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Comments
In England, my Velox is worth about 3000-3,500 pounds, my Cresta about 4,000 pounds when done and my 59 about the same.. maybe 5,000 but thats IT.
My XKE? More than all 3 put together!
ANd I know about Bonnets.. I smashed the one on my old 74 once. Got hit by someone whoran a red light!. Their insurance company threw a minor fit.
Bill
The guy I sold it too still loves it. The only real problem has been with starters and brakes. Had to do a major overhaul on the brakes and then they were fine. It goes through a rebuilt starter every 6-8 months but it is cheaper than a car note.
That Olds 350 was not very powerful in this car (even though this was one of the smaller caddys) but it ran steady at 80 on the interstate and that was all I needed.
First of the Seville: that Olds V-8 is bulletproof. Caddy knew what they were doing when they picked that engine. Plus, it has the only fuel injection setup ever built for an Olds small-block! Now I grant you that it is pretty primitive but still those are prized by Olds performance buffs for use in retrofitting modern FI technology. It is definitely worth something from that standpoint alone. Plus, the first-gen Seville was a very nice car overall. Bill Mitchell's "sheer" look.
Aside from the Seville, don't trash all of these sorts of cars. I have a mint '79 Electra that I'm sure Caddy would love to be able to sell new these days to the market that they are abandoning with their new ugly generation of vehicles. A friend has an equally nice '79 Caprice that he picked up from the typical little old lady that is dead-solid reliable and quiet as a church. The fact that it looks like a New Orleans cathouse inside he is able to overlook. ;-) In any event, I expect that in 20 years or so one of these will wheel into a car show and people will be agog. It'll probably never be worth big money like a muscle car of the sixties, but they are very distinctive and unique in comparison to todays cars.
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I always liked the Olds V-8, too. That same basic block spawned engines ranging from 260 CID on up to the 403, and they were all pretty solid. Sure, the Chevy smallblock went up to 400 CID, but they'd also grenade themselves much quicker than a 403!
These cars may serve very well and loyally as transportation, but as styling or technical displays, they are very forgettable, IMO. GM would be dead in a week producing cars like this anymore, not because they are "bad", but because they are clumsy and inefficient, and, as you say, rather tawdry in their design.
Hard to say what someone might think of them in the year 2022. I'll guess they will look like Ramblers and STudebakers of the 50s look to us now. Rather odd things that we don't much relate to.
A Toro in '76 would've been every bit as luxurious (i.e.: pimpy) as an Eldorado, but had a shorter wheelbase, most of which I believe came out of the hood area so it didn't hurt passenger room. It would've also most likely had a 455 standard. For a few years, they made a model called the XS, or XSR, or something like that, that had a wraparound rear window, that was pretty cool.
The attitude that seems to be prevalent in the UK is that they were unlike almost anything else produced in that era in the UK.
Compare them to anything else that the country was making back then, with the possible exception of a Mk2 Ford Zephyr/Zodiac... they really were like space oddities on the road back then.
So while we had fins..etc in America... they had Morris Minors and stuff like that
Over here its just a weird old car.. lol.
Besides, everyone else in Orlando has a 57 Chevy or a Camaro or Chevelle or something.
Bill
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
I don't find them worthy of restoration. I can't think of one point of distinction in either styling or engineering that differentiates them from the typical ordinary cars that should be salvaged, rather than clutter up the road. I mean, you can't save every old car, and some discrimination is mandatory. So you pick the best of the best. These cars just don't make the cut IMO.
OTOH, *preserving* a good example might end up being a decent strategy. Just to have, for example, a full-size rear-drive GM V-8. Might be a bit of a curiosity in the decades to come.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
It just so happens that last night I put up a couple of pics of what an interior is supposed to look like. Check this out:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/ab348/buick1.html
A dash and seats the way God (and Bill Mitchell, Harley Earl and the like) intended them to be...
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In contrast, a modern Park Ave would have a center console that you could easily pull apart with your hands, a dash slobbered in generic plastic, thinly-padded seats with leather so cheap you'll question whether it's vinyl (what ever happened to the days when they could make vinyl so nice you'd mistake it for leather? ;-)
My grandmother's '85 LeSabre is very similar to ab348's Electra, except that it has a digital clock in the radio, black-backed gauges, and slightly different door panels. I think any of these older cars, especially in top trim levels, make most of the newer Buicks look cheap in comparison. Of course, Buicks have improved in a lot of other ways. Better fuel economy, a much improved 231 (the '70's version was junk), air bags, abs, better and bigger tires, and all the generic stuff that's come with time. Stuff that would have been integrated into any car. Too bad Buick couldn't just take what was good about the '70's and early '80's cars and improve on it, instead of dumping them for cheaper designs.
I guess you could say they tried that with the Roadmaster, but that car just felt too half-hearted to me. It was too lumpy and disproportionate, and a confusing mess of traditional and aerodynamic styling cues, whereas the old '70's and '80's RWD'ers at least looked like they were designed by one committee with a common goal in mind. Maybe they made the Roadmaster look clumsy on purpose, so that the Buick faithful would opt for a more expensive Park Avenue?
