Cadillac Eldorado Parts | GM Parts House

What is the history of the Cadillac Eldorado?

The Eldorado model was part of the Cadillac line from 1953 to 2002. The Cadillac Eldorado was the longest running American personal luxury car as it was the only one sold after the 1998 model year. Its main competitors included the Lincoln Mark Series and the lower-priced Buick Riviera.

The name was proposed for a special show car built in 1952 to mark Cadillac's Golden Anniversary; it was the result of an in-house competition won by Mary-Ann Zukosky (married name = Marini), a secretary in the company's merchandising department. Another source, Palm Springs Life magazine, attributes the name to a resort destination in California's Coachella Valley that was a favorite of General Motors executives, the Eldorado Country Club. In any case, the name was adopted by the company for a new, limited-edition convertible that was added to the line in 1953.

The name Eldorado was derived from the Spanish words "el dorado", "the gilded one" or "the golden one"; the name was given originally to the legendary chief or "cacique" of a South American Indian tribe. Legend has it that his followers would sprinkle his body with gold dust on ceremonial occasions and he would wash it off again by diving into a lake. The name more frequently refers to a legendary city of fabulous riches, somewhere in South America, that inspired many European expeditions, including one to the Orinoco by England's Sir Walter Raleigh.

Having lost its only remaining 2-door platform mate, the Buick Riviera, after the 1999 model year, rumors of the Eldorado's imminent demise began to circulate. GM showed a lowered, customized Eldorado-based concept at the 2000 North American International Auto Show, which was called EldoRODo, to little media or public interest. Not long after, GM announced that the Eldorado's 50th model year, 2002, would be its last. To mark the end of the historic name, a limited production run 1,596 of cars in red or white - the colors available on the original 1953 convertible - were produced in three batches of 532, signifying the Eldorado's first year of production. The last cars had exhausts that were specially tuned to imitate the note of their illustrious forerunners from a half-century earlier and dash-mounted plaques indicating each car's sequence in production. Production ended on April 22, 2002 retooling the Lansing Craft Centre to build the Chevrolet SSR.