Projects 1960 Cadillac - How much are these things going for, anyway?

IMG_0570 by Abomination posted Jun 10, 2016 at 4:33 PM

So, I'm thinking of selling my car after a good many years for only $5k to s****e together a downpayment for a running Eldorado.

Folks say I could get much more for it than $5k, but I say they're full of it.

Are these things really going up in value, or are people crazy?

~Jason

 

Tell us more about it.

 

It has a '64 429/TH400 swap (a one-year-only combo that swaps right in). It'll run with fluids and plugs, and it'll stop if you replace the soft brake parts, as all the hard parts are new (the master cylinder and wheel cylinders and shoes were all new when it was parked to replace the rear end, which has been replaced, as well as the rare, 1-year-only flexplate which was missing some teeth).

It has typical rust, with nothing that can't be fixed/patched. The front floors are a little crunchy, but those are commonly available.

Folks like the price, but nobody's buying. I can't figure out why. I mean, it's not come clapped out POS - and it's been in heated and cooled garages for 20 years!

 

Please post more pics. The fact that it's a 2 door will certainly help the value. I would say put it on eBay with no reserve and see what it goes for. I'm thinking you could easily get $10k or more for it. Good luck....

 

Therein lies the rub: I need exactly $5k for the downpayment on this Eldorado I want. So me selling it for $5k is my compromise between getting all I need out of it, vs not having to wait too long to sell it (anybody could by that Eldorado out from under me in the meantime).

~Jason

 

So $5k is only the down payment on the Eldo? If you give the seller a couple of hundred bucks as a deposit will he hold it for you for a couple of weeks?

 

I seriously doubt you could get $10K for it, $5K sounds like a reasonable price to the right buyer but that's the rub....

Given the amount of rust mentioned and seen and the non-stock motor, I'd put it around $3-4K.

My experience is if you get no calls, you're way too high. Calls, but mostly no-shows, still high. First guy that shows up buys it, you're too low... LOL...

 

If I give them $5k they'll hold it. Lol!

I gave up trying to build anything, dude. I've only gotten a chance to work on that car like 6 times in 20 years.

This is a finished '60 Eldorado, at a dealership. And I can get it for the same monthly payments as a new car... I just have to pay for ten years instead of like, 6.

It's a killer deal for the Eldo - for the price of a new Dodge Ram!

So I'm p***ing it on with a killer deal on my Series 62.

I just don't want to sell it, then the Eldo is gone, and I have a small pile of money that'll just get spent on bills or something. Then ****, the dream's gone.

~Jason

 

Ain't THAT the truth?

~Jason

 

Put fluids and brakes on it. You could easily ask another $500.00 for it, and a running and stopping car will sell a lot faster.

 

Is the one you're looking at blue and in Iowa?

 

I've been trying to find the time to do that for 5 years, unsuccessfully. That's why I'm giving up after 20+ years and selling it.

~Jason

 

That would be the one.

Hell of a deal, too... But I took the link out of the quote, lest I help their viewership. Lol!

Years ago I spent a week of ****** knuckles on a stuck bumper bolt. When I realized I could've cut it off and bought a new one for a nickel, I vowed never to do that again.

The family can't fit in the extended-cab Ranger anymore, and my wife gets tired of always driving us around whenever we all need to go somewhere, so I needed to get something bigger.

So when I found out I could get a finished '60 ELDORADO for the same monthly payment as a new Dodge Ram, it was a no-brainer. But, they need 10% down... and I'm having them change the color, because if I'm paying it off forever, it may as well be exactly what I want... And how else could I finance a nice paint job?

I work like, all the time. But I have no time to do much else besides change plugs and oil.

I figure this way I can at least get the Cadillac I want before I die, you know?

Besides, I can get it paid off before the kids are in college and there are "other licensed drivers" in the house ruining my insurance rates!

~Jason

L

 

this is a tuff time to sell. as you can see by my long running ads. try e-bay but with a reserve high enough to make up the fees and still have $5Gs left.

 

I removed the link from my post. I don't think that shade of blue is an original color. I had a light blue '59 Caddy a few years ago that looked pretty sharp. What color would you have it repainted to?

 

A friend of mine even put it up for sale in Germany! Lol!

I'm THIS close to eBaying it!

~Jason

 

Sienna Rose, with a dark grey vinyl top, like the Eldo Seville that sold a few years back in Arizona.

And thanks!

~Jason

 

If you at least get it on the road, then you'll get your 5k. If the color of the body panels matched maybe 6k. There are a lot of nice 60 Cad drivers on EBay that sell for around 10k. I'm a Craigslist addict, 3/4's of the cars listed under 6k are "easy fixes" "only need a few things to be on the road". If that's true I always wondered why sellers just don't fix 'em, easier to sell a car that's on the road and registered. (No paperwork is a whole other deal)
Also, even a restored old car is gonna leave you stranded a lot, decide not to start some mornings, they just aren't like Honda Civics. We've all been there. I daily drive my 60 Caddy, rebuilt everything two or three times myself, but I would say I can rely on it to be unavailable at least 15% of the time. Ornery.

 

get off the computer, get out there and get the car running and driving and stopping.

 

The '60 is my favorite. If you drive it to Las Vegas I'd pay the 5 grand and pay for your hotel while you're here. Don't know where I would store it, but that could be worked out. How's the interior?

