1970 Eldorado Is the Most Car Nut Barn Find in the World, Hasn't Moved in 40 Years

However, by the end of the sixties, the T-bird had grown significantly in size, closing in on Cadillac’s territory. So, in 1967, Cadillac retaliated, moving the Eldorado nameplate to the personal luxury segment of the market as a short-wheelbase two-door hardtop. Well, in GM’s top-tier division logic, ‘short’ equaled 120 inches (3,048 mm), while the total length spanned 221 inches (5,613 mm).

The Eldorado nameplate covered half a century of production, from 1953 to 2002, and was distributed across twelve generations. The fourth-gen Eldorado lasted from 1967 to 1970 and introduced several important changes to the platform. The switch to the front-wheel-drive architecture (1967) was a bold move, and the 1970 launch of the absolute piston terror Detroit had seen up to then was another.

While everyone else was going up in the horsepower wars, gradually adding (cubic) inches to their egotistic engine displacements, Cadillac dropped the mic with a megalodon of a motor, 500 cubic inches in size, and torquey enough to make a locomotive green with envy. 400 horsepower (405 PS) was a respectable figure in itself. Still, the 550 lb-ft of torque (746 Nm) put everyone else under the table.

8.2 Litre (yes, Cadillac spelled it the British way) was a displacement more likely to be found in industrial applications, such as marine or tank powerplants. And yet, General Motors chose the Eldorado of 1970 to exclusively present the new eight-cylinder powerhouse to the world. Twenty-three thousand eight hundred twenty-four examples of the fabled nameplate were assembled in 1970, all fitted with the ‘Eldorado V8’ mated to an automatic transmission.

Yes, this last detail might seem like a redundancy, given that Cadillacs were all about comfort and care-free motoring, not burning tires and blasting standing quarters or winning stoplight trophies. As such, all had the THM transmissions, GM’s legendary Turbo Hydramatic gearboxes.

The irony of this assembly was the torque converter that was supposed to multiply engine torque ‘for increased driving thrust to drive wheels during acceleration in any gear (low, intermediate, or high).’ That was the official GM brochure's statement.

I wonder just how much multiplication would have been needed for the monstrous V8's 550-lb-ft rating. Whatever the rationale, Cadillac spared no effort to get the Eldorado’s 2.2-ton bulk moving without so much as a twitch. So much for the Standard of the World – after all, nobody ever fitted a bigger engine in a mass-produced passenger car, before or since. No, the 8.4-liter Viper does not fit the bill; being a full-blown sportscar, and trucks and other type of machinery can’t play this game.

The 1970 Cadillac Eldorado was one absolute unit of a personal luxury car (that’s also a redundant statement: Cadillac made only luxury cars, and I’m quite certain all of them were intended for private use. When’s the last time you saw a Caddy bus, after all?). But even kings die, and the big two-door automobile shared the same fate as his less-pretentious brethren from Detroit and elsewhere.

Here’s living proof: a 40-year abandoned Eldorado from 1970, parked in a barn in 1982 or 1983 (the owner doesn’t remember precisely) and left there. Literally, the car has not seen the light of day or even an engine start in the last four decades. Instead, it served as the most comfortable housing for squirrels. The walnuts on the floor clearly indicate the car’s former residents who invaded it during the prolonged retirement in a barn in Honor, Michigan.

Luckily, this barn rescue aged extremely well, with no damage to the body or other nuisance like corrosion. The thick layer of dust makes it look way worse than it actually is, but that’s what detailing YouTubers do for a living. Dane Shemwell from Traverse City, Michigan, is a self-entitled ‘Barn Find Detailer’ with car-rescuing habits, and he pulled the old car back to life.

Surprisingly, the car is in extraordinary condition, with cosmetic flaws for the most part, but everything comes out clean after a thorough wash. Unfortunately, the trunk keys are missing, and the vlogger hasn’t started the engine yet, but he will put the car back on the road. We don’t know the status of the mechanicals, but given how nice the engine bay is (consistent with the whole car), we should have pretty high expectations from the ‘8.2-litre’ dinosaur.

I have one question for all you classic car loyalists: apart from the mandatory once-over jobs for the vital systems, what else (if anything) would you do to this Caddy? For the sake of the argument, throw in a budget you’d be willing to allot to this project.