It was a chilly fall night in 1999 when Dad’s 1976 Cadillac Coupe DeVille met its end along Interstate 696 in metro Detroit.
My parents were coming home from an evening visiting friends when the engine started to smoke. Dad swung the car onto the shoulder of the freeway. They flung open the doors. Mom — who had her priorities — left her sweater on the front seat, but grabbed the box of cannoli from the back seat.
My parents bolted down the shoulder of the freeway, cannolis in hand, as the car erupted in flames. The once vibrant red car with its long and lustrous life of service was reduced to a charred frame by the time my uncle arrived to drive them home.
I was living in Chicago at the time and when my mom called to tell me what had happened, all I could think of was the famous line in “The Godfather”: “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”
The car was finally kaput. In some ways, I was relieved. The car had turned into an eyesore. It was held together by my dad’s innovative use of duct tape, a rope securing a door and liberal use of WD-40. Its padded white vinyl roof was peeling the way a bad sunburn might, and rust lined various fringes around the body.
But that car was a rolling relic of my early life — and of Dad. I’d ridden in it from age 6 to age 30. Over the years, Dad, along with the car’s previous owner, had put more than 200,000 miles on it — a number unheard of back then and even scarce now — though some cars can achieve it.
A recent study from iSeeCars.com showed Toyota as the most likely of brands to make vehicles that could reach 250,000 miles. Of the 32 car brands listed in that study, Cadillac ranked No. 7.
Dad’s Caddy was unique, in part because it was his. He kept it going. It’s the car I learned to drive in. It’s the car I grew up in, alongside the man who taught me so much about life. So this Father’s Day, please indulge me while I tell you about Dad and his Caddy.
Dad’s driveway of cars
My dad bought the car in the early 1980s from the close family friends that my parents had visited on the night it burned to a crisp. Their friends had bought it new in 1976.
It already had quite a few miles on it when it landed in our driveway. Our family friends had driven it from Michigan to California, towing a U-Haul trailer, when they had moved away for a few years. It towed their U-Haul back to Michigan when they returned.
It was the first Cadillac Dad had ever owned. I don’t know all the various car brands he’d owned in his life before I was born, but I do remember he had a turquoise blue Ford Torino at one point when I was small.
One hot summer day in the early 1970s, Dad arrived home in that Torino with all the windows rolled up. He stepped out sweating. Mom asked him why he didn’t have the windows down. He said he wanted other drivers to think his car was air conditioned.
Mom and Dad also had a dark blue Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme from a 1970s model year. That car was my favorite as a kid. It was a monumental occasion when the Olds hit 100,000 miles. Mom and Dad timed it so that we could pull over and take pictures of the odometer turning over to all zeros.
You see my parents grew up during the Great Depression, so they were frugal. It would never have occurred to Dad to get a new car every few years the way many people do today.
My parents paid for their cars in full and kept them for a long time. For example, Dad had a dark red 1975 Ford LTD that he bought from his mother after his father died. Dad treasured that car and only drove it on nice days or to special events.
He had that car until the fall of 2006. It was the last car he would ever drive. He died the following spring.
The quiet bystander
As for Dad’s Caddy, in its heyday — before the years of harsh sunshine, hard rain, wind, snow, ice and hundreds of thousands of miles beat it down — it was a beauty.
The exterior was a vibrant red with a shiny white vinyl roof line. The interior featured mechanically adjustable seats in velvety red cloth. It had automatic locks and windows — a big deal back then. It also had air conditioning, so now Dad could keep the windows closed and not have to sweat inside.
The car weighed some 5,000 pounds and it had a massive 5.2-liter V8 engine, known for being the largest displacement production V8 used in a passenger car at the time, according to www.carbuzz.com.
The best part of the car was how it became a quiet bystander to the best memories of my young life.
In looking through old photos, there it is in the background of so many events. As a tween, me and my friend played with sparklers one summer evening at our cottage on a lake outside of Brighton, there’s the old Caddy parked in the background. Or, when Dad hit his hole-in-one, the Caddy sat in the golf course parking lot ready to carry home his golf clubs in its deep trunk.