 

He's right. I've got little kids too, when they were born, my car just sat unmoving needing an engine rebuild and other stuff for years and years. I work at least 12 hrs a day, 6-7 days a week, when I get home I am totally zonked, visit with the fam then collapse into bed. It's hard, but if I can get my *** down to the garage after the kiddos are sleeping and start messing around, I usually can get a second wind, so last year I finally rebuilt the motor, trans, brakes, interior, just about everything else. I got it done at night. I was tired sometimes the next day but it wasn't so bad because I was jazzed about my car, now I drive the kids in my heap to school, baseball, scouts, car shows and we have a ball. Your Coupe will be better than that Eldo when you are done because you will have done it with your own hands. Don't get me wrong though, if I could swing the $ I would have an Eldo in a second.

 

EXACTLY.

That's what I'd planned on doing. The kids are older now and can help, but we're always doing stuff with Scouts, etc. Several months out of the year, I come home from working all day, then work another 6 hours on Scout stuff (the kids' mom is a leader), go to bed, then do it again the next day and all day on the weekend.

I'm getting older, and more tired by the day. If it's taken me 20+ years to change out a rear end and drop a transmission, I'll never finish. Plus: ELDORADO. Damn... it already has everything but cruise, and I can get that from Jim's Antiques in Texas. There's no Autronic Eye/Guide-Matic setup, but I have that in a box, as well as nice replacements for some of the driver-quality trim.

It's mostly about time. I have time to be at work. I don't have time to be in the garage anymore. So yeah, it might be like I'm selling out, but I'll have the exact car I want now, and paid off in 10 years. But if I built mine it would take another 20 before I had time, and then I wouldn't want to work on it, anymore. Plus, whatever money I chuck into this Eldorado I'll be money ahead vs what I'd put into my Series 62. And the Eldo already has everything I want (power vents, fog lights, power (well, vaccuum) locks (they were electric in '59... screw you, GM), power trunk popper/pulldown... even the factory AC I wanted)!

I'd still get to work on the Eldo, just not with the intensity I'd have to do on my Series 62. But the fact is if something broke, I'd have the love to fix it. It's an Eldorado! The same money sank into a Series 62 vs an Eldo, you come out ahead in value with the latter every time, anyway. And it's a lot less overwhelming to have to fix ONE thing on the car you've lusted after for 20 years vs everything on a car that will only ever be a Series 62 - the cheap model, with nothing on it.

So, I'm jumping at the chance to have an Eldorado. If I can unload my car.

~Jason

 

Heck, I was talking about what you need to do to be able to unload your car. And here you are, on the computer again!

 

Dude... it's taken me 5 years to get fluids and pugs in it, and hook up that fuel line, and I've never had the chance. The only chances I've gotten were small snippets of time, but I always kind of get yelled at whenever I go out there, because I have other responsibilities... and they're right.

There's a huge frustration level surrounding it these days, and I'm just giving up.

The new house we'll be moving to has no usable garage. The one we're in has a 2-car one under the house with AC and heat, and a 24 x 30 shop. So I need to liquidate everything. I figured if I did that and got this Eldorado, I'd have at least this one, good thing... you know, turn all my parts stash and projects into payments for it, so I didn't completely give up. Plus it might strengthen my persuasive argument to build a pole barn in the back yard...

So it's not that I'm lazy - I work my *** off. But there's a lot of other contributing factors that are driving my liquidation. Hell, I have a 8' x 1-' room of vintage Apple stuff I'm also liquidating - I may be giving it all away. I'm one of maybe 2 people within several hundred miles of KC that still work on everything Apple's made going back to the 70s, and I'm ditching my shop. All I've done for 33 years is Apple Service, but sometimes you just get too much stuff, you know?

~Jason

 

Ha!

I do Apple service for a large company. None of them break, so I get paid to watch YouTube.

There are less than 500 folks globally with the certifications I have - if they paid you this amount to sit on your *** and write emails, etc every day, you'd be on the computer, too! LOL!

~Jason

 

But, I agree.

I had a conversation with a guy last night that has cash money for it it it just RUNS. Dude crawled out of the woodwork, turns out I went to high school with him!

I want that Eldorado bad enough, I just might take him up on it...

Meanwhile, in one day this car got almost 700 looks in Europe, and people keep asking questions about it. Apparently they buy worse, and do amazing things to these cars... and they're not even in Cuba!

~Jason

 

I sold off most of my meager Apple collection a few years ago.

But seriously, how much room does the car take up? How much can you get out of it? How much is it keeping you from being able to do, because you won't get your **** out there for three or four hours? The sensible thing to do is to not do anything else but get it running and stopping, so you can unload it. Sleep is optional, you know.

 

I reluctantly agree.

We'll have two houses for a while, as I plan on renting the one we're in. I kind of figured if I can't sell this car, I'll probably go over and work on it while I'm supposed to be "getting the place ready for rent". No kids will be running around, and it would be just me and a radio. I have a feeling it might take quite a while to paint just one room, if you know what I mean.

It takes up a lot of room, but it's kind of like a dog - if you have a great big dog, and you love that dog enough, the size doesn't matter, and eventually you don't notice.

And I know I can get more out of it if it's running and driving. I can take it to a few cruise nights with a for sale sign in the window. And anything I get out of it extra, is more of a downpayment for an Eldorado... even if I lose this one, another one of the 1075 built (there's way less out there than that now, but they come up) will come along. The Mrs says I should sell it all and put it in a savings account without online access to keep it sacred, which I just may do. God knows, I don't want to sell it all and have to spend all the money on bills and end up with nothing (which is my main fear).

Then again, if it's running and driving, a Series 62 is better than no '60 Cadillac at all...

~Jason

 

Just from a financial point of view, how much is that eldo gonna be worth when it's paid off in 10 years after sitting outside and being a daily driver....and I guarantee you will have to fix stuff on it in the future, 'cause it won't have a warranty, like the Dodge you mentioned.