Why the 1967 Cadillac Eldorado Is the Marque’s Most Charismatic Car

Our collector-car column last week featured the 1963 Buick Riviera—a standout from America’s golden age of personal luxury automobiles. On its heels for this week is another of the trio that Ed Welburn, now-retired vice president of Global Design at General Motors, named as a favorite during our conversation at an official Cadillac dinner years ago. Readers will have to wait until we get to the second half of the alphabet (O) to be introduced to the Oldsmobile Toronado. But if this series ended with “C,” Cadillac’s 1967 Eldorado would make a fitting “Finis,” a car highlighting a decade of visionary domestic automobiles whose grand style, luxury, and that slippery concept of “taste,” has not been bettered since.

Cadillac’s Eldorado began decades prior. The model was introduced in 1953 as a convertible, and was produced from 1957 through 1960 as a Brougham (four-door hardtop). Both were the most expensive Cadillacs upon their release, save for the Series 75 Limousine. But the Eldorado iteration made from 1967 to 1970 was the beginning of GM’s new vision of personal luxury. A two-door hardtop coupé, it followed the Oldsmobile Toronado, introduced the year prior, by using GM’s brand-new, front-wheel-drive E-Body platform, also shared by the rear-wheel-drive 1963 Buick Riviera. It’s a complicated family; consult a GM genealogist for details.

Its looks were everything. Under the hand of GM styling chief Bill Mitchell, the Eldorado traded the Riviera’s streamlined form for a more angular shape, and the first two years (1967 and ‘68) featured concealed front headlamps that were a first for any Cadillac. Adventurous, impressive, and expensive, the model sold about 43,000 units in its four-year heyday. During those years, its V-8 engine grew in displacement from 429 cubic inches to 472 cubic inches to 500 cubic inches, all mated to a three-speed automatic transmission driving the front wheels. Acceleration is respectable, considering the car is close to 4,700 pounds.

Collectors should consider the first two years of manufacture, with 1967 as the high watermark. In 1968 came things like side-marker light regulations, courtesy of our government’s “we know what’s best for you” Department of Transportation. The first-year production saw almost 18,000 examples made, so there should be one out there for even the most fastidious collector. Journalists in the day praised the Eldorado for its drive experience, and today, it reminds us of a time when fossil fuel was as cheap as it was abundant, and cars with hoods as long as a California King mattress were as common as the beds themselves.

The mantra for would-be owners is buy the best example you can afford. Restorations are not for the faint of heart. Expect to pay around $70,000 for a concours-quality 1967 model, which is close to free, considering what it took the owner to bring the car to that condition. Would-be owners who are less ambitious can acquire a “good” example for a third as much, but really, the experience of owning and driving a pristine example is one to be savored.

Today, the sight of a Cadillac Eldorado occasions celebration. Although seeing one in public may be as out of context in a Tesla-packed parking lot as would be a mule-drawn wagon or a riding elephant, only last week, I espied a glorious white ’67 in front of my local Weiler’s Deli, stopping me in my carbon-ceramic-disc tracks as if I’d spotted a diamond in a field of coal. The car’s driver—old enough to be the original owner—made his deliberate way into the restaurant. It was easy to envision Rat Packers Frank or Deano, and could only imagine that this man, too, was quite the player in his day—maybe even now. Classics, after all, become even greater with time.

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Click here for more photos of this 1967 Cadillac Eldorado.