Automotif DXLIX...

1970 was the final year for the third generation of Cadillac's DeVille series. Even though it had received a fairly serious styling overhaul for '69, this was still the era where small exterior changes were made every year in the name of planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption. When you rolled up to the country club in this thing, nobody would mistake it for last year's Caddy.

The quad headlamps, which had gone from being stacked vertically to arrayed horizontally just last year, now had body colored surrounds to better blend the housings into the fascia. There were crests on the forward creases of the front fenders, now, and the grille was also different, with a bolder egg crate look.

Under the hood, you'd find the trusty Cadillac 472 cubic inch V-8. With its Rochester 4-barrel carburetor and a 10.0:1 compression ratio, the big 7.7 Litre mill turned out 375 SAE gross horsepower and a monster 525 foot pounds of torque.

That powerplant was enough to shove even 4,800 pounds of Cadillac to sixty in the mid-8 second range. If you wanted to slow down, you had power front discs and enormous finned drums out back. The car had a full array of ultra modern features like thermostat-determined climate control and automatic headlight dimming ("Twilight Sentinel" in Cad-speak).

1970 was also the last year of the Coupe DeVille convertible, and this Nottingham Green Firemist example is in primo condition.

This one was photographed in September of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens.