Used Cadillac DeVille for Sale near British Columbia

I like it because it is easy to work on and looks great! The car draws a lot of attention wherever you are. The car is great to cruise on the freeway at high speeds. After a while you feels as if you are the captian of your vessal. The flying lady on the hood looks like the bow and the car is as big as a boat. It's just a great hobby car. It has a 365 which puts out about 285 hp. It is really torquey, it takes off really well. It weighs about 5,000 lbs so just barely. It's a great car for someone who loves good old Americana from the 50's.

The 1956 Cadillac Series 62 convertible I drove for a few days in 1992 was a test car for an automotive publication that I worked for back then. Like the next car on my test drive list, a 1959 Cadillac 62 hardtop coupe, it was freely provided by a German car dealer specializing in Cadillacs. In both cases, the gentleman just gave me the keys and let me do with the cars what I wanted with no apparent worries that I might wreck his precious objects of desire. I didn't, fortunately. Anyway, "my" convertible was jet-black, had a red all-vinyl interior and all options on the book in '56. The Caddy was completely stock, unrestored but in excellent condition all around. Everything worked fine, especially all the power goodies including the convertible top. Driving around the country roads and small towns of the Westerwald in the western part of Germany, the big Cad was a sight to behold, no doubt. Every street, every road seemed too narrow for it and the 62 looked completely out of place in the picturesque medieval hamlets of the region. So what? I must admit that this was the first classic Cadillac I ever drove personally, and the experience was less of a pleasure than I had expected. For one thing, the seating position behind the steering wheel was awkward. Even with the power bench seat all the way back, there was far too little legroom for my 6'4" frame, the angle of the steering wheel was too steep and the wheel was too close to my chest. It took me a number of test drives of other 1940s and 1950s American cars to realize that this was pretty much the standard seating arrangement in those days. On paper, the Cad's 365 CID V8 with 285 gross horsepower seemed barely adequate for a car this big (214.9 inches long, 80.1 inches wide) and heavy (4,645 pounds of curb weight), but pickup was okay. According to contemporary road tests, a '56 Cadillac was good for 0-60 times of around 11 seconds and top speed of 110 mph. I didn't try to match these figures (I wasn't that reckless), but they seemed plausible to me. The standard HydraMatic four-speed automatic transmission shifted willingly, but rather harshly, a property typically associated with fluid couplings instead of torque converters. Once underway, the big Caddy reacted slowly to steering wheel input, with constant squealing from the new 8.00 x 15 diagonal tires. There was considerable body lean and a lot of wallowing as the car tried to regain an even keel after turning a corner. The power drum brakes were quite inadequate for a car this heavy. Kudos to my fellow automotive writers from the Fifties who wrung such cars when they were new; they sure had more guts than brains. In summation, the 1956 Cadillac 62 convertible was an impressive sight and must have made quite a splash with the Country Club crowd back then, but it drove and felt like an old car. I would have taken this for granted with Fifties vehicles had my next ride not been a '59 Cadillac Series 62 (check out my respective review), which was worlds apart from its predecessor in terms of ride, handling, and braking. Hard to believe that three years can make such a big difference, but they did. This is not meant to blackball the '56, which was very much a car of its time, but to emphasize how advanced the '59 was in direct comparison. If you own a '56 or intend to spend a king's ransom buying one, enjoy your ride but don't expect your Cad to drive like a more modern vehicle - it won't.