My Diecast Car of the Day™ – 1970s Cadillac Sedan De Ville

My Diecast Car of the Day™ is a true classic American luxury car, the 1970s Cadillac Sedan deVille.

The 1970s were truly the halcyon days of the American motorcar industry. Back then, delirious excess and over-indulgence were the way to go. The cars were huge, long, tacky, overweight, velour trimmed, and vinyl-topped gas guzzling behemoths of the road. The Cadillac or Lincoln hood alone was around six feet long.

Thanks to the oil crisis, environmental propaganda and the U.S. Government, American automakers were forced to make cars smaller, safer, and more fuel efficient, you know, to do things the way foreign companies did things. American car companies should have been allowed to create machines that Americans wanted and let the free market decide.

Take the old school 1970s Cadillac Sedan de Ville. What a machine. Damned thing is something like 225 inches long – a few inches longer than a modern Suburban! Okay, my car is a Matchbox 1/64th diecast replica and it's quite small, but it is to scale, dammit.

My Matchbox 1/64th scale diecast car is pretty nice. It is small, but the attention to detail is awesome. It looks great from every angle. The paint job is top-notch. The grille and bumper treatment is very well done. Even though this is a 1/64th scale car the details would look good on a larger diecast model.

The real Cadillac Sedan de Ville had huge seats and a vast, roomy interior: a pleasure dome of hedonistic excess – miles of grotty plastics and vinyl.

Back in the day American automakers offered just about every option thinkable. Want a Chartreuse colored velour interior with power adjustable armchairs? Got it. Want an AM/FM radio with a state-of the-art Quadraphonic 8 track (the iPod of its day)? It’s yours. How about thick pile Hunter Green shag carpeting? No problem.

All that for around $6000? Not a bad deal.

So, I salute you Cadillac Sedan de Ville. You served you country well. And Matchbox has created a swell 1/64th scale tribute to a fine American classic.