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.
Median 109 hp across 54 similar cars
Lead trim: Eldorado Biarritz 390 cu in V8 (325 hp, 1963) · up to 340 hp
Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz1963–1964
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Nobody in Burbles has spotted a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz 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 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.
In 1963 the Eldorado Biarritz joined the Sixty Special and the Series 75 as the only Cadillac models with Fleetwood bodies (the Fleetwood wreath and crest and rocker moldings), the first Fleetwood-bodied convertible since the Series 75 stopped offering convertibles and the Series 90 (V16) ended in 1941. The completely redesigned body had a bolder, more angular look with slab sides, front fenders projecting 4.625 inches further forward than in 1962 and lower tailfins; a total of 143 options, including bucket seats and wood veneer facings, set an all-time record for interior appointment choices. The engine was entirely changed for 1963 while displacement and output remained 390 cu in (6.4 L) and 325 hp; for 1964 a minor facelift with a bi-angular V-shaped grille and the 17th consecutive year of Cadillac tailfins brought a larger 429 cubic-inch (7 L) V8 with 340 hp available, the industry-first automatic "Comfort Control" heating and air conditioning and the new 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic transmission (also in the De Ville and Sixty Special; Series 62, 75 and the Commercial Chassis kept the old Hydra-Matic until 1965). The main visual cue distinguishing a 1964 Biarritz from a De Ville convertible was the lack of fender skirts. Dimensions: 129.5 in wheelbase, 223.0 in long in 1963 and 223.5 in in 1964, 79.7 in and 79.5 in wide, 4,800–5,000 lb.
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
2 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 Biarritz 390 cu in V8 (325 hp, 1963) | 1963–1963 | 6.4 L V8 | 325 hp | 430 lb-ft | — | RWD | — | — |
| Eldorado Biarritz 429 cu in V8 (340 hp, 1964) | 1964–1964 | 7.0 L V8 | 340 hp | 480 lb-ft | — | RWD | — | — |
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Owners’ builds
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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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