I’ve always loved the 1977-79 Cadillacs. They were prominent during my formative years watching Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider. Of course the bad guys were usually driving them. Sure I liked the red Ferrari and black Trans Am just fine but I liked the Cadillacs more.
So you can understand my fascination when I spotted this absolutely new condition 1978 model on Long Island Craigslist.
It didn’t hurt that this car is painted the same color combination as the car I first remember riding in, which was my dad’s 1979 Pontiac Bonneville 4 door. It was his company car at the time.
1978 was a good year for Cadillacs. The de Villes and Fleetwoods had been nicely resized the previous year, the Seville was as good looking as always and it was the last year for the truly large-and-in-charge Eldorado.
If you didn’t quite have the scratch for a Fleetwood Brougham, you could always order the d’Elegance package on your Coupe de Ville or Sedan de Ville. Which is what the original owner of this tobacco brown beauty did.
As the 1978 brochure extolled, “This very special edition features luxurious pillow style seats in a handsome new Random velour.”
You could choose your interior in green, beige, blue or mulberry. Ah, when you could actually choose an interior color!
50/50 divided dual Comfort front seats, hood, door and trunk striping, opera lamps and d’Elegance emblems on the sail panels were also all included.
Like all 1978 de Villes, the d’Elegance was powered by Cadillac’s 425 CID V8 with a 4-barrel carburetor, and GM’s always excellent turbo hydramatic 400 3-speed automatic transmission.
A total of 88,951 Sedan de Villes were built for the year with a base price of $10,924. As this was the era of personal luxury coupes however, the Coupe de Ville handily outsold it to the tune of 117,750 built. The 1978 Coupe DeVille was slightly cheaper too (relatively speaking, these were Cadillacs, after all), at $10,584.
At any rate this sepia toned DeVille d’Elegance looks extremely nice and was touted as being owned by the same owner for the last 25 years and it has 35000 original miles. Given the condition that could be true.
At any rate it’s a pretty darn nice car for $8900 so if you’re so inclined feel free to check out the link!