Cadillac Club Estonia

1961 Cadillac Esprit DeVille Sportswagon.



1961 Cadillac Esprit de Ville Sportwagon—Yes you're right. Cadillac didn't make any factory station wagons in the 1960s. Or 1970s. Or 1980s. And they certainly would never have made a 2-door wagon like this pillarless hardtop. But that's what Photoshop is for!

I absolutely love the way this chop turned out. The original Coupe de Ville I used as a base photo was white with a gray interior, but I made "mine" Fawn Metallic with red leather and cloth, a very striking and elegant combination. Besides the wagon body, I added ribbed stainless steel rocker panel trim and painted the center of the wheelcovers to match the interior color.

I can just see Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and their luggage, cruising all night to Vegas in this Esprit de Ville for a hot poker game on the Strip. I can also see Lucille Ball or Angie Dickinson using this wagon to pick up a few items on Rodeo Drive!

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1983 Seville Elegante Coupe—A Natural?



C H O P — After finding the sketch of a bustleback Seville coupe I did in haste thirty years ago, I thought it might be time to use my Photoshop skillz to create one. I had a couple of hours "off" tonight, so I made one. This one is pillarless, and is a bit lower than the sedan. I moved the front wheels forward several inches to give it the appearance of a longer hood, also tucking in the front bumper a little bit. I made the distinctive sloped rear deck slightly more horizontal to go with the "faster" roofline I gave this coupe. Other changes include a slight reshuffling of trim pieces and the fitting of much larger wheels—covered with 20 inch wire wheelcovers, lol. I think this car would have been a natural for Cadillac!

Would it have slotted in above the Eldorado, or do you think this could have been the Eldorado? In the latter part of the fabulous Fifties, the Eldorado came as a convertible, tjhe Biarritz, or as a hardtop, the Seville. Since the bustleback Seville and the severe notchback Eldorado coupe of the '80s shared a platform, would it have been a better idea to have them share styling, too? I'm really loving this coupe right now!

Short-Deck, 6-Window 1965 Cadillac Town Sedan



Re-imagining one of William Mitchell's flawless 1965 Cadillacs. Caddy built short-deck 6-window hardtop sedans in 1961, and 4-window short-decks in 62 and '63. They produced full-size 6-window sedans all the way through '64. Though they dropped the short-deck for '64, my chop presumes they decided to try again in '65 with the '61 formula—short-deck, 6-window—though pillared this time. Click on image to enlarge, as always.

C H O P S — Oftentimes, to relax, I'll peruse eBay's cars for sale. I'll pick a "marque of the night," say Mercury, or Hudson, or Nash, and then go through the years and see what is still out there. Tonight I picked Cadillac—1961-72. I was struck how many 6-window sedans Cadillac showed up. They were very light-looking, almost sporty rooflines for such a stately luxury car. I found examples of them for sale right up through 1964, the last year for the bodystyle. It got me thinking of what a 6-window 1965 Cadillac might have looked like. The birth of a chop idea!

I found a good image of an appropriate car, a mint condition low-line '65 Calais pillared sedan, with the proper focus and resolution, thanks to Google Images. My "vision" wasn't quite as easy as just adding the C pillar window, though. Besides adding the extra glass, I ended up lowering the roofline, changing the angle of the C pillar and enlarging the rear window, all in order to get the same "sporty" feeling as those earlier 6-window Caddys.

I liked how it looked at that point, but decided to "step it up a notch" and recreate a little-known version of the Caddy sedan offered in the early '60s. the short-deck. From 1961 through '63 Cadillac offered a version of their sedan with a six-inch shorter trunk for customers with pre-war garages which tended to be smaller than postwar garages. Offered at first in their base Series 62, as a 6-window, for '62 and '63 it was offered only as a 4-window, though a De Ville-level model was added. The base short-deck for '62 was named the Town Sedan and the step-up version, the Park Avenue. For '63, only the Park Avenue was offered. Since I had started out with the low-line '65 Calais, I named this chop the Town Sedan. Besides shortening the trunk, I reshuffled the chrome trim, taking off the mid-body chrome spear and adding chrome rocker panel moldings to further differentiate this shorter sedan from its longer kin.

In the end, I liked the way it came out, but in no way do I think it's "better" than the cars Mitchell approved. The 1965 full sized cars he presented to the world, from Chevy through Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac, are all examples of a design manager at the very tippy top of his game. There isn't a bad line on any one of them, and they've all more than withstood the test of time.

