30th Anniversary '76 Eldorado Convertible

[BicentennialEldo]

It is here, the 30th Anniversary of the End of the Eldorado Convertible.

Today, April 21, 2006 marks the day the Last of a Breed rolled off the line at the Clark Street Cadillac Assembly Plant in Detroit.

As you all know the last 200 were all identical and dubbed Bicentennial Editions.

To date we have located and registered 25.

I have located 7 more but still do not have complete info on these.

We have added a new item, a build sheet from Body Number 13995, or the 195th one built.

Interesting tidbit on this build sheet is the production date in the top left corner, 04 / 12. There seems to be a big gap in the production dates. This being the 5th from the last car built.

Did GM hold up the Last One for its Impromptu day in the sun? We may never know, but April 21, 1976 is the official day of ?The End Of An Era? for this

?Last of a Breed?.

Check us out at, www.bicentennialeldorado.com

Thanks Lewis Schwartz CLC #21703

[Guest my3buicks]

do the 83-84-and 85 Caddy Eldo Convertibles not count? Seems to me 76 was NOT the end of the Eldo Convert.

[K8096]

Cadillac advertised the 1976 as the last convertibles they'll built. I think the 1980's Eldo's all started out as coupes & were converted by an outside company, not by GM. I heard that when Cadillac came out with the Allante convertible, someone tried to sue GM for lying about the 1976 being the last Cadillac convertibles built. That's the American way!

[ex98thdrill]

Yeah Chrysler did the same thing in the late 70's early 80's when they came out with that Plymouth Turismo pickup (Plymouth's version of the Dodge Rampage) when they advertised it as "Plymouth's first pickup."

My father politely brought in some literature and pictures into the local dealership and showed them where they were wrong, but they didn't care and we didn't sue.

[Guest my3buicks]

Can't find data on 83, so that year may not have been available in the Eldo Conv, but in 84 & 85 Caddy put out a combined 5600 Eldo Converts, model designation was L67 versus coupes using L57 - with that kind of numbers and a model designation, I think it is very safe to assume that 76 was NOT the last year for the Eldo Convertable. I agree it was billed as the last convertible by Cadillac in 76, but had Cadillac not decided to produce the 84's & 85's I guess that statement would have been true. I guess a true statement would be that the 1976 Eldo's are having their 30th birthday/anniversary

[BicentennialEldo]

1976 is the last year GM built an in house Convertible. No one wanted or would buy convertibles, we had A/C, so we did not need to drop the top. Yea right. The Brass at GM found out later with Chrysler, there was a demand. 1982 was the first reintroducted Drop Top from GM, the Riviera Convertible. Cadillac had to wait until 1984 with a new Eldorado Convertible. But, both of these makes were farmed out to ASC to be chopped. They were not built on the assembly line as Convertibles had been in the past. So, 1976 was the last year of the Factory Asssembly Line built Convertible. Buick Riviera, 1982 thru 1985 and Cadillac Eldorado 1984 thru 1985. Both of these ended with the new body styles of 1986.

www.bicentennialeldorado.com

[Guest my3buicks]

of course we stated earlier, there is the Alante and also the Buick Reatta, and then of course we have a whole bevy of Cavaliers, Sunfires, etc. Whether the vehicles are farmed out or not, the Eldo was sold as a model from Cadillac, and not an aftermarket custom. Lots of companies farm out cars for various reasons - like Buick in the 50's farmed out the Wagons to be done. Fact still reamains, the 76 Eldo's are NOT the last Eldo Convertibles sold BY Cadillac.

[mrpushbutton]

Here in the home of Cadillac (and all of the after market conversion houses) the '76 Cad Eldo covertible was, and is still considered the "last convertible", as in Factory-built. the '84-on convertibles were a half-a_ _ chop job done by outside houses,some of whom produced a very unsightly finished product. convertibles need a lower top-of-windshield dimension in order to not look like a car wearing a baseball cap. the '76 Eldos (that whole body series going back to 70, 71?) were factory designed and built to be "whole cars", not something hacked on by a job shop (like a 43 ft. long Esclade strech limo). I had a friend who was an engineer for Fisher body, and he designed the top bows for the last few years. They wanted to eliminate the "buckets" on either side of the back seats in order to have a full-width back seat. Frank worked for over a year, and they finally had it for the last few years, the top bows folded into themselves rather than along the sides, then after '76, no more.

My former employer bought a '76 Bicentennial convert (the last eldo convertibles made were all Bicentennial editions) he kept it in his collection of over 200 cars. We took it out of storage in '03 for the big CLC mega-meet in Dearborn, the Centennial meet. The car had about 800 miles on it since new. we fired it right up, put a fresh battery in it and changed fluids. We felt pretty good about having it judged, it being a true one owner car (the boss had the protect-o-plate with his name on it, the framed certificate that "this was one of the last 200 convertibles ever to be made by Cadillac").

I took it through judging, the clock did not work (we had a new one on order and it didn't arrive in time), but the car ran flawlessly, and still looked brand new. One judge was outraged that we did not have a replica AC Delco oil filter, and that we did not have a "correct" AC Delco freedom battery. That was fair enough--we really did not have the time to hunt down the repros. But he was a total jerk insisting that there was no way in H_ _ _ that this was an 800 mile original car, and that we MUST have turned back the odometer. Oh well, having a car entered in judging is no recipe for happiness.