If you had moola in the mid-1980s you may have had or wanted a car like this 1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible, at least if you were looking for an American car. A black convertible with a red interior is hard to beat for making a statement. The seller has it listed here as a Barn Finds Classified and it looks like a nice example. It’s located in Westfield, Massachusetts and the seller is asking $17,950.
This was the last year of the tenth-generation Eldorado and they were made for the 1979 through 1985 model years. GM downsized the E-Body platform for the 1979 model year and the Eldorado shared that platform with the Oldsmobile Toronado and Buick Riviera. They are front-wheel-drive cars and were over a foot-and-a-half shorter than the previous generation cars. You can see the special grille treatment on this Bizarritz model.
The seller has had this Eldorado Biarritz convertible for two decades after purchasing it from a close friend and has put fewer than 3,200 miles on it in that time. It’s easy to say that we would all have driven it that many miles per year – after all, it’s an Eldorado convertible. But, most of us have been there. Life gets busy and that special car that we have stored away never gets used enough. In some cases, those cars that we have stored away never get used. The seller had all of the bumper filler panels replaced last year.
That is one beautiful interior! Everything works other than the digital gas gauge being off a couple of gallons. The AC is cold and has been converted to 134a. Also, they say that the previous owner had just replaced the air ride suspension before they bought the car.
This sure looks like a nice example, and it should have some back seat legroom for passengers. The only glitch that I see at all is the typical scourge of GM’s unintended crackle-finish paint from this era. My 1984 Seville had it and it was also black. You literally couldn’t see it in most circumstances, but inside or in the shade it showed up. The seller has provided a lot of great photos but oddly, there is not one engine photo even though there are two photos showing the trunk. The engine decodes to being GM’s HT-4100, a 4.1L V8, the same engine that I had in my Seville. The seller says that it was rebuilt in 2004 and there may be a handful of oil drips overnight. Hopefully, that isn’t a complicated or expensive fix. Have any of you owned a tenth-generation Eldorado?
Fortunately it’s not in Vegas otherwise you’d have to worry about it blowing up every time you turn the ignition on
Except nobody knows except for the engineers( and everyone that saw the movie) there is a metal plate under the driver’s floor that’s what saved Sam Rothstien in the attempted murder.
It appears to be tape stripes over the factory painted stripes, which was used as the break line for whatever repainting was done most likely after an accident. That is why the paint above the line is checking
I want an earlier Rado. Say an 80 with a good 350 in it. 1981 through 85 was the era of likely the worst Cadillac engibe ever. My brother in law had a new 82 Coupe deVille with that 4.1 boat anchor. Cranks broke. Cams broke. Gutless pile of crap in a beautiful car. This was truly almost the end of Cadillac. Heck, the 4.5 was better. Then they dumped the North Star on us. I will take a 96 Brougham with LT1 any day. But love that red leather when red interior meant just that. Today, even the new Corvette has red seats and hideous, boring black everything else inside. New cars suck.
George, For quite some years my wife & I saved up to buy a 1998 Cadillac STS, her dream car. It had a Northstar V-8 which was touted as the best engine ever produced. There isn’t enough room on this site to explain all the problems and failures before we traded the car in on a Lexus ES-300h. My correspondence to GM would fill a book, my encounters with GM factory representatives reflected GM’s indifference to owning up to their dismal failures related to not only the Northstar engine’s shortfalls, but heater, steering and comfort items such as electric seat controls, and air conditioning. Never ever will I buy a GM product again!
I tried to research it, but I give up. Was black available on convertibles in 1985?
Yes, White, red, black, blue and grey as I recall from ordering them. Tops were white or black. ASC did the factory conversions.
Touring suspension was not available on convertibles.
The Commemorative Edition was also available as a convertible in Commodore Blue or Cotillion White, but they got the white or blue Biarritz seats not the two tone seats that came with the package on non convertibles Eldorados and/or Sevilles.
Though Sevilles got two tone button tufted seats, so not sure why the Eldorados or convertibles couldn’t.
Ah, CCFISHER you crack me up. Cadillac made the last factory Eldorado convertible in 1976. Any Cadillac convertible after that was a creation of a custom shop, until the late 80s when Cadillac came out with the Allente hardtop/convertible. After that was the XLR in the early 2000s.
I had a chance to purchase an ’85 Eldorado convertible. It was a toss up, buy the ’85 with the custom convertible configuration or a ’75 Eldorado convertible from the factory, from the same seller. I chose the ’75.
The `84/`85 Eldorado convertibles were ASC conversions authorized by Cadillac. So the factory window stickers reflected the options as such. It is a technicality, but they were considered “factory convertibles” even though not built as such in Cadillac plants. They left the factory and were shipped to ASC for the conversions. Thus all subsequent warranty work was authorized and done through Cadillac dealers. I was the fleet manager at Fanning Cadillac-Buick at that time, and personally ordered all of them using Cadillac order sheets from the factory through our DCS system.
One of our local competitors however, would order cloth Eldorado coupes and have them locally converted into convertibles. Cadillac refused any warranty claims on those non-authorized conversions. Additionally those counterfeits did not have the proper frame bracing for removal of the car’s roof, and subsequently leaked like all get out as a result.
It got so bad that Cadillac began tracking the Certificate of Origins on any cloth Eldorados that they ordered, to ensure that they were not erroneously being changed to “convertible” at the time of their initial registration with the State of Illinois.
They then used their influence to have the CoO’s recalled if any red flags came up. Which impacted the customers who bought what they were misled to believe were “factory convertibles”.
They weren’t even Biarritzs, just base cloth Eldos with stock wheel covers. It was a mess….
I’m inclined to like this Cadillac. It would be a nice evening cruiser with top down and no rain in sight. Black on black is to hot for Summer days here in Houston. I’d park it next to my 64 Buick Riviera, driving one in the day and the other at night. Always dressing period correct. Now if I only had some extra cash.
God bless America
Sorry I forgot to include engine picture.