It’s time, once again, to return to those once upon a time daily drivers of the past, in 1980s and 1990s Illinois. How about a nice opera-windowed Continental? This was taken in Plainfield, IL on February 26, 1986.

Last Wednesday I had an hour to kill before seeing a movie at the local Cinemark (it was the new Liam Neeson action flick, if you were curious).

It’s no secret I love Cadillacs. Even more so when the Cadillac is “triple yellow”, meaning paint, top and interior are all in that classic Cadillac pastel yellow. In 1977 it was Naples Yellow, in 1978 it was slightly paler and renamed Colonial Yellow.

I’ve always loved these early downsized Caprices. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but when I was a little kid there were TWO 1977 Caprice Estates on my block. They looked so cool. One cream, one tobacco brown. Both with Di Noc woodgrain sides.

I was 31 years old when I started traveling for a living. I had just taken a promotion to be a Regional Training Manager with Cricket Wireless, and I was supposed to be covering a fairly small territory of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. I had a very young family—my son…

Poor Oldsmobile. During the 1980s it went from volume champion to being essentially the Cutlass Division of GM, thus finishing the decade in a real bind. What went wrong? Was it the loss of divisional independence caused by the newly formed B-O-C Group? The omnipresence of front-wheel drive? Increased, and increasingly intense, competition? In any…

Oh no! A Seville! When Cadillac sold luxury cars, and where never was heard, any combover word. Yes, the bustle back Seville. Banks of computers are coming online, electricity is churning and burning, as certain RG folks immediately start typing madly, seeing this blast from the past. Great walls o’ text, saying in multiple paragraphs and…

Here’s another round of the vintage insured photos I rescued from the recycle bin at the insurance company twenty-odd years ago. I saved them purely for the cars in the pictures, but nowadays I can appreciate the buildings too.

A few days after I posted that ’78 Fleetwood Brougham previously discussed, I ran across this Bonneville in similar colors, just with a light gray top instead of black. I’ve always liked these, Dad had one, and I love their clean flanks and fender skirts. This one was for sale in Chicago on Marketplace. Thin…

Note: This originally ran on a site run by some dude who bought a Scion xB and painted the wheels red. I drove the car in late autumn 2013, when these were still fairly common as late-model used cars at Caddy dealerships. I’d just bought my 2000 Cartier (which is now living happily in Syracuse,…