It was red with a worn out white vinyl top. He, all by himself, did alot of body work, fixed a big gouge down the side of the car, had a body shop repair the rusted panel across the rear window trim, and did all prep work before having the body shop shoot the white paint on it. Turned out pretty nice.
It has air bag suspension he installed. Interior is all original but less, much less than "pristine".
We bought it for $900 when he turned 16 and he drove it a couple of months before it spun a bearing and seized up. He and my mechanically minded youngest brother pulled the motor and rebuilt it with a mild cam. My son also rebuilt the Turbo400 tranny (with a little help from a tranny shop on some parts) and put a mild shift kit in it.He also rebuilt the Quadra-bog carb and fine tuned it. Electronic ignition added and some other rocker arm upgrades, etc.
He made a few trips to CA and LV and other car shows in Mississippi, etc in that Caddy.
After that he found an old '68 Caddy Hearse rust bucket that only had 55K miles on it, and still ran and was drivable...but was a Kentucky car and was badly rusted underneath. He pulled the body off, rebuilt the frame and somehow re located the engine height so he could install air bags and drop the frame to the pavement and raise it up just enough to drive. Those old hearses all came with positrac rear ends, and after he swapped the rebuilt 472 from his white Coupe De Ville into the hearse, he could smoke the tires like nothing else...both of them. (kinda a waste of rubber....but real attention getter) He was in Austin with some buddies for a car show they have down there every summer, and was on Congress Ave downtown one night, and did a major tire burn to show off. The hearse had no floor in the back since he rebuilt with tubing the rear frame, and the car filled up with white rubber smoke. A cop tapped on the glass and as my son rolled the window down, a ton of white smoke drifted out. The nice policeman just sternly said "no more of that"....and walked away.
Long story here...so I'll wrap it up.
He's working for TAMU now, just turned 28 yrs old and married and they are expecting baby #1 later this year. So he's selling all his hobbies. But does have plans to build a new rock crawler since he's sold most of his tricked out Suzuki Sammy, but the next crawler will have a Caddy engine and trans...with Ford Dana axles. He's a very skilled mechanic and can fix damn near anything. Nothing like me, hell I can barely change my oil.
I had one of these same cars back in the late 80's...fun to drive and loads of power....but even when tuned perfectly best you could get was 10-12 mpg...but then again gas was 22 cents a gallon when this thing was new. When I was in school at TAMU in '75 I drove a pink and white 1959 Caddy Sedan with the huge tail fins. Years later I (1982) finally sold it to a Mexican homosexual dude for $2500 that owned a couple of restaurants in College Station and he planned to make a salad bar out of it, but ended up keeping it to drive.
I used to love Caddys....owned a bunch of 'em, but I like Lincoln Town Cars now.
