
-Nate
Yeah, my nephews are “52” and “37”. The younger one is my brothers son. He (my brother) passed away in 2007. His two kids could likely pass me on a street and not even know me..lol
The older nephew is my sisters, son. He and his sister , and I see each other maybe every 2-3 years..
With my brother gone, that connection just naturally “shorted out”.
Mys sisters two are eleven years apart so it’s like “two only children”.
They have almost no contact with each other and they live in the same city..
Joseph, the older I get, the more I find myself understanding my parents. It’s way too late to have any impact on our relationship, but now I sort of understand.
As an only child of older parents, I never had relational problems with siblings, though I’ve seen how devastating that can be when X won’t talk to Y but will communicate through Z. I’m so thankful our two (now in their thirties) get on so well, to the point where Aunt Ruth is the favourite babysitter, next to Grandma herself. That’s precious.
As a ’57 model myself, in my childhood I found forties cars just old but nothing special, thirties cars interestingly old, and the occasional twenties car really ancient. To my dad (b.1910) Forties cars were new, and he couldn’t understand why they interested me, why I thought of them as old. I used to think he had some kind of mental time clock had stopped because of the war, but now I realize that while there may have been that, it’s also an effect of aging. He had fond memories of his ’35 Chev; newer cars, while differently shaped, really were the same to drive – unlike the Model T tourer he learnt to drive in.
Nowadays I can look at nineties cars and think of them as new, because I can remember keenly when they were new. I drove a ’74 Cortina back then. After the doldrums of the eighties, cars were getting better again. They were things I might have purchased as a young family man, or things I might have wanted to be able to justify purchasing! I look back to the familiar, and remember, with affection. Good times! The driving experience would be the same, but better.
Newer cars are so much more complex with dash touch screens for ever so many functions, full of electro-nannies that beep and burp at you if it even looks like you might be doing something wrong. It’s enough to make me glad I’m not driving any more. The mechanism is improved but to me the interface is alien.
Dad would never have coped.
Peter, thank you for this – an excellent expansion of the idea of one’s age directly correlating what era of car we consider new or old. I did also have the idea a couple of months ago when I rented a car to drive to my high school reunion that I’m glad renting a car from time to time keeps me sharp on what cars are doing these days. I haven’t owned a car since 2003, and to your point, the technology is just so different now compared to when I had the (actual) keys to my own car with its ’90s technology (1994 Ford Probe).
Mr. Wilding ;
You’ve stopped driving before 70 years old ? .
-Nate
Was some beautiful weather here in “DC area” , for Thanksgiving. Spent “thanksgiving” afternoon outside . 1-4:30pm. Knew I’d be working the next four days and had worked the previous four. Glad you got to enjoy the outdoors.
We had an “early 80’s” era “Seville” here in my upper NW neighborhood for many years.
Was also yellow. Seems to me, it disappeared around 2014-15.
As It sat outside all those years (I moved here in “94”) , it had gone downhill.
Can remember seeing it in motion a few times, at a supermarket parking lot a time or two as well.
It was so mild that week – I was loving it. It was perfect for walking around. One of those 1980 – ’85 Sevilles is in my neighborhood in excellent condition, but apart from that one, it would have been years since I would have seen one in decent nick.
The more I see one of these 1979-85 Eldorados here in CC, the more I like them, to the point where they may be my favorite Cadillac ever. I like the sharp lines, bladed fenders, and don’t even mind the upright backlight, usually a non-starter for me. This generation of the E-body is reasonably sized without appearing hideously shrunken, as its successor did. Without a vinyl top, it still looks ‘modern’ in a way that only someone born before, say 1965, can appreciate.
I am glad you enjoyed your day exploring DC with your nephew, as I too enjoy being an uncle to my now grown nieces and nephew. At a recent family wedding, I spent considerable time talking with them all (they all live far away from me) and appreciated their youthful perspective, the sense of having so many great things ahead of them in their lives, the easy conversations borne of being relatives, and the ability to detect similarities with their parents embedded within their own distinct personalities.
Like you, the upright rear backlight doesn’t really bother me on these Eldorados – and in fact, I think I prefer it to the sloping fastback of the final cars. There’s something about the overall effect of these cars’ lines that just works.
Part of the fun of getting to know my nephews and nieces as they continue to grow is to (as you pointed out, in your case) see some of the family similarities I share with them, including sense of humor, a few mannerisms, etc. Spending time with them is just one more way of realizing and reinforcing that I make sense, which is invaluable to me.
He is lucky to have such an uncle. These photos have given me new appreciation for what a great job the stylists did with the ’79 Eldorado given the constraints that were imposed on them, perhaps the last GM car I’d aspire to owning in some respects, and maybe the last representative of traditional American automotive design leadership at it’s best: tasteful, elegant, imposing, arrogant even. The apotheosis of an attitude, now forever lost, of the confidence we once had as a nation, deserved or not.
