Cadillac Classic Cars

Cadillac's halo car for half a century — from a hand-built 1953 convertible to the towering-finned 1959 Biarritz.

Introduced in 1953 as a limited-production, hand-finished convertible flagship, the Eldorado spent nearly fifty years as Cadillac's most prestigious nameplate. It's best known for the 1959 model — home to the tallest tailfins ever fitted to a production car — and for the 1967 switch to a front-wheel-drive personal luxury coupe platform that redefined what the name meant for the next three decades.

Cadillac's standard-bearer full-size line, and the car where the modern tailfin was born.

Introduced for 1940 to replace the discontinued LaSalle, the Series 62 became Cadillac's volume full-size line for a quarter-century — the car that funded the brand's flagship Fleetwood and Eldorado models. It's most famous for the 1948 model year, when designer Harley Earl's team gave it a set of small rear fins inspired by the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter plane, launching the tailfin era that would define American car design through the 1950s and 60s.