Junkyard Find: 1988 Cadillac Brougham D'Elegance
I admit it: I’m suffering from a silly infatuation with Broughamness. Every American car manufacturer (and a few Japanese ones) slapped Brougham emblems on a wide variety of vehicles during the Brougham Era, which we’ll call 1968 through 1992, and the last hurrah for Detroit Broughams was the car that I found in a Denver self-serve wrecking yard yesterday.
In 1987, Cadillac decided to remove the Fleetwood name from its big rear-wheel-drive ocean liners and simply dubbed the car the Cadillac Brougham.
At first glance, I thought I was looking at an early 1970s product here.
You wouldn’t have seen a Chevy 305 engine in a proper Early Malaise Era Cadillac, though.
I’m pretty sure this car has more marque emblems than any built before or since. I gave up counting after I got to 15.
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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Thanks for that video, pinkslips. That Brougham is beautiful in the way only a low mile survivor can be. It also shows how hard GM was trying to keep a very old car fresh. As soon as I saw that interior, I became nostalgic for my 84 Eldo because it was the same color, same seats and everything excluding the IP. I was not nostalgic for the 4100 V8, which didn't live long under normal circumstances, less so under my teenage right foot.
Once upon a time owning a Cadillac was actually impressive. Today they are cramped and non-luxurious eyesores. The best way to get a Cadillac now is to have the company leave everything off the chassis and buy it with the engine and then have it reworked. I am convinced that if you own a Cadillac today you are an idiot and so far removed from intelligence that you don't understand that you are driving a product that can be had for $20k elsewhere and is more impressive - even a Honduh Accord, the bloated thing it has become, is better than a Cadillac.