+1
Thank you so much.
No one pointed out your horrendous, unforgivable boob! Unlike the behemoths, this Eldo never had the 425. The ’79 had the Olds EFI 350 (like the first Seville’s), the ’80-1 the Cadillac 368 (shrunken 425), the ’82-5 the HT4100. Some years offered the Buick 4.1 V6, IIRC, and all years offered the Olds 5.7 Diesel.
That sure looks like Colonial Yellow and a repaint. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these with a full vinyl roof, but compared to Devilles, a fair proportion were slick tops.
Horrendous boob, indeed. I misread my American Encyclopedia of American Cars (the “Webster’s Dictionary” of much factual information). I’ll reengineer that paragraph like the engine compartment of an AMC Pacer to shoehorn the correct information. Thanks.
Nice piece, Joseph! You set the feel of a special day with your nephew well. Having a good time with relatives you only see occasionally is really priceless thing. And there is nothing that makes one feel older quite like being around adults that you remember as little kids or babies when you were an adult.
I see someone finally pointed out (the small error) that the 79 Eldo only came with a modified Olds 350. That is my favorite color on one of my favorite Cadillacs of the era. I came close to buying a 79 once. 79 or 80 are the years to have with that generation.
Yes – a big “thank you” to you and Ralph for pointing out my gaffe. I’ll fix it.
Thanks for another fine JD essay. My nephew Eric was born with the car bug, and it’s been fun to share aspects of that over the decades, culminating in his joining our EXBRO trip to Eastern Oregon this past summer. And he’s contributed a few posts here too. That goes for another nephew too, on Stephanie’s side of the family. So yes, it’s great to share something in common with the next generation.
Thanks, Paul. What’s interesting is that it’s not my older brother’s son referenced in this essay who likes cars, but my younger brother’s teenager. I’m glad I get to talk cars with one of them. And it was great to read about the EXBRO adventures.
I feel like there was so much great CC output from all contributors especially this year.
Interesting observations on aging. I am a late Boomer, born in 1954. I remember turning 35 and my buddy remarking, “How does it feel to be middle aged?” I suppose that is the midpoint to a 70 year lifespan. For me and maybe some of my generation, the term middle aged referred to someone closer to their 50’s. About like a college aged kids parents. That is probably the main point, when you’re in your 20’s your parents seem to be pretty old, or at least, pretty out of touch. Currently for me, middle aged is late 40’s to early 50’s. I had my kids when I was in my early and mid 30’s (33& 37). A bit later than many but I was ready for the responsibilities of parenthood without suffering many of the regrets, It’s true that your kids keep you young and in touch with what’s current. I can’t really see the 80’s as being that old, not because it wasn’t that long ago, but because it was the decade that I became a real adult. At my current age of 68 I consider myself as old, but not ancient!
On those 79 thru 85 Eldo’s, oh how I wished I could have bought one instead of my Cougar. I still find them clean and attractive, on the outside w/o a vinyl top. Inside they are filled with the silly fussiness that characterized that eras Cadillacs, along with the dashboards that had no gauges.
I agree with your definition of middle aged. It’s one of those things where my peers and I are finally okay with just saying / admitting it, and not in a bad way. Each year seems to bring news of another classmate or friend who had passed away, which came into sharp focus at my high school class reunion a couple of months ago. These days, I’m like, I’ve made it to my mid- / late- 40s and feel thankful for a lot of things, including that I’m still here and in good health.
As far as having kids in ones thirties, my opinion (as a nonparent) is that this would be a great age. You referenced having been ready for the responsibilities by that point, and I have nothing but great respect for that. It’s too often a child of parents / a parent who either weren’t prepared for them or hadn’t thought things through who can spend untold time and effort to fix it. Therapy is hard work, and not everyone who needs it seeks it.
Agree with you that these Eldos look terrific as a slicktop.
Boomerism .
I had my son very early on so we were able to enjoy many of the same things, he’s a Journeyman Mechanic and Gear Head as I am but he’s somewhat burned out in his mid 40’s .
Just because we’re aging doesn’t mean we have to grow up ~ =8-)
Thank You, Mr. Dennis. Your posts never fail to touch me in some warm, loving way. Please continue to share your thoughts with us. Happy Holidays.
Dennis, I truly appreciate your kind words. Happy holidays to you, as well.
I ordered a new Eldorado in 1983, all black. It was a beautiful car, a pleasure to drive, and I never had a minute of trouble with it.
I’m glad others still appreciate the styling.
Thanks for the article!