What do the Grateful Dead and the Special Olympics have in common?

TIN MEN

I try to have variety on this blog but for the simple fact that the streets of Brooklyn are littered with Cadillacs. Believe me when I say that the following 2 examples were distilled from at least a dozen from the '70s that I've passed by. Without further ado I present another 1970 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, this one being a convertible.

  The factory Glenmore Green paint goes great with the contrasting (formerly)white top and green interior. This big beast has that look about it like it's driven around with some frequency. Sometimes you can just tell by subtle details such as the headlights being bright and seemingly focused in the same direction.

Yes I know my finger shows up in the corner of many of the pics. I'm usually jumping off of the bike mid-ride and snapping with the phone amidst traffic, so I don't see it stopping anytime soon. NO REGRETS!

Let us all pause in contempt for the Don Henley lyrics floating through our head right now from The Boys of Summer. I looked back; you should never look back.

There might be a one-liner here and if you come up with it you're going to feel very bad inside. The placement for this sticker is one of the most curious I've ever seen! I guess it allows you to pay your toll and still quietly express your views to the toll collector in the booth?

Now right around the corner we're going full style:

Wow! When I rounded the corner and saw this scene it blew me away!

This is the last and final call for monumentally-sized Caddys; a 1978 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz in Colonial Yellow! By '78 the Fleetwoods, Coupe DeVilles, and newer Seville were all downsized to more manageable dimensions, but the Personal Luxury flagship Eldorado held fast at 5,000+lbs. The body-colored hubcaps, 4 square headlights, loooong hood and mighty front end all mean business.

You still flip the license plate down to fill 'er up on this creamy yellow beast, and fill 'er up you would with a 7 Liter 425 V8 hauling all this metal around.

One detail I remember from my father's '74 Eldorado is the power trunk; close the trunk most of the way and a motor took over to finish the job.

The Biarritz package was the luxury version of a luxury car, so the garish '70s style was cranked up even further. This included a heavily padded vinyl landau roof treatment with working opera lights. Dig that chrome band that comes around from under the window before widening into a brushed stainless-steel stripe that follows the V-line of the hood. You can also glimpse from this angle the "pillow-top" seating which is just as it sounds (if you're into yellow leather pillows).

This was all I could shoot of this car before the owner came out of the garage across the street and told me "Don't get too close to the car with the bike please". In 1979 the Eldorado would join it's siblings in downsizing, but for '78 it was still king of the road.