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Hey guys I'm looking for some advice, comments or opinions.

Background: I have 3 cars.....my 1971 Cadillac Coupe DeVille is awesome, and I love it dearly. However I have only put about 5,000 miles on it in almost 6 years. I bought it as a "driver", at one time it was car #2 of 2 (both wife and I work). I paid $3,000 for it, and planned on restoring or modifying it to my specs. The Cadillac has never broke down, in fact it was my back up car a few times when the Armada was in the shop (bodywork) and also when I was troubleshooting/repairing my Camry (bad distributor). I have no garage to work on this thing.....and living on an Air Force Base has a lot of cons. One of the biggest cons is not allowing work on cars (aside from battery/sparkplug change, you know simple stuff). But a vehicle can't look like a parts car.

Dilemma: This car does more sitting than anything. I have watched the dash crack, the headliner thread break at the seems, and just generally waste away in the Cali sun (but lucky no rust). Clearly gas is very high, so it's not practical for me to drive it more than I do to keep it running. Every year some Bay Area Clean Air organization offers me $650 to "buy back" my Cadillac. It's a "gross polluter" as it has no smog equipment (smog exempt), so they figure pay me a few dollars is worth scrapping the old girl for the sake of cleaning up the air. :rolleyes: I hate the thought of this American beauty melted down and turned into 14 Hyundais. I'd love to sell it a person who wants to keep this thing on the road..........but I got to be real; gas prices are obscene right now. Hell I'm not even looking to get back my $3k, but I think it's time to let the beast go.

What would you do? Or what advice would you give? :confused:
 

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clean her up, buy a nice quality car cover, disconnect the battery, and enjoy her when you can afford to. You may not even be able to unload her, and w/ gas prices the way they are someone who could may low ball you. I have put only 16k on my baja since I acquired here ten years ago, but I understand your dilema. Is she costing you anything other than insurance and tabs?


BTW early 70's caddys are untouchable!! Here is mine w/ my buddy's two caddy's. I am sure you all have seen this before but it is still cool!


 

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Certainly the car is worth decent money to someone outside of California where such awesome rust-free old cars are not everywhere...
+1 the 1971-76 Cadillac begins to be on the collector's radar.

although a more drastic (and very costly) solution is to do a swap engine to a Duramax engine similar to what Pimp My Ride and Jonathan Goodwin converted a 1965 Impala to use biodiesel.
 
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