Junkyard Find: 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

1996 was the last year of the Cadillac Fleetwood and possibly the last year for any General Motors Brougham edition. Can it be that The General has been Brougham-less for 17 long years now? Here’s a reminder of what Cadillacs were like when the postwar Cadillac-buyer demographic (i.e., those old enough to remember Prohibition) remained just barely young enough to buy new cars.

These cars were proper rear-wheel-drive, floaty luxury machines, powered by the same LT1 engine that went into the mid-90s Roadmasters and Impalas.

None of that fancy European-looking switch hardware on this car— what was good enough for the ’79 Sedan de Ville was good enough for the ’96 Fleetwood!

This one is pretty well used up, but it doesn’t take much imagination to picture it cruising placidly on US 50 at 95 per.

Will expanses of chrome like this ever make a comeback?





Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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