Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1991 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz
GM's Cadillac Division introduced the ultra-swanky Eldorado as a 1953 model, and the Biarritz name was first used on the Eldorado convertible three years later. After that, Eldorado Biarritzes in various forms were built intermittently through the following decades. The end finally came for the Biarritz in 1991, when the last eleventh-generation Eldorados rolled off the Hamtramck line. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those cars, found at a self-service yard near Denver, Colorado.
Biarritz is a resort city on the Atlantic coast in France's Basque Country, just the sort of place where a high-living oil heiress might have flaunted her new Eldo during the late 1950s. The Biarritz title was used to designate Eldorado convertibles through 1964, then got dropped until its revival as the name of a gloriously rococo trim level for 1976.
For me, the definitive Eldorado Biarritz is the 1979-1985 version, with its stainless-steel roof panel inspired by the one on the 1957 Eldorado Brougham. When Robert De Niro as pink-suited Ace Rothstein falls victim to a bomb in his car in the 1995 film "Casino," that car is a 1983 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz.
The Eldorado got a radical downsizing for the 1986 model year and its next-to-last generation, losing 16 inches of overall length and a corresponding portion of general bulk. The Biarritz version stuck around, but with no stainless-steel roof.
The 1991 Biarritz package did get you two-tone paint, "Tampico" carpeting, birdseye maple wood on the dash and console plus 10-way power front bucket seats.
Also included were "wire wheel discs" aka faux-wire-wheel hubcaps.
