If it weren’t for the first five generations of the Buick Riviera, GM’s E-body cars would have been all front-wheel drive. How’s that for worthless trivia? Are you ready for another? They were all two-door personal luxury cars. It didn’t get more luxurious than this 1990 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz that the seller has posted here on craigslist in Vancouver, Washington. They’re asking $10,900 for this low-mile gem. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Curvette for the tip!
Just because it’ll come up in the comments, the seller refers to this car’s special luxury package as “Barrettes” several times, even though it clearly says “Biarritz” on the car. I’m not quite sure what that’s about, unless it’s an inside joke or something. This car also has the Gold Package, which gives it maybe a bit too much bling for me, but I also don’t care for the current trend of gold-colored kitchen and bathroom faucets. I think that’ll look incredibly dated in a few years.
The “gold ornamentation” package included 23-karat gold, so it wasn’t pure gold. That being said, 24-karat gold is fairly soft, so by adding 1% other metals to the soup, these badges and other gold “ornaments” should last longer, if they aren’t pryed off by thieves. Make mine a Touring package car without the Continental spare tire, or even a Biarritz without that thing on the rear bumper, but that’s just a personal preference. It’s such a crisp design other than that, in my opinion. I’ve always wondered what an eleventh-generation Eldorado convertible may have looked like…
The eleventh-generation Eldorado was downsized by over a foot in length, but was oddly about two inches wider than the previous Eldorado series. They were made from 1979 through 1985, and I know they may be at the bottom of the list for most vintage Cadillac fans, but I really like this size. As expected on a car with fewer than 36,000 miles, the interior looks like new, both front and rear.
The clean engine is Cadillac’s 4.5-liter OHV fuel-injected transverse-mounted V8, which was rated at 180 horsepower and 245 lb-ft of torque when new. Backed by a THM 440-T4 (transverse) automatic sending power to the front wheels, the seller says this car has had one owner and is in excellent condition inside and out, and it sure appears to be. Are any of you fans of the smaller Eldorados?
Your 11th gen looks fantastic as a convertible, what about how a hardtop might’ve looked like, Scotty? Great tech there.
As someone that’s “computer challenged” but having had to deal with the mistakes made by Siri and her henchpersons at Google Maps etc. is it possible that the seller had listed the photos then had AI voice interpretation write the narrative? “Barrettes“ might be what Siri, et.al., heard when the seller said “Biarritz”.
Thanks, folks! Here’s a hardtop, Nevadahalfrack. Good call on that, they should have made that body style.
That looks WAAAAYYY better as a hardtop Scotty. Very nice job. You really have a knack for this.
I enjoyed your write up Scotty!! And your drop top version too. Looking at it made me think that if that was really available at the time, they would have handily outsold the Alante for sure!!!. As for the “Barrettes” I think Nevada Half Track is onto something. Auto corrected!! It could be worse. I think we’ve all seen worse Auto Corrects than that.
Wow. Beautiful Biarritz. 😍 Caddys always look great in white paint. 🌴
This example ticks alot of boxes. Reasonable asking price it seems also.
Thanks SG, the convertible Eldo looks dynamite too.
Looks like a car that a pimp would drive to “downsize”.
I lovez me an ebody! This is nice, don’t care for the continental spare…
A half-step up from the biggest mistake Cadillac ever made. (Though with the chrome wheels and continental kit, it’s more like 1/4 step up.) Yes, the Cimarron was a huge mistake, but at least it made Cadillac a. boatload of money (it was ridiculed from the start, but somehow lasted seven years – you do the math). Probably not enough to offset the losses from the ’86-’91 Eldorado, unfortunately. Not only were the cars expensive to build, but GM invested heavily in the Hamtramck plant, only to see E- and K-bodies trickle out at a fraction of the expected volume. I’m not sure they could have built more at first, because the high-tech robots were doing things like shooting each other with glue and crushing windshields. The lack of demand was almost surely due to the “freeze-dried 1985 Eldorado” styling; the critically acclaimed and commercially successful 1992 Eldorado and Seville rode on the same platform, so you can’t blame the engineering.
I bought a used one just like it once very cheaply on craigslist. It was a high mileage car and wasn’t shifting right, and the digital dash wasn’t working. It had a full carriage roof. The white paint was chipped in places, and the original paint was pink, so it must’ve been a Mary Kay car. The tranny had an external cooler that was leaking. I removed it, cleaned all the fluid/dust buildup it caused, topped off the tranny, and then it shifted normally. I cleaned the carriage top with a brush and scouring powder. While doing so, I noticed all the trees were filled with black crows! They must’ve been attracted to the swishy-swishy sound of the brush. The car cleaned up nicely, and I sold it for a few bucks profit. Never did get that digital dash working.
This Cadillac is absolutely beautiful! It is one of my favorite generations. Its color combination is fantastic! However, if this was my Cadillac, I’d be looking at removing the Continental kit and maybe the Rolls-Royce grill. I like stock. If Cadillac had thought that these two items were necessary, they would’ve done it themselves. Otherwise, it’s a beauty.
Agree totally with you Dave. Also agree with Scotty, the gold stuff has got to go.
First things to go should be those no good Vogue tires. They are absolute junk.
The 4.5 is a great engine except for that one little head gasket thing. Cadillac sold (sells) a radiator treatment that seals the head gasket and basically eliminates the issue for lots of miles. I don’t know if it is different than the diy copper based sealers you can buy everywhere. We had a 1990 Coupe Deville but it had the 4.9L engine. Our 1988 Coupe Deville had the 4.5 and with the treatment it went over 250k miles with no issues.