Rusty But Trusty

In the last few years (maybe with increasing wisdom age) I’ve started to see the appeal in pre-70s Cadillacs. They seem to have been built before a time where the accountants held the reins at GM, before the badge-engineering phase, and when Cadillacs were something you aspired to instead of laughed at from the wheel of your Euro-mobile. In the last few years they’ve regained some of their appeal, but to find a rusty-but-trusty candidate you really have to reach back into the sixties. Which, as I found, is pretty hard to do since anything that’s not just a project is at the higher end of the price range of cars I like to feature. Both the cars featured today are late 60s cars, a design period which is often overshadowed by the more garish Cadillacs of the 50s and early 60s, but these have their own sort of understated, simpler elegance.

First in this two-fer is this 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham in St. Petersburg, FL. I normally stay away from eastern cars just because the likelihood of rust is that much greater, and sure enough, this one has a few spots here and there. But on this car you still get the elegant stacked headlights and pillarless bodystyle. It does need a bit of work to revive it, as it’s been stored for 6 years, but the seller implies through his comments on the brakes that the car is driveable. Clearly, you’d want to look into the quality of his restoration, but since he did it himself he should be able to comment on the work done. For a Cadillac of the period, these have minimal chrome and a really tidy design.

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