When I became the first person in my father’s family to graduate from college, the Caddy transported my family to East Lansing for the ceremony at Michigan State University.
When I got a reporting job at a television station in Traverse City in 1994, my parents hooked a U-Haul onto the back of that old Cadillac. The car, now rusting and nearly 20 years old, still managed to tow that load from Livonia to Traverse City.
Dad at the dealership
I have no idea how much money Dad spent to keep that Cadillac running, but in its later years it was regularly at the corner gas station’s mechanic’s bay getting one thing or another replaced. Dad just would not part with it.
So it should be no surprise that when Dad went with me to shop for the first car I would buy, he was blindsided by sticker shock.
It was 1993 and I had a full-time job as a journalist. I had saved enough for a down payment to buy my own car. Until then, I’d been driving Dad’s Cadillac to my job each day.
Dad pulled into the dealership, parked his big Cadillac and we went inside. I was a dealership salesperson’s dream: a young, naive, eager buck ready to do whatever it took to get her first car. My dad was that salesperson’s worst nightmare: smart, cynical and unimpressed.
Back then, dad said something to the effect of: “You honestly want that much for this crappy little car?”
He told the salesman to follow him outside to the Cadillac. There, Dad schooled him on what a superior car and engine the Cadillac had and yet cost him considerably less to purchase it.
I was mortified. Dad was alienating the salesman and ruining my chances of getting a new car! Dad tried to barter down the price on the car I had wanted, but the best the sales manager would offer was to throw in a free tank of gas or paint a pinstripe around the car free of charge.
I was thrilled by such a generous offer! I sat there pondering which of these two glorious options I would take. I mean a full tank of gas sounded amazing.
My dad, however, sat in cold silence. He stared at the manager for several seconds and then said to me, “Get up. We’re going.”
A lesson learned
I cried the whole way home. Being young and stupid, I felt my whole world had ended and I’d never own a car.
But when we got home and Mom heard about that offer, she was also outraged. My parents explained to me that a full tank of gas is something that should automatically come with the car and a pinstripe isn’t even worth $25. The offer was insulting.
Today, I see that Dad was right to walk out. Not only did I never return to that dealership, I learned from Dad that there is power in saying no and shopping around.
Eventually, after visiting enough dealerships, Dad and I found an agreeable offer and I did buy a car: A red Nissan Sentra. I parked it in the driveway next to the old red Cadillac and we posed for pictures in front of both cars.
Years later, I’d trade that car to buy a blue 1996 Nissan Altima. When I moved to Chicago in 1998 and did not need a car anymore, Dad bought that Altima from me. It would end up replacing the charred Caddy as Dad’s new ride.
My dad had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, so I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about driving a Japanese-made car. But Dad loved it. It was a stick shift and he enjoyed its “pep.” It also had roof handles that helped him get in and out of it easier as he aged. He admired the ingenuity of its designers.
The end of an era
Dad loved to drive. He kept the Altima until 2005, when my mom, who could not drive a stick shift, insisted they trade it for a new Ford Taurus in an automatic that she could drive.
I went with them to the dealership. I remember the pained look on his face when the dealer took the Altima away. For not only did Dad say goodbye to his car that day, but he also knew he would never receive the keys to drive the new Taurus.
His budding Alzheimer’s made it unsafe for him to continue to drive. Sometime later, he made a comment to me: “I never got to drive that new car. Not even once.” It broke my heart.
Mom kept the Taurus until 2018, then dementia ended her ability to drive. When we sold it, unlike the Caddy’s 200,000-plus miles on it, the Taurus had traveled only about 30,000 miles.
While the Caddy had the most dramatic ending of Dad’s cars, each carried a bit of him in them.
Now all of the cars, like Dad, are gone. But what wonderful memories they held. Happy Father’s Day.
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer for USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dad’s Cadillac became a rolling relic of family memories
Reporting by Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
