1965 Cadillac Deville Convertible 429 Motor Unrestored Nice Car Buy It Now on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Don Draper's 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville up for auction

Few have ever nor ever will embody the sheer confidence and style of Don Draper, the main character on the hit AMC drama Mad Men. But if you can't quite match his style, at least you can drive his car. Now that the series has now concluded its eight-year run, the studio behind it is selling off a whole mess of artifacts from the show through ScreenBid, a specialist Hollywood memorabilia auctioneer. There's a good 1,300 lots up for grabs, from props to costumes. But the lot that's caught our attention is this 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Don picked this car up in the fifth season and drove it until the penultimate episode. These are the wheels he (spoiler alert!) drove across the country, got repaired in Oklahoma, and ultimately gave to a kid working at the motel before making his way by bus to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the final episode. At the time of writing, bidding had reached $25,000 with four days still to go. Cadillac first used the de Ville as a trim level on the Series 62 before spinning it off into its own model line. 1965 was the first year of the third-generation de Ville, stretching a massive 224 inches (over 18 and a half feet!) long. Powering over 4,600 pounds of personal American luxury was an equally massive 7.0-liter V8 that drove 340 horsepower through a three-speed automatic transmission. The name wasn't retired until 2005 when the final DeVille (as it was styled by then) was replaced by the DTS, which itself was shorthand for DeVille Touring Sedan. Cadillac produced the last DTS in 2011, finally putting to rest a name that had, in one form or another, been used since 1949. Few cars had the kind of presence that the third-gen Coupe de Ville did, though, and Draper knew it. Or at least the show's producers did.

2014 Cadillac CTS images leak from somewhere

The redesigned 2014 Cadillac CTS will be unveiled this Tuesday on the eve of the New York Auto Show, but as often happens, some images of the car have leaked onto the web a few days early. Previously, the only information we had on the 2014 CTS concerned the all-new twin-turbo V6 engine that will be found underhood, rated at 420 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque.
While none show the new car in its entirety, the images do show much of the front end, particularly the headlights that feature vertical bars of LEDs that start down low as foglights and continue up to the top of the front fenders. They're similar to the lighting design first shown on the XTS and ATS, except the lower portions are much taller.
There are also views of the rear end and one of the taillights, as well as an interior shot of the front passenger door. The latter image has us most intrigued, as it shows some very high end materials being used in the new CTS interior. The low-gloss wood trim, in particular, looks very premium.

GM won't really kill off the Chevy Volt and Cadillac CT6, will it?

General Motors is apparently considering killing off six slow-selling models by 2020, according to Reuters. But is that really likely? The news is mentioned in a story where UAW president Dennis Williams notes that slumping US car sales could threaten jobs at low-volume factories. Still, we're skeptical that GM is really serious about killing those cars. Reuters specifically calls out the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Impala, Chevrolet Sonic, and the Chevrolet Volt. Most of these have been redesigned or refreshed within the past few model years. Four - the LaCrosse, Impala, CT6, and Volt - are built in the Hamtramck factory in Detroit. That plant has made only 35,000 cars this year - down 32 percent from 2016. A typical GM plant builds 200,000-300,000 vehicles a year. Of all the cars Williams listed, killing the XTS, Impala, and Sonic make the most sense. They're older and don't sell particularly well. On the other hand, axing the other three seems like an odd move. It would leave Buick and Cadillac without flagship sedans, at least until the rumored Cadillac CT8 arrives. The CT6 was a big investment for GM and backing out after just a few years would be a huge loss. It also uses GM's latest and best materials and technology, making us even more skeptical. The Volt is a hugely important car for Chevrolet, and supplementing it with a crossover makes more sense than replacing it with one. Offering one model with a range of powertrain variants like the Hyundai Ioniq and Toyota Prius might be another route GM could take. All six of these vehicles are sedans, Yes, crossover sales are booming, but there's still a huge market for cars. Backing away from these would be essentially giving up sales to competitors from around the globe. The UAW might simply be publicly pushing GM to move crossover production to Hamtramck to avoid closing the plant and laying off workers. Sales of passenger cars are down across both GM and the industry. Consolidating production in other plants and closing Hamtramck rather than having a single facility focus on sedans might make more sense from a business perspective. GM is also trying to reduce its unsold inventory, meaning current production may be slowed or halted while current cars move into customer hands. There's a lot of politics that goes into building a car. GM wants to do what makes the most sense from a business perspective, while the UAW doesn't workers to lose their jobs when a factory closes.