The Eldorado's fluted aluminum side panels were distinctive enough that Reynolds Aluminum commissioned a one-of-a-kind Eldorado coupe to show them off.
Median 90 hp across 27 similar cars
Lead trim: Eldorado (1954) · up to 250 hp
Cadillac Eldorado1954–1956
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Nobody in Burbles has spotted a Cadillac Eldorado yet. See one on the street, point the app at it, and the first card is yours — with your @handle permanently credited on this page.
FactThe Eldorado's fluted aluminum side panels were distinctive enough that Reynolds Aluminum commissioned a one-of-a-kind Eldorado coupe to show them off.
In 1954 the Eldorado lost its unique sheetmetal in an effort by GM to lower its price and increase sales: it shared its basic body shell with standard Cadillacs (129.0 in wheelbase), distinguished by golden identifying crests behind the fender air-slot breaks, wide fluted extruded-aluminum beauty panels on the lower rear sides, monogram plates, wire wheels and custom interior trimmings. Sales nearly quadrupled at a US$5,738 base price, 2,150 sold. For 1955 the body gained its own rear end styling with higher, more slender, distinctly pointed tailfins and twin round taillights halfway up the fenders (3,950 sold). For 1956 a two-door hardtop coupé, the "Eldorado Seville", and a convertible, the "Eldorado Biarritz", were offered with an Eldorado script, twin hood ornaments and a ribbed chrome saddle molding; of 6,050 sold, 2,150 were Sevilles, still the division's halo car at 4% of Cadillac sales. Length was 223.4 in (1954), 223.2 in (1955) and 222.2 in (1956), width 79.6, 79.8 and 80.1 in, weight 4,900–5,100 lb; engines listed on the infobox are the 331 cu in (5.4 L) and 365 cu in (6.0 L) OHV V8s with the 4-speed Hydra-Matic, though the page does not year them or give ratings.
Collectors Spotted in the Cadillac Eldorado Lineage
No member has published a public street spot of the Cadillac Eldorado yet — the First · Worldwide stamp is wide open.
Trims & Figures
3 published trims in the catalogue. A blank is a figure not recorded, not zero.
| Trim | Years | Engine | Power | Torque | 0–60 | Drive | Gearbox | MSRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eldorado (1954) | 1954–1954 | V8 | 230 hp | 330 lb-ft | — | RWD | — | — |
| Eldorado (1955) | 1955–1955 | V8 | 250 hp | — | — | RWD | — | — |
| Eldorado Seville / Biarritz (1956) | 1956–1956 | V8 | — | — | — | RWD | — | — |
Owning one
We don’t estimate running costs for a car like this. What it costs depends on its condition, its specialist and how it is driven, and an average would mislead.
Owners’ builds
Nobody has claimed one yet.
Photographs
By 1997 this Eldorado had standard electronic stability control, traction control and adaptive suspension all talking to each other — tech Wikipedia compares directly to Lexus's vaunted VDIM system.
Cadillac shrank the Eldorado by 16 inches and 350 pounds in 1986, betting on a gas-price spike that never came — sales cratered 72% from the outgoing model, and buyers found it too small for Cadillac people yet still not a BMW.
1984 was the best year the Eldorado nameplate ever had: 77,806 sold, more than one in four Cadillacs that left a showroom that year.
When Cadillac supplied the 1973 Indy 500 pace car, it built 566 convertible replicas — just 33 ever saw the track, and the other 533 went one-per-dealership nationwide.
For exactly two years — 1967 and 1968 — the Eldorado hid its headlights behind moving covers, the only Cadillac ever built that way before regulations shut the idea down.
The 1965-66 Fleetwood Eldorado marked the end of an era — the last rear-wheel-drive Eldorado before Cadillac switched the nameplate to front-wheel drive.
The 1963 Eldorado Biarritz was the first Fleetwood-bodied convertible Cadillac had built in 22 years — the body style had vanished when the V16 Series 90 went out of production in 1941.
For 1961, Cadillac quietly demoted the Eldorado Biarritz convertible — it was reclassified as a mere subseries of the De Ville line, a status that stuck for years.
This Eldorado Biarritz had a second career thirty years later as Maurice Minnifield's car on the 1990s TV series Northern Exposure.
The 1959-60 Eldorado Brougham wasn't built in Detroit at all: Cadillac shipped the chassis by boat to Savona, Italy, where Pinin Farina mated the hand-built bodies in Turin before shipping the finished cars back across the Atlantic.
The 1957 Eldorado Brougham carried one of the first all-transistor car radios ever built — a 13-transistor Delco unit, and it came standard, not optional.
The sculpted rear-end styling on the 1957 Eldorado Seville and Biarritz wasn't new — it was a callback to the Cadillac "Interceptor," an obscure post-war show prototype most people have never heard of.
The Eldorado's fluted aluminum side panels were distinctive enough that Reynolds Aluminum commissioned a one-of-a-kind Eldorado coupe to show them off.
The entire run of the original 1953 Eldorado was just 532 cars — 0.5% of Cadillac's sales that year, making Cadillac's halo convertible rarer than almost anything else on the lot.
Rivals
Same body, same money, other badges — tap any card to flip.
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