A 1989 or 1990 Cadillac Fleetwood coupe in Medium Garnet Red Metallic. You can narrow down the year because they restyled the Fleetwood in '89 and bumped the engine displacement to 4.9 liters in 1991; this one has a "4.5 Litre" badge on the decklid.
The '89 refresh was a light update of the Fleetwood & DeVille, which had gone to the front wheel drive GM C-body platform in the 1985 model year. It was a mishmash of confused styling cues, blending a more modern aero snoot with throwback rear fender skirts and fin-like taillamp extensions. Sales of the model had been slumping but the refresh gave them a boost.
The 1989 version of the 273 cubic inch Caddy HT-4500 V-8 had a throttle-body fuel injector and was rated at 155 horsepower. For 1990 it got port fuel injection and a new intake manifold to go with it, which boosted output to 180bhp.
The "Fleetwood" name itself was actually that of a coachbuilder, Fleetwood Metal Body, in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania that had been bought by Fisher Body, with the latter being absorbed into General Motors.
Fleetwood Metal Body was moved to Detroit in '31, and originally only made the bodies for the highest-end Cadillac models, like this V-16 powered '32 Fleetwood Madame X.
It wasn't until Cadillac introduced the front wheel drive C-body DeVille that "Fleetwood" became a model of its own, basically a more upmarket version of the DeVille, with extra bling and more standard features. It's kind of a downer that the "Fleetwood" name went from gracing only the most upscale Caddies to sharing a platform with the Buick Park Avenue and Olds 98.
For a fun bit of trivia, the Fleetwood coupe found only 2,438 buyers for the 1990 model year, make it the least common body style of Caddy sold that year, even being outsold by the limited production Allante.
This example was photographed in the SoBro neighborhood of Indianapolis in December of 2021 using an Olympus E-510 and a Zuiko Digital 12-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens.
No comments:
Post a Comment