These Guys Bought This Cadillac Coupe deVille Sight-Unseen, the Car Is Disintegrating

Born in the 1970s, moved to the UK in the 1990s, battled moist for over 30 years, now it is disintegrating. It falls apart piece by piece, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. The Cadillac Coupe deVille is absolutely huge; it is terribly heavy and eats up gallons of gas like a football fan would eat popcorn.The car is powered by a massive 500-cubic-inch (8.2-liter) V8 engine with 190 horsepower. But, hey, it was the 1970s, the era when the oil crisis killed performance. Carmakers were making efforts to keep fuel consumption down while still rolling out huge automobiles such as this one. “That’s a cartoon engine noise!” they say. “This car is every movie sound effect.”

This Caddy weighs 5,070 pounds (2,300 kilograms), is 19 feet 2 inches (5,860 millimeters) long, which makes it longer than the Rolls-Royce Phantom, for instance, which is 18-feet (5,770 millimeters) long.

The good old Caddy is the victim of corrosion

Once the new owners pop the hood, they realize that the original paint job of the car is not the black they see but the baby blue that is underneath. The hood is so badly affected by rust that you can put your finger right through it. “It is a cave system,” they joke. The orange peel is everywhere: on the bonnet, roof, trunk lid, and doors.

The car has been in the United Kingdom since 1992. So, it had time to rust. The white vinyl roof shows serious signs of wear and tear. It looks as if it was brush-painted at some point. And that is the least of this car’s problems. All the panels rattle as if they were ready to come off.

The Coupe DeVille came with spare parts in the trunk. They have brake calipers in there, and they know they might need them. Meanwhile, they rip big chunks of the rusty boot lid. This car is disintegrating. If they slam the door, they end up with it in pieces.

The Caddy rides on wheels with fake whitewall tires. The rubber has been spray-painted to make it look like the real deal. The two of them also look underneath the car to check how bad it is. There are leaks down there and when they put the screwdriver on any component, it just goes right through. Everything is rotten.

A death trap on the road

By the laws in the UK, the Cadillac no longer needs inspection. It can just drive legally on the road. Once they take it out of the road, they are both terrified. The brakes don’t work, the emergency brake is next to nothing, and this car looks and feels like a death trap on the move.

They believe that if they crash, the car will fall to pieces. It would be just the two of them left in the seats. And those are wonderful seats, by the way. They are wrapped in baby blue vinyl, which held on pretty well over the years.

The engine dies at a roundabout. It is probably because they ran out of fuel along the way. A friend comes to the rescue, but the fuel doesn’t go through to the engine. The mechanic explains that when the car ran out of fuel, the fuel system created an airlock, so the pump could not pull the fuel through to the engine. A little fuel poured into the carburetor was enough to get the car running again.

They decide to dyno the Cadillac to see how much of that 190 horsepower is left in it. After all these years, the 500-cubic-inches (8.2-liter) V8 engine can only pump out 120.5 horsepower. That is as much as the dyno can squeeze out of it. The expert tells them that this one is the worst car that he has ever dynoed.

The Cadillac is terribly thirsty

They hit the road again, but a few miles later, the Cadillac is thirsty again. They stop at the gas station. They fill up the tank: that’s 90.61 liters (23.94 gallons) for 131.9 pounds ($173 at the current exchange rate).

On the move, the cabin feels like a living room on wheels. It has cruise control, but it doesn’t work. Climate control doesn’t either. When they stop for lunch, they have issues squeezing the American car into the car park. Once they park the car, they can see a massive leak. Engine coolant is boiling.

Once they hit the road again, they decide to check the 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 kph) acceleration. It takes the Cadillac 24.8 seconds. They stop at the gas station again for a refill because they want to try to calculate the fuel consumption. This car drank 55 liters/100 kilometers, which is 5 miles per gallon.

A bumpy bridge throws the car up in the air and lands with what they say is “the actual sound of the car disintegrating.”

They paid 2.900 pounds to get this car. That translates to $3,807. In the US, a Caddy of its era costs an average of $13,000. The finest examples – with no rust involved – can go over the $60,000 mark.