Year & Model:
1966 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
 

Member Name:
Rob Leonard

Location:
Hawthorne, CA">

Year & Model:
1966 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
Member Name:
Rob Leonard

Location:
Hawthorne, CA

Car Facts:
 
When I was 5 years old my father bought his first Cadillac - a used 1966 SDV in midnight blue with a black interior. He sold the car when I was just 10 so I never had the chance to ask him to save it for me. I never forgot that first Cadillac, and on my 17th birthday bought my first Cadillac - a silver and black '66 Fleetwood Brougham. I drove that car for almost four years and then it was totaled thanks to a 16 year-old that ran a red light at high speed. The frame was bent, the rear passenger side door was 2 feet inside the car, and all the windows were shattered, but I drove that Brougham home from the accident. After it sat for months I came to grips with the reality that it would never be road worthy again, and reluctantly junked it.

Over the past 25 years I have owned eight 1966 Cadillacs, including 2 Fleetwood Broughams, 2 SDVs, 2 CDVs, a series 75 sedan, and Eldorado convertible. I'm still kicking myself for selling the Eldorado… Needless to say I am hooked on '66 Cadillacs. With the advent of the internet in the mid 1990s I began in earnest my search for a '66 SDV that was the closest match possible to the one my father had. The difficult part was finding the midnight blue color - few cars in the west came in this color. I had only seen one in the prior dozen years of looking in the California market, and it was a very pricy convertible with a white interior. Now I expanded my search nationwide, and got lucky in the spring of 2002. While perusing Collector Car Trader Online I came across an add for a '66 SDV with just 64K original miles located in a small town outside of Pittsburgh PA. The one photo with the add showed it to be a dark blue color with a black vinyl top.

Purchasing a car from over 2,000 miles away is a whole different experience. First you have to get a hold of the seller, which in this case was not as easy as one might imagine. The guy selling this car was very slow to answer the phone - 14 rings. I ended up having several phone conversations with him before making the trip to PA, and each time I waited for the phone to ring 14 times before he answered. Fortunately for me, the guy was quite computer savvy and was more than willing to take, upload, and send to me the 21 photos I requested. I had him take shots of all the places that usually showed rust on an eastern car, and had him place a Pepsi can on the hood in a close-up so that I could use the can's known color to contrast it with the color of the car. The car was indeed midnight blue, it had a black top and interior, and the miles appeared to be genuine given the interior's originality and condition. The car had been restored around 1980 and had only been a fair weather show car since. We settled on a price, I flew out, I drove the car and inspected it above and below for rust, gave him the cash, registered the sale with the state of PA, took the car to the shipper, and flew home. The car arrived four days latter and has been a part of the family ever since.

The car is named Marie, after my father's sister, married to my uncle from whom my father purchased his 1966 SDV. Marie is an upgrade of my father's '66 as she has the following options that I don't remember my dad's '66 having: vinyl top, leather interior, AM/FM Stereo, seat warmers, and rear defrost. In the photo my wife Linda is at the wheel and our faithful dog Taco is riding shotgun. Marie is part of my permanent collection, but I am still looking for the right '66 Fleetwood, Fleetwood Brougham, or series  75 sedan because I simply cannot get enough of Cadillac's 1966 offerings.