Vintage Car Life Review: 1967 Cadillac Eldorado – “A Classic Made In A Modern Manner”

Car Life magazine published their first full road test of the new front-wheel-drive Cadillac Eldorado in April 1967. They expressed admiration for its brisk performance, sporty handling, and handsome styling (which they compared favorably to the first Lincoln Continental), but they had some reservations about the brakes.

The editors of Car Life saw the FWD Eldorado as “yet another product category for today’s much-segmented automotive markets” — not only a luxury specialty car, but a throwback to prewar classic design.

This same issue of CL included a retrospective of the original Lincoln Continental of the 1940s, and they saw the Eldorado as a modern successor, a “visually distinctive, tastefully luxurious, enormously expensive individualistic conveyance” with the obligatory long-hood/short-deck proportions. (Of course, Ford Motor Company would have argued that the Lincoln Continental Mark III was the true successor to the original Continental, but when this review appeared, the Mark III was still a year away from public introduction.)

From a commercial standpoint, where this really mattered was in buying Cadillac some renewed interest from the rich and famous. A lot of Cadillac buyers were neither famous nor wealthy, and while their money was no less green for that, it was important to the brand’s image that it have something to grab the attention of movie stars, performing artists, and trust fund babies for whom a De Ville was just too, too common.

CL continued:

Sight and touch say Eldorado is a classic car—a classic made in a modern manner of modern materials. Its appearance, tasteful and expensive, mirrors its owner/driver’s good fortune and keen perception, and implies his social or financial status. By being both brisk and solidly constructed, the Eldorado imparts the same sort of feeling as a carefully machined block of platinum.

The Eldorado won’t appeal to all owners of previous Cadillacs, for several reasons. The first is that it is visibly different—a stand-out—and thus distressing to those who require an expensive, yet homogenous [sic] conveyance. The second is that it doesn’t offer the interior space, the luxuriously generous passenger accommodation of a standard Cadillac. A third reason is that the Eldorado simply may be too “sporting” in nature and radical in concept for the traditional Cadillac client.

However, CL believes Eldorado will encourage new customers, many of whom have spurned Cadillac for these reasons already cited.

When the FWD Eldorado debuted, it had been almost 25 years since Cadillac had offered a really unique “individual” model. Since then, Cadillac had essentially been selling the same sausage in different lengths with different trimmings; there were multiple body styles and various trim levels, but they were all fundamentally the same thing, more or less. The new Eldorado was another story, having far less in common with other 1967 Cadillacs than with the FWD Oldsmobile Toronado, introduced the previous year. (In fact, Cadillac engineers had developed some parts of the drivetrain and suspension for both cars, although their version arrived a year later than the Olds.)

Car Life dismissed the outgoing RWD Eldorado as “nothing more than a rococo convertible, overly adorned and tastelessly festooned with chromium knicknacks to set it apart from De Villes.”

The new FWD Eldorado was significantly more interesting from an engineering standpoint, although the editors politely acknowledged that it was a case of novelty for its own sake, with no great practical advantages to its front-wheel-drive layout:

IN THIS DAY and age, a front-drive system can be both luxury and necessity. In the case of Cadillac, Oldsmobile and certain European products, it becomes a luxury because its application accrues few benefits over those of an equally as expensive rear-drive system. In the case of much-smaller English and French cars, in which space and cost are factors controlled with fanatical care, front drive becomes a distinct advantage and is widely used. However, front-wheel drive can be a salable entity, in the name of mechanical extravagance, when the competing automobiles offer only the same old conventional rear-drive layout. With Toronado and Eldorado, front-wheel drive elevates them from the ruck.

Car Life next offered an overview of the GM “Unitized Power Package” FWD layout, which had won their Award for Engineering Excellence in the previous year’s Toronado. Curbside Classic has previously examined that mechanical layout at length; the Eldorado was mostly the same except that it used the Cadillac 429 V-8 rather than the Oldsmobile 455 engine.