My theory of value is that any car in the world, if it can pass inspections and is clean and decent looking, and reliable, has got to be worth $1,500 in modern day America--just as a transportation car."
In 75 to 85 those basic "transportation car(s") cost about $300. It sure seemed easier to walk away from a $300 dollar investment when she broke.
I bought my first car, a '71 Buick Electra, in 1985 for the princely sum of $450.
The same holds true, to an extent, even today. While we don't have that many big cars anymore (even the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis/Town Car are only the size of the typical '73-78 era intermediate), people seem to have given up cars in general for trucks and SUVs, many of which actually outweigh and outguzzle some of the biggest cars of the '70's!
Back then Detroit didn't like small cars because their profit margin was lower. The mantra was "small cars mean small profits". So they built them grudgingly in the hope that the buyer could be moved up to a more profitable bigger car.
Today the same holds true but the distinction is (for the most part) cars versus trucks. Detroit would like to sell you a SUV or luxo-pickup, which have a huge profit margin, instead of Malibus or Impalas.
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I went to the Chevy dealer, and literally couldn't get the salesman to show me one... he finally said, "Son, there ain't no room to move on the price on them small cars"
I left..
Nice clean simple design.
The Mustang 11 coupes were nice. Didn't really care for the hatch models though. I think the coupes would make nice resto-rods today. Drop in a hot 5-liter and take the rice rocket crowd to "school". I'm afraid these babies are being lost to the crusher nowadays. Don't see very many considering how many were sold.
Can't think of anything else from this era that I would care to salvage.
There was a '75 Firebird there for months. Light green metallic, white vinyl buckets, 350, automatic, rally wheels, rally stripe. I *loved* that car. I'd stop by and just look through the windows at the interior of it and drool. I was 19 at the time and would have killed for a car like that. I'd have a hard time passing it up if it suddenly appeared today.
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As far as a Firebird from that era, I wonder how much HP those 305's and 350's were really putting out, being right in the worst of the smog crunch. Low factory HP ratings are probably what keeps resale on those cars down. I wonder how much that '75 Firebird would be worth if that 350 put out, say, 300-400 horsepower?
As for the GM B-body, the basic design ran from '77-90, until it was replaced by the "bathtub" design in '91. Even the bathtub style used the same frame...the fatter body just hung over the frame rails more than it did with the more chiseled '77-90. This is probably more info than most people would want to know on the subject, but the boxy Caprice went through three minor transitions from that '77-90 timeframe. The first, '77-79 models were a bit more traditional Detroit, where they'd change the grilles, taillights, and other trim every year, and had a fairly broad choice of engines with the 250-inline 6 and 305 and 350 V-8's. The coupe versions these years had a cool rear window that kind of wrapped around., and the rear windows and rear decks on all of them were more sloped-off and less formal than later models.
In 1980, they gave the lineup a slightly more aerodynamic facelift, and were able to shed another 100-200 lb off of the cars. The 250 was replaced by a 229 V-6, and the 350 was dropped, leaving the 305 as the biggest engine. 1980 was also the year that the focus at Chevrolet shifted from big cars to smaller models. Suddenly, with another gas crisis looming, even these downsized Impalas and Caprices, along with the Malibus and Monte Carlos, were just too big. The lineup ran almost unchanged from '80-85, with only a grille change in '81. Over the years, the Impala became more of a fleet favorite, while families gravitated more toward the more luxurious Caprice. Also in '85, the 229 was replaced by the 262, a sawed-off 350 with TBI and 130 hp. Sounds sad today, but back then, Ford's 302 and Oldsmobiles' 307 were only putting out 140 hp in the big cars, although those engines had a lot more torque.
For '86, the Impala nameplate was dropped. Also this year, the big Delta and LeSabre were downsized, so the Caprice started to run the gamut from cheap fleet car to near-luxury. They also gave it a minor face- and rear-end lift, which made it look a bit more aerodynamic (but probably wasn't). It was given flush-mounted headlights for '87, and then ran almost unchanged until the bathtub re-do for '91.
While it's doubtful that any of them will ever be lusted after, I think the '77-79's are the best. Since they changed them up every year, each one just seemed to have a bit more personality. Also the coupes back then looked downright sporty compared to the formal, personal-luxury look of the '81-87 coupe (it was retired for '88). Then, there was the 350 V-8. While the 305 was up to 170 hp by around 1987, I'm sure the 350 still would've had more torque, so it would've been better off-the-line. Those '77-79's just seemed a bit better put-together, as well. Sometimes, GM has a bad habit of cutting corners on their cars after they've been in production for too long. They might have just gone too far in '80 with weight reduction. The cloths and vinyls they used in those earlier models just seemed a bit higher-grade, as well. These cars were Chevy's biggest seller in '77-79, so it makes sense to me that they'd put more effort into them than in later years, when they just had a built-in audience that would buy them no matter how they were put together.
Okay, I'm sure that's more thought than anybody's put into the '77-90 B-body in awhile ;-)
Yes, I know. So many were sold yet they are looked upon with ambivalence, by Mustangers at that.
I may yet "hot-rod" one though.