Photo: Top Dead Center | YouTube
These guys bought a Cadillac Coupe deVille, sight unseen, 400 miles away, that might have been the worst car on Facebook Marketplace. They could just take it apart with a screwdriver. Every move the Caddy makes feels like it's falling apart. That's the effect of living in the UK.
Born in the 70's, moved to the UK in the 90's, has battled damp for over 30 years, now it's disintegrating. It's falling apart piece by piece and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
The Cadillac Coupe deVille is truly enormous, it is tremendously heavy and it consumes 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. Automakers were struggling to keep fuel economy low, while still releasing huge cars like this.This is the sound of a cartoon engine!” they say. “This machine is every sound effect in the movie.”
This Caddy weighs 5,070 pounds (2,300 kilograms) and is 19 feet 2 inches (5,860 millimetres) long, making it longer than, for example, the Rolls-Royce Phantom, which is 18 feet (5,770 millimetres) long.
Once the new owners pop the hood, they realize that the car's original paint isn't the black they see, but the light blue underneath. The hood is so rusted you can stick your finger through it.It's a cave system,” they joke. Orange peel is everywhere: on the hood, on the roof, on the trunk and on the doors.
The car has been in the UK since 1992. So it has had time to rust. The white vinyl roof shows serious signs of wear. It looks like it was painted with a brush at some point. And that is the least of the problems with this car. All the panels rattle as if they are ready to come off.
The Coupe DeVille came with spare parts in the trunk. They have the brake calipers in there, and they know they might need them. In the meantime, they tear off big chunks of the rusty tailgate. This car is falling apart. If they slam the door, they'll end up with the whole thing in pieces.
The Caddy is riding on wheels with fake whitewall tires. The rubber has been spray-painted to look real. The two also look underneath the car to see how badly it is damaged. There are leaks underneath and when they put the screwdriver on a component, it goes right through it. Everything is rotten.
By UK law, the Cadillac no longer needs MOT. It can simply be driven legally on the road. Once they take it off the road, they are both terrified. The brakes don't work, the emergency brake is almost useless and this car looks and feels like a moving death trap.
They believe that if they were to crash, the car would fall apart. It would be just the two of them in the seats. And they are beautiful seats, by the way. They are covered in light blue vinyl, which has held up pretty well over the years.
The engine stalls at a roundabout. Probably because they ran out of fuel along the way. A friend comes to the rescue, but the fuel is not reaching the engine. The mechanic explains that when the car ran out of fuel, the fuel system created a sealed chamber, so the pump was unable to get fuel to the engine. A little fuel poured into the carburetor was enough to restart the car.
They decide to test the Cadillac to see how much of that 190 horsepower is left. After all these years, the 500 cubic inch (8.2-liter) V8 can only produce 120.5 horsepower. That's the most the dyno can squeeze out of it. The expert tells them that this is the worst car he's ever dynoed.
They hit the road again, but after a few miles the Cadillac is thirsty again. They stop at a gas station. They fill up: 90.61 liters (23.94 gallons) for 131.9 pounds ($173 at current exchange rates).
On the move, the cabin looks like a living room on wheels. It has cruise control, but it doesn't work. Not even the air conditioning. When they stop for lunch, they have trouble getting the American car into the parking lot. Once parked, they see a huge leak. The engine coolant is boiling.
Once back on the road, they decide to check the acceleration from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 km/h). The Cadillac takes 24.8 seconds. They stop at the gas station again to fill up because they want to try to calculate the fuel consumption. This car drank 55 liters/100 kilometers, or 5 miles per gallon.
A bumpy bridge throws the car into the air and it lands with what they say is “the actual sound of the car disintegrating.”
They paid 2,900 pounds to get this car. That's $3,807. In the United States, a Caddy of its era costs an average of $13,000. The best, rust-free examples can top the $60,000 mark.
