Sometimes just wandering the junk yards either in person or virtually can spawn some ideas for a quick blog entry.
One of my favorite places to conduct my virtual tooling round is WWW.PartingOut.com They put a lot of hard work at delivering a very useful online tool for locating parts.
So while wandering around their site I found this 1973 Caddy. Now I grew up in the 60’s and ’70 (why does that seem like a long time ago?) and having spent some of those years either hanging out in or working in one my Dad’s body shops (he started and closed several in that time span) I was close to the car scene (not that I liked it much at the time). I remember the auto industry’s move into the long, thick cushioned Ford LTDs and Thunderbirds as well as the GM Buicks and Caddies.
With shows like Starky and Hutch and Mod Squad showing off some of the (criminal element or shady characters often drove them) plush mobiles, the excess they represented was easily noticed – I think Huggy Bear has a plush T-bird – he was often portrayed as a “business man” that organized a all women work force (any one get that?).
The 1973 Cadillac came with two engine. The most powerful was the standard V8 which displaced 500 cubic inches and had a bore and stroke of 4.30X4.06 inches. They had 5 main bearings, hydraulic lifters and 10.0:1 compression ratio. Top it off with the Rochester Quadrajet four barrel and you’d get about 375 hp.
Now the Eldorado came with the Eldorado V8 which had a smaller stroke 4.306 inches, reducing the compression ratio to 9.0:1 and produced only 365 hp.
You’d need every bit of that power, because these cars topped out at over 5,000 lbs
1973 was the year GM produced their five millionth Caddy (it was a DeVille, however, not an Eldorado).
Now days these cars are being restored and finding used parts keeps the cost down, most cars of the 70’s aren’t going to bring you big bucks when they are done. This 1973 Caddy has a lot of parts and looks to be a project car that’s either taken to long to finish or replaced by a ‘cooler’ project.
Still has the Engine
Grill and Headlight assemblies are all there!
Looking at the pics all the lenses seem to be there as well!!!
Check out the other parts cars at WWW.PartingOut.com
PartingOut.com
Thanks for reading
Tim
