Posted on 09/22/2009 2:56:20 AM PDT by Daffynition
Finding a 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and a '55 convertible together is a dream come true
A lot of what happens in life depends on a combination of good luck and being in the right place at the right time. So it goes with the hunt of for classic cars. For me, it seems every year the moon and stars line up perfectly and the car gods agree that it's my turn. So it came to pass this summer with a 1955 Cadillac convertible. A mechanic friend was told about an old Cadillac convertible he heard about that was stored in a North Vancouver garage for 20 years.
After burning up the phone lines, I located the daughter of the owner of the car - a woman I'll just refer to as Patti. She said her father had left the car in her garage years before and moved to Vancouver Island. It was in her way and she needed the space. A site visit was arranged and what I saw in that garage knocked my socks off: Not one great Caddie, but two. The red 1955 Cadillac convertible was alongside a pale green and white 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
Patti explained that her father had bought the cars in the U.S. in the 1980s and stored them in her garage. But what was supposed to be temporary stretched out over two decades and the cars never moved. Telephone contact was made with Patti's father, negotiations concluded with a meeting arranged to exchange money for title.
But the big challenge was getting the huge red convertible out of the jammed garage which led out to a sharp turn in Patti's backyard and then up a hill between trees that had grown quite large and fat over the years.
Bring in Rick the tow truck driver. He backed down the hill on the grass putting the truck's rear end perpendicular to the Caddie's rear end. Rick then hooked his cable through the sling lift so the cable was on a 90 degree angle to his truck. Once attached to the Caddie, Rick skillfully extracted the car straight out of the garage. He then lifted the car and dragged it up the hill.
The Caddie had been restored with new red paint and new leather upholstery before being stored. It was covered in dust and needed a good cleanup. Within a half hour of being brought to my shop, a new battery had been installed, points filed, fresh gas added and the Caddie was purring like a kitten with all the power options going up and down including the top.
And so it was the year previous. I had never seen a 1958 Oldsmobile 98 convertible before the occasion that I went to Vancouver Island to pick up a 1966 Thunderbird that I had purchased during a very weak moment. The car was in a mobile home park outside Nanaimo. As I was driving down between the mobile homes, I looked into a garage and spotted what I knew to be the front fender of a 1950s GM car. A closer look revealed that it was an ultra rare 1958 Olds 98 convertible sitting in there with the top down all covered in dust.
The owner explained he had purchased his' dream car' in Idaho and restored the car in Medicine Hat, Alberta before moving to Nanaimo, he brought the car with him. But he had injured himself falling off a roof and the car remained unused. I started visiting him regularly during business trips to Vancouver Island and eventually reached an agreement to purchase the huge convertible.
The old car hobby runs largely on emotion. We have connections to the cars we loved when we were young. Growing up during that era when those cars were new, I was the first in the showrooms to see what the car designers had come up with for the new model year. What a privilege it is to now own some of those very special convertibles that were the dreamboats of yesteryear. And there is always the dream about what could be coming next.
Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators - a Vancouver public relations agency.
Thanks for Sharing this, wow, sure brings back memories.
Thanks. I love stories like this.
Living vicariously.
Vintage car porn, SG.
I worked in a Texaco as a kid around 1955,every year it was fun to see where Caddy hid the gas filler.....That 1st shot of the tail light poking out of the garage reminded me of just that....Good read thanks
built back when cars were cars and each make / model was unique. not like today where everything looks like everything else.
man these pics bring back memories, not that my dad ever made enough to own a caddy (he was an olds guy through and through), but I remember these caddys drivin down the road when I was but a lad..
Yeah, the tail lights are interesting, but those humongous chrome boobs up front really get your attention!
Amen.
My dad was a *Buick* man. Hard working middle-class. Never owned anything else until the last years of his life.
He walked into the Cadillac dealer, paid cash for a Coupe de Ville. Mom was mortified. She said she needed a mink coat just to ride in it. She could never, in her mind, justify it.
We told her, dad deserved it to himself after all those years of sacrificing and providing for us.
Dang car was rife with problems that they could never seem to get corrected. I felt bad for him, he was unlucky to get a lemon. Life!
My mom told me a story about her dad. He bought a Buick once and the salesman promised him he would get 100,000 miles out of it (at the time, that was a lot). Well, he didn’t want to make a liar of the salesman, so he held onto it well past it’s prime. It got so shabby that my grandmother refused to ride in it.
That was the end of the Buick.
Eisenhower era ping!
Go for a hell of price on parts on Havana E bay!
/sarc
Nice rides.
If you drove a caddy in those days, the above was almost an automatic to be ridin in the passenger seat..:)
WOW!
Very impressive.
A trip to the past.
Lord, how beautiful. This is like finding a chest full of gold doubloons.
Vancouver is really wet. That garage looks damp. No way are those original.
bump
ping
Reminds me of an old rockabilly song of that era:
I had a roll with my coffee, found a rock in my soup
Got a roll in my pocket and a Cadillac coupe
Gonna roll that cat tonight
Gonna find that joint and rock till the broad daylight
Gonna rock a-rock-a-rock-a
Gonna roll a-roll-a-roll-a
I’m gonna rock and roll until I lose
Those mean old rock and roll blues
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