The 1950s were a wonderful time for General Motors, and particularly its prestigious Cadillac brand. The Depression had taken away such luxury car rivals as Duesenberg, Peerless, Marmon and Pierce Arrow, and weakened competitors Packard and Lincoln.
The memory of the Second World War and its 3 1/2 year interruption in car production was fading, no foreign automakers were seriously challenging in North America, General Motors held half the market and its Cadillac was clearly the vehicle of choice for those who had arrived.
Like other manufacturers following the war, Cadillac offered re-worked pre-war designs until it could develop a new model. This came in 1948, and with it Cadillac tentatively explored the tailfin idea. GM's styling vice president Harley Earl had been captivated by the twin tail booms of the Lockheed P-38 fighter plane and carried the concept over into the Cadillac. He saw fins as adding some interest to the rear of the car and they became an immediate Cadillac mark, soon imitated by the rest of the industry.
A technical breakthrough came in 1949: a new high compression, short stroke, overhead valve V8 engine. It was some 91-kg lighter, 127-mm shorter and 102-mm lower than the side valve V8 it replaced. Its 160-horsepower was 10 more than the biggest former V8.
To celebrate its post-war superiority for 1953, Cadillac built an ultra-luxurious image model to counter cars like the Packard Caribbean. It was intended to consolidate Cadillac's position as the ultimate in prestige, as its V16 had in the 1930s. It came as a convertible only.
This new luxury Cadillac, based on the Series 62, was called the Eldorado, a name evocative of wealth and luxury. Introduced part way through the 1953 model year, it was like a dream car with a difference: it could be bought by the public.
The Eldorado looked big, rugged and substantial and carried all of Cadillac's styling cues, including, of course, tailfins. There were imitation vertical vents on the leading edges of the rear fenders, hooded headlamps and a heavy egg-crate grille. The huge front bumper guards were nicknamed "Dagmars" after a buxom television personality of that era, undoubtedly the world's only entertainer immortalized in an automobile bumper.
But the real piece de resistance for stylist Earl was his beloved wraparound windshield. As soon as he conceived it for the 1951 Buick Le Sabre and XP 300 dream cars, he couldn't wait to get it into production.
Earl regarded the "panoramic" windscreen as one of his major styling contributions. While lauded at the time as a breakthrough, it would turn out to be a relatively short term phenomenon that was more show than practicality because of its distortion tendencies and its knee bruising intrusion. But the wraparound windshield looked futuristic and this plus a dropped beltline gave the Eldorado a stance several inches lower than the standard Series 62 Cadillac.
Large gold plated vees were mounted on the hood above the grille and on the trunk lid, but surprisingly the Eldorado name did not appear anywhere on the exterior. It was on the instrument panel and door sills only.
The interior was luxuriously outfitted with quality leather and expensive fabric. It came with every available appearance and convenience item including automatic transmission, power steering, windows, seats and top, signal-seeking pre-selector radio, whitewall tires and chrome wire spoke wheels.
There were four colours available: Alpine White, Artisan Ochre, Azure Blue and Aztec Red. The folded fabric top was concealed by an almost flush fitting metal tonneau cover. The Eldorado had a 3,200-mm wheelbase, stretched 5,608-mm long and weighed a hefty 2,178-kg. Although large by today's standards, the Eldo/62 was Cadillac's smallest model. Its largest, the Fleetwood 75 had a 3,727-mm wheelbase and was a mind boggling 6,007-mm, just shy of 20 feet.
Cadillac fitted a 5.4-litre, 210 horsepower V8 engine. It breathed through a four barrel carburettor and exhaled through a dual exhaust system with through the bumper outlets.
Power reached the rear wheels via a four speed Hydra Matic transmission, until the Hydra Matic plant in Livonia, Michigan, was destroyed by fire in August, 1953. Modified Buick Dynaflow transmissions were then fitted to Cadillacs until the Hydra Matic plant could resume production.
The Eldorado was joined by two other flagship image cars from GM: the Buick Skylark and the Oldsmobile Fiesta, also convertibles. But neither would remain very long in the luxury field.
First year Eldorado sales were just 532 cars, due in part, no doubt, to a price $2,000 above Cadillac's formerly most costly vehicle, the Fleetwood 75 limousine. It was aimed at an exclusive audience, and limited sales or not, the Eldorado served its purpose of marvellously enhancing Cadillac's self-conferred image as the “Standard of the World.”