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.
Median 120 hp across 69 similar cars
Lead trim: Fleetwood Eldorado 429 cu in V8 (1966)
Cadillac Eldorado1965–1966
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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 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.
For 1965 the Eldorado gained Cadillac's Fleetwood designation, marketed as the Fleetwood Eldorado like the Fleetwood Series 75 and Sixty Special; the Biarritz name was dropped from sales literature (to be revived in 1976 as a trim option for the coupe). This was the last Eldorado with rear-wheel drive, on the same 129.5 in wheelbase (224.0 in long, 79.9 in wide, 4,700–4,900 lb) with perimeter frame construction that let the engine sit six inches further forward, lowering the transmission hump and increasing interior room. The elevated tailfins became slightly downward-sloping, sharp body lines replaced the rounded look and the headlight pairs switched from horizontal to vertical, with curved frameless side windows. Power was still the 340 horsepower 429 cu in (7,030 cc) V8 with the 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic THM400. For 1966 changes included a coarser radiator mesh divided by a thick bright bar with rectangular parking lamps, separate rectangular side marker lamps, variable ratio power steering and optional seats with carbon-cloth heating pads, headrests, reclining seats, an AM/FM stereo and available automatic level control; there was generally less chrome on all Cadillacs.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fleetwood Eldorado 429 cu in V8 (1966) | 1966–1966 | 7.0 L V8 | 340 hp | 480 lb-ft | — | RWD | — | — |
| Fleetwood Eldorado 429 cu in V8 (340 hp, 1965) | 1965–1965 | 7.0 L V8 | 340 hp | 480 lb-ft | — | 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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