1976 Cadillac Eldorado
You could argue that the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado was the last of a particular breed of American car. Somehow, like a dinosaur that’d managed to hide from the fiery comet that wiped out life on earth millennia ago, it had survived a couple more years as a hardtop coupe – only to be given the coup de grace in 1978 when the last full-size Eldorados were terminated, to be replaced by the diminutive, downsized 1979 model.
The Eldorado had long been Cadillac’s top-of-the-line nameplate, sitting at the top of the tree for many years, but subsequently reinvented itself to emerge butterfly-like from a chrysalis in 1967 as Cadillac’s personal luxury offering. It went head-to-head with Lincoln’s Mark III, Ford’s premium personal luxury car and the late Sixties and early Seventies, and this ‘Battle Royale’ was recounted in the buff mags of the time: , and others. America’s appetite for personal luxury cars, a segment arguably created by
