Talking Cadillacs

This former Old Cars Weekly editor joined current Old Cars Weekly editor Angelo Van Bogart at the Cadillac LaSalle Club Grand National meet in Milwaukee last week. Whenever Angelo and myself get together, we have a lot of mutual respect for what we did during our editorial tenures, but there’s also an age gap between us.

We got to talking about how we got into collector cars and we determined that the age gap is about 20 years. There is also a passion gap, as Angelo is a tried-and-true Cadillac fanatic compared to my own habit of collecting Pontiacs and MGs. However, for some reason, we both like 1980s Chevy Caprices.

The Cadillac meet was held in Brookfield, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee. It was a first time Cadillac meet for me, while Angelo has been to a number of them. The turnout of cars seemed huge to me, but Angelo said that he had been to much larger Cadillac nationals.

It was easy to see that Angelo was having the most fun. He was in his element checking out the details of different models, point judging the show cars and talking to Cadillac owners. To me, a lot of the cars seemed alike. After all, Cadillac used some similar design motifs—such as tailfins—for years and years.

One thing that impressed me at the show was the number of cars, of all eras, that were nicely preserved, rather than restored. Apparently, a lot of Cadillac owners lavish wonderful care on their machines,

That should come as no surprise to me, because my girlfriend Linda Clark has a 1997 Cadillac DeVille Concours that looks like brand new. She doesn’t drive the car a dozen times a year and she keeps it spotless when it’s in the garage. She often covers things with sheets to keep them from getting dirty.

Linda is absolutely meticulous when it comes to using and storing her Pearl White pride and joy and it shows. In fact, if she had entered her car in the Cadillac meet. It’s likely that she would have taken first place in that class. When you see a Cadillac meet, you realize that people just love these cars.