On the road, all the award-winning engineering under the hood was most noteworthy for its invisibility:

Front drive, in the Cadillac/Oldsmobile-developed idiom, is so slick and smooth that a driver is hard-pressed to distinguish which set of wheels really propels the car. Only the occasional, discordant screech of full-throttle tire slippage, or the massive understeer of brisk cornering, give away the front drivers. Saginaw’s marvelous hydraulic power assistant effectively masks any other untoward steering activity that might irritate an owner. Yet, the owner knows it is there, and he knows that not every car has, or can have, front drive.

1967 was the final year for the Cadillac 429 cid V-8, last direct descendant of the 1949 OHV V-8. Its displacement was now close to the limits of what the block would reasonably allow, and it was a bit smaller than other contemporary domestic luxury car engines. Car Life speculated that Cadillac “might put into production some of the experimental V-12s it has developed in the past few years,” but the V-12 project had already been canceled in favor of an all-new, physically larger 472 cid V-8, which would arrive for 1968.

Interestingly, the TH425 chain-driven transmission in the 1967 Eldorado used the switch-pitch stator in the torque converter, effectively giving the transmission an extra “half-step” between geared ratios. (This feature would be dropped for 1968.) The editors found that shifts were “virtually imperceptible” and yet ideally timed for maximum performance. With the 340 hp 429 and the standard 3.21 axle ratio, Car Life recorded acceleration times that qualified as pleasingly brisk for a big luxury coupe:

• 0–30 mph: 3.2 sec.
• 0–60 mph: 9.2 sec.
• Standing ¼-mile: 17.2 sec. at 81 mph

“The torque curve is really broad and flat, so throughout the car’s high gear speed range, it produces very strong power delivery,” CL remarked. The standard 3.21 axle ratio had the engine turning 2,700 rpm at 70 mph, but the editors found, “Cruising is effortless and silent at any speed selected.”

 

Although the straight-line performance was very good for a car like this, what most impressed Car Life about the Eldorado was “its great comfort at fast highway pacing, and its alacrity at in-town maneuvering.” They explained:

Both the comfort and alacrity are aided by firm suspension and fast steering. Eldorado, because of its inordinate front end weight, has far stiffer than normal front springing. The front ride rate is 140 lb./in. where a normal Cadillac Calais, for example, has just 86 lb./in. The rear ride rate is 105, compared to 110 lb./in. Additionally, Eldorado has a 1.062-in. diameter anti-roll stabilizer, where Calais has an 0.815-in. bar. This combines to give Eldorado a stout roll resistance, thus permitting it to corner flatter and more surely than any previous Cadillac. An automatic leveling system also contributes to comfort and stability by maintaining rear-end elevation at its prescribed height despite variations of up to 500 lb. in the luggage compartment. Only once did the suspension systems show a flaw; a “freeway hop” front wheel oscillation was encountered as the Eldorado was driven at 65 mph on an inbound stretch of the Los Angeles Harbor Freeway.

This kind of freeway hop was a frequent complaint from Southern California testers about GM cars of this vintage. It was apparently due to the spacing of freeway pavement segments, which could set up unfavorable sympathetic vibrations in the suspension components. GM officials allegedly expressed embarrassment about it, but it took several years before it was really resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.

Car Life really liked Cadillac variable-ratio steering, which they said gave the Eldorado “sports car handling quickness,” but they were not so keen on the brakes. Their test car had front discs, a $105.25 option fitted to only about 7,800 of the 17,930 Eldorado hardtops Cadillac built for 1967, but deceleration rates were worse than CL had previously recorded for a RWD Cadillac Calais with drums. Interestingly, their Eldorado test car did NOT have the customary problems with “rear wheel lock-up and tire skidding,” but the brakes were only mediocre by 1967 standards.

