Junkyard Find: 1988 Cadillac Coupe De Ville GT

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

By the late 1980s, the Coupe de Ville had become a not-so-imposing front-wheel-drive machine, sharing the C-body platform used by the Buick Park Avenue and Olds 98. GM had squeezed much of the remaining value out of the Cadillac name by that point, and the average age of the World War II vets who aspired to Cadillac ownership had crept up to close to 70. We don’t really notice these cars today, though quite a few are still on the road, but this one caught my eye because it is a very rare GT version.


As we can see in the 1988 ad above, GM was desperate to woo some younger buyers to the marque. As the 1980s ground on, conspicuous greed became increasingly fashionable, so the marketers imagined that successful American 30-somethings would drive to the polo championship in shiny new Coupe de Villes instead of those damn German cars. Hey, if they want something European, there’s always the Allanté!

These things weren’t bad to drive, but they just didn’t radiate luxury the way their predecessors did. It took Cadillac a long time to come back from the dark days of, say, 1972 until the Escalade Era.

I didn’t see any Landau emblems, but the padded vinyl landau roof is in full effect.

Cadillac never made a factory Coupe de Ville GT, of course; this one boasts some enhancements added by what I assume was its final owner.

The pinstripe decals on the marker lights were likely applied by the same owner.

The HT4100 V8 engine gets a bad rap, but the half-dozen or so we’ve seen in 24 Hours of LeMons racing have been very reliable. Perhaps the problem with this engine on the street is the lack of cornering G forces to massage the engine oil properly.

I may have to go back and buy these crypto-opera interior lights for my van.

170,125 miles on the clock, which was pretty good for a late-80s GM product.








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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  • RatherhaveaBuick RatherhaveaBuick on Feb 01, 2013

    The 80s weren't a good time for Caddys. I love the early 80s Devilles, Broughams and Eldos but the engines were supposedly really unreliable. I think this generation Deville is one of the worst Caddys, as it looks like a slightly shorter version of a Park Avenue of the same vintage, which, due to some design elements, was a much easier car on the eyes. These Devilles look shortened and stubby because of GM's whole downsizing effort at the time. Same with 86 Eldorado restyling. At least the 98s and Electras of those years seemed proportional. Cadillac fixed it with the 89-93 Devilles though, as those are much nicer looking. Broughams will always be the best of that time period though.

  • And003 And003 on Feb 18, 2013

    I could see this Caddy getting a V-Series restomod treatment, perhaps something along the lines of what Jay Leno did to his 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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