In 1759, Francois-Marie Arouet, otherwise known as Voltaire, wrote Candide, my favorite book. Ironically subtitled “Optimism,” Candide chronicles its eponymous character’s hapless adventures as he crosses the globe in search of a woman he doesn’t really want. One of those adventures finds him and his resourceful sidekick Cacambo in Eldorado, where they encounter gold and jewels that the town’s citizens find as meaningless as stones, but which Candide covets. During the summer of 2019, on adventures far and near, I found several Eldorados in this best of all possible worlds, and I coveted them all.
Eldorado #1 was parked at a nearby state park in June. It’s a 1970 “Aaron Special,” which is a reference I use when a car is not only something I’d buy, but is also in a condition in which I’d buy it: nice but with the perfect knocked off. It likely spent many a stationary hour in an old garage before someone decided that it had sat long enough.
John Gardner, the author of Grendel, famously claimed that “there are only two plots in literature: a person goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town.” A Louisiana state inspection sticker from 2000 signifies that the Eldorado is the latter, in addition to offering some hope that the Eldorado isn’t a pit of Bondo-laden despair. The two pictures above were taken on two successive weekends, leading me to perhaps fallaciously assume that those who like neat cars also like state parks. I offer the picture of the Cadillac and my ’74 Firebird as a counterpoint to those who feel that cars of the 1970s offer no redeeming qualities.
The “Summer of Eldorado” also reminded me how to differentiate between a ’69 and a ’70 Eldorado: look at the grille trim. On a ’70, there is a bright strip surrounding the grille that is lacking on the otherwise similar ’69. In 1970, General Motors redesigned the Eldorado’s platform mates, the Riviera and the Toronado, and the results were, to me, like the wistful Candide’s love interest, Cunegonde. In other words, time did their appearance no favors. On the other hand, the nearly unchanged Eldorado is just as attractive as its predecessor.
In Candide, the main characters manage to lose and find each other over and over as fate (or free will?) carries them from shore to shore. Although I haven’t seen this Eldorado since June, I maintain hope that our paths will cross again.
In the meantime, my wife and I found Eldorado #2, also a 1970 model, in a place that was not as close to home as the first.
In August, we were hundreds of miles away in Marquette, Michigan, the largest town in the Upper Peninsula and home to Northern Michigan University. It’s a city in the heart of the UP’s Iron Range, and we spent an hour or two at Presque Isle Park, walking out on the breakwall and watching an ore freighter, the Lee A. Tregurtha, capture its load of taconite pellets. It’s intriguing to consider that perhaps our featured Eldorados were born from Upper Peninsula iron.
Eldorado #2, parked on the side of the road just minutes from where the Tregurtha ingested her cargo, was for sale. Although it looks hale enough in pictures, its 3300 dollar asking price was indicative of its general earthiness, although I’m certain someone could make a perfectly serviceable driver out of it.
To say the Eldorado radiated patriotism is an understatement, such as when Candide said that the city of Eldorado was “better than Westphalia,” the town from which he was expelled by way of a swift kick in the pants. The Cadillac was festooned with patriotic stickers and these peculiar eagle’s head lock covers, as if an Eldorado didn’t already scream like a bald eagle. This flag-waving beast wasn’t, however, the only Eldorado in Marquette that day.
Being a toy, a ’67 model, and something I actually bought rather than drooled on, Eldorado #3 works best as a sidebar. Minutes after discovering the white ’70 on the side of the road in Marquette, I found this Auto World toy, in its appropriate golden hue, on the pegs at Walmart. Yes, I shop for toys on vacation. Judge me as you will.
A month later in September, back at home, we found Eldorado #4 less than a mile from our house. Notice the lack of a bright grille surround, the easiest way to identify it as a ’69. In sinister black with a black vinyl top, this is my favorite of the bunch, except for some troubling signs that this car may be a Michigan native.
See the bubbles underneath the edge of the vinyl top? If this car were for sale and I were a truly interested party, that would be enough reason to suspect the whole car, even though I’d have no problem cutting and welding a patch into that flat expanse of c-pillar. If Candide has taught me anything, it’s to take trouble as it comes and try to maintain one’s equanimity.
Therefore, it’s important to remember that anything man built can be repaired, providing one is prepared to bear some buffets and blows along the way. In fact, I prefer to think of my hobby as the best way to make sense of life, a way to simply stay busy, or as Candide might say, a way to “cultivate our garden.”
And on that note of subdued optimism, our summer of Eldorado ended. Although our journeys did not take us to the faraway lands of South America or offer us a horde of gold and jewels, they offered us plenty of evening adventures and atmospheric pictures of beautiful machinery. And even though I have no current plans to buy an Eldorado of my own, mostly because it wouldn’t fit in my garage with the rest of the collection, I must maintain the disciplined, dispassionate philosophy of a man who casually endures life’s minor disappointments.
Therefore, I’ll let Voltaire wrap this up for me, as Candide discusses his fate, one he finally must accept with composure, with the foolish philosopher Pangloss:
Pangloss sometimes said to Candide:
“There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.”