B O N U S 1 0 - M IN U T E C H O P :



A reader, Bobf, mentioned he'd like to see an early '60s Caddy with a fastback roof similar to the '67 and '68 GM full sized coupes. I've thought about a car like that for a while, too. It's difficult to find decent high-resolution photos of older cars, though. I've been checking out '68 Cadillacs on eBay and Hemming's lately, and had in my files this medium-resolution photo of a gold Coupe de Ville. I'm particularly partial to '68s as my father gave me a '68 Hardtop Sedan de Ville for my 20th birthday back in 1977. I loved that car and kept it for about 10 years.

I spent about 10 minutes this morning mocking up a fastback '68 Coupe de Ville to see how it would work, and I love the results. I'll keep looking for a high-resolution photo to start with, and create a real chop one of these days. This car looks like such a natural, it's too bad Caddy didn't offer it in addition to their much more formal coupe. The '68 Buick LeSabre/Wildcat looked awesome with this roofline, especially with the optional fender skirts.

Update: As one of my loyal readers, PaulNYC, pointed out, this could logically have been a return of the "B Body" Cadillac, similar in marketing as the Series 61, discontinued in the early '50s. Perhaps the entry level Calais could have been differentiated more from the De Ville series this way.

Don't be Mad at Elegance



Seville's triumphant return as the premium owner/driver Cadillac for 2012. Rear- and all-wheel drive available; V6, Supercharged V8, TurboDieselHybrid. Every amenity and contemporary safety item. Prix Fixe, everything standard. The Standard of Today's World

Hot off the Photoshop process, lol! Chop is a little rough around the edges, but I have so many I want to do right now! This reborn Seville looks pays homage to the severe notchback roofline of the groundbreaking original late 1975 model. For a bit of contemporary street theater, the LED head- and taillights extend quite far into the fenders and operate in day-and nighttime running modes

Another Old-School Cadillac: the Coupe De Ville



Long and sleek, low and wide, this DTS-based Coupe De Ville marks a return to rear fender skirts covering the rear wheels. A full-length glass roof and pillarless styling ensure a light and airy cabin

C H O P — I've found about a dozen half-finished chops on one of my hard-drives. Some were stopped because they just weren't working. Some were stopped because I had a hot idea for another chop and never went back to the earlier one. This Coupe De Ville is one of those latter ones. It was almost done, but needed the background changed. I started by just adding the "V" and crest from my Sedan De Ville chop from the other day, and then I spent another few hours, lol, adding the rear fender skirts and the glass roof.

Light and Airy Cadillac Six-Window Sedan



I may have gone a bit too large with the size of the wreathe-and-crest Cadillac logo on the trunklid, lol. At least there would be no doubt what type of car you were driving!

C H O P — Cadillacs of the Seventies through the present day, have often been very formal, with large 'blind' C pillars, first made popular post-war by Ford's Thunderbirds and Galaxies of the late Fifties. Cadillacs of the time however, often came with very glassy rooflines, with slim and elegant roof pillars. I wanted to see what a current-day DTS might look like with a less formal roofline, so I created the version above. I made the taillights taller and slimmer, more elegant to my eyes, and then added a V-shaped indent on the trunklid, focusing on Cadillac's current wreather-and-crest logo. "Back in the day" only Cadillac's top-shelf models came with this wreathed logo. "Lesser" versions came with a large "V" under the Cadillac crest. I wish this was the case today, I liked the look of the "V" better than the wreathe, but nowaday's Cadillac uses the "V" to denote the more powerful versions of its cars while still using the wreathed crest on its grilles and trunklids. The way I created a "V" in the trunk would be a subliminal nod to those Caddys of the '50s and '60s. I also used my favored 'suicide' doors, perhaps more of a Lincoln styling fillip, but was last used on a Cadillac for its limited production über lux '57-'58 Brougham models, so there is a postwar precedent for their use.

I Love Cars With Names! Coupe DeVille Returns



Squarely in the "ain't gonna happen" file, my Coupe DeVille could be the tech leader of the Cadillac lineup with a fully active suspension.

C H O P — Granted, the era of Cadillacs with proper names is probably over for a few generations, until the buyers of today tire of alphanumeric designations and pine for the "good old days."

Well, at artandcolour, the good old days are here, lol. This stretched CTS coupe, a pillarless version with a notchback roofline, brings back the classic Coupe DeVille moniker. Just as the original 1949 Coupe DeVille for all intents and purposes brought pillarless hardtop styling to the masses, my 2011 version would introduce GM's first fully active suspension—electronically correcting for every possible movement of the body. I toyed with using rear fender skirts, but that was one retro step too far. At least for now. I can't say I'll be as restrained with the next Fleetwood Brougham or Sixty Special!