The problem was both weight and weight distribution. A 1967 Eldorado was not any lighter than a Coupe de Ville (despite what the above spec panel says, the curb weight of a well-equipped Eldorado was over 4,900 lb), but with FWD, a lot more of that weight was up front, putting a greater burden on the front brakes while leaving the lightly loaded rear drums more susceptible to lockup. If the disc/drum brakes were a disappointment, the standard four-wheel drums were worse; even Motor Trend, which was usually polite to a fault about such things, found the drum-braked Eldorado scary to drive in stop-and-go traffic.

With a 6-way power seat and adjustable steering wheel, Car Life found the front seats comfortable for average-size people, although their 6’3″ tester “had crewcut brushing headliner in even the lowest, farthest rearward position available.”

The rear seat was best limited to occasional use. On paper, it offered reasonable head and legroom, but CL warned:

Rear seat passengers won’t be as happy, mainly because knee room is somewhat restricted, and because of the low seat height used to insure adequate head room. These slightly cramped rear quarters can be viewed as a sacrifice to the handsome proportioning and neo-classic appearance of the overall automobile.

The Eldorado was still part of the Fleetwood series, which Car Life credited with being “particularly tasteful, well designed and well made.” However, I must part ways with CL to argue that the interior of the FWD Eldorado was really something of a letdown, particularly given its $6,277 base price. (The loaded CL tester had a sticker of $8,061, a relative worth of about $87,700 in 2025 dollars.)

Although the outgoing RWD Eldorado had not been mechanically exceptional (it was, as CL noted, basically a fancier De Ville convertible), it had boasted a particularly lavish interior with real wood paneling on the doors and quarter panels, along with full leather upholstery. Even the sides and facings of the cushions were covered in leather rather than vinyl, unlike a De Ville.

With the 1967 FWD Eldorado, Cadillac had added a big infusion of mechanical novelty while actually cutting the base price by $354. They had clearly made up some of the difference in the interior: There was no more wood, and the standard cloth seats were bolstered in vinyl rather than leather. Even if you paid extra for leather upholstery (a hefty $157.90 on the Eldorado), it was limited to the seat faces, looked plasticky, and didn’t change the uninspired “generic Fisher Body” seat design — a disappointment next to this car’s spectacular exterior.

Don’t get me wrong: On the outside, the 1967 Eldorado ranks among the 10 or so finest GM designs of all time, an exquisite piece of work. I just wish the Cadillac studio hadn’t run out of money and ideas on the inside. Judging by the subsequent success of the Lincoln Continental Mark III, which had a much fancier interior, I think some Eldorado customers would have been happy to keep the exterior styling while trading the avant-garde engineering for more interior lavishness.

Nonetheless, Car Life noted that the Eldorado was already a hit:

Though not everyone can afford such a car, there seems to be a sufficient number of customers who can: Production is currently 1900 cars per month and dealers report back-orders stacked 3 months deep. Eldorado is giving Cadillac its greatest-ever sales, despite a generally soft and receding automobile market. Obviously, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the French explorer and founder of Detroit, has at last found El Dorado, the legendary land of gold.

The FWD Eldorado would remain a big moneymaker for Cadillac throughout this generation and into the mid-1980s.

 

Related Reading

Vintage Reviews And Commentary: 1967-1968 Cadillac Eldorado – The King Of Cadillac From When Cadillac Was King (by GN)

1967 Cadillac Eldorado vs. Renault R-10: An Unfair Comparison Thanks To A GM Deadly Sin (by Paul N)

Vintage Car And Driver Comparison: 1967 Ford Thunderbird And Cadillac Eldorado – A New Contender Enters The Personal Luxury Car Wars (by Rich Baron)

1966 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado Convertible – The Last Fading Ember of the Rear-Drive Eldorado (by me)

1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III, Inside And Out – Unsubtle But Effective (by me)

Vintage M/T Review: 1970 Cadillac Eldorado Vs. Lincoln Continental Mark III – “Take Me To Beverly Hills” (by me)