“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”
(A rerun of an older post)
The 1968 Eldorado is my all time favorite Cadillac because it still had hidden headlights and the first year for the longer hood to conceal the wipers. If I had the funds I wouldn’t think twice to restore & slightly modify one of these beauties. My ideal would be something in the order of a cobalt blue pearl paint, no vinyl top, and a Ferrari saddle color leather interior with the bucket seat option. I might add real wood birds-eye-maple interior trim in a natural stain. I don’t drive all that fast for a guy in his 70s thinking like he is still in his 20s. So a Northstar engine with 469 horsepower from the supercharged 4.4L V8 would be a nice engine transplant. Of course I have not put much thought into what would be my perfect 1968 Eldorado.
Although all of the Eldorado’s look good, I’d prefer to have YOUR Firebird (since I drooled over, but never owned a Camaro/Firebird)!! 🙂
The Firebird’s a great car; my wife’s Google Images memories brought up that I trailered it home on a U-Haul ten years ago this coming Saturday.
As a kid and avid model car builder I built the Johan 67 Eldorado which appealed to me although I was a Ford fan building many Ford model cars.
This generation of Eldorado had a presence like no other luxury automobile and It seems to me Cadillac got it right and was careful in updating the model up to the 70’s.
Handsomely sculptured cars such as this are much missed, though I’d much prefer a ’63/64 Eldo, produced when Cadillac was at it’s postwar peak (1949-64 in my estimation), or if fwd was the chief criterion, a ’66/67 Toronado, which truly looked the part.
Nice Voltaire quote.
Balzac would have to be my French author favorite, admittedly of a somewhat later period.
Such literary allusions certainly add a certain piquancy to the commentary.
Thank you…I haven’t read too much Balzac; I started “Le Pere Goriot” a long time ago, but I just wasn’t feeling it at the time and never went back. Maybe one of these days.
The ’66 Toronado is one of my favorite cars, and I sure hope I can make it happen someday soon.
Tregurtha is a proper Cornish name, as is mine. I’ve heard that our pasties are a local delicacy in the Upper Peninsula.
The ship was named after the wife of the vice chairman of the Interlake Steamship Company…no idea if she’s from Cornwall. 🙂 And yes, pasties are very popular in the UP.
https://www.interlake-steamship.com/our-fleet/m-v-lee-a-tregurtha/
Awesome write up, and I just ordered Candide, as I’ve never read the full text.
Regarding the car, 67- 70 Eldorados are among my all-time favorite designs. The original, 1967 model was a masterpiece of sheer, razor-edge stylung and a Cadillac Hall-of-fame first ballot unanimous entry. While all models of this generation were attractive, they lost a little bit of their “edge” each year – starting with the corner mounted parking lights in 1968 and culminating with the shrunken taillights and elimination of hidden headlights in the last models. Still beautiful, but not quite as distinctive and avante-garde.
Thank you! I hope you like the book, and I’m sorry for bringing it up if you don’t. 🙂
Your praise of “Candide” has piqued my interest too but, being lazy and thrifty, I’ve found an audiobook of “Candide” on YT, read by the actor Michael York.
Indeed, give me a 67 with any of the Firemist colors, no vinyl roof, and with an aftermarket EFI system so I don’t need to worry about altitude changes here in California.
That said, an early Toronado would be more likely to come sans vinyl top, and has that highly appealing (to me, anyway) drum speedometer.
Any mention of Candide must also acknowledge the attempt in 1956 to make it into a “comic operetta,” as it was billed. The music was absolutely brilliant (Leonard Bernstein), but the book apparently was a mess, and the show closed after only 76 performances. Repeated reworkings finally resulted in a concert version that Bernstein himself conducted and recorded, and opera companies stage it from time to time.
Cadillac seemed to have a good deal more success with their Eldorado than Voltaire’s Candide did in his visit to El Dorado!
The lines of the 1967 Eldorado were among the finest Detroit managed in the post-war years. Some of the stated horsepower numbers in the era were, at best, merely indicative but I’ve always been amused by: 1970 Eldorado = 400; 1970 Boss 429 = 375. Ford had a reason for under-rating and I don’t know if Cadillac’s “400” was verging on the panglossian but had the Eldorado been RWD, it could have been made the sort of car the Chrysler 300 once was. Whether by the late 1960s there existed for such a thing as much demand as Cadillac found for the PLC is dubious but it would have been an interesting exercise. Road & Track might not wholly have approved but would have enjoyed it.
I rode in the back seat of this generation Eldorado and the two things that stuck were the lack of view from those tiny widows and the extra interior door handle because the doors were so long. They do make impressive cars from the end of the era I consider worthy Cadillacs, since the malaise era resulted in cheaper nastier Cadillacs.
I am curious how many Eldorados of this generation were made without vinyl roofs? A light colored smoot top would be striking
Rivieras (and I believe Toronados) shared those big doors, with the extra, inside release (for rear passengers.) Yes, very interesting!
Yep, Rivieras and Toronados with the deluxe interior packages had the rear door handles.
There are pictures in this post:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/1966-buick-riviera-versus-1966-oldsmobile-toronado-closely-related-yet-so-different-part-2/
The 1970 Eldorado saw the debut of the 500 cu.in./8.2 litre V8 engine.
A pristine condition 1970 Eldorado has long been at the top of my wish list of dream cars to own for a couple of reasons:
– ’70 was the only year for the high-compression 500
– I am also a 1970 model!
Love these Eldorados, I’ll take the blue one. But if I can only pick one car from this article, I pick Aaron’s ’74 Firebird.