This is a 1964 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Convertible the last model year to carry the Biarritz name before Cadillac retired it after a nine-year run. Factory documentation places its assembly in the third week of May 1964, identifying it as the 185th example built out of 1,870 total for the model year. It's finished in Firemist Blue, a premium metallic from Cadillac's Firemist series, over a blue leather interior with a matching convertible top. Factory-optioned equipment includes air conditioning, Soft Ray tinted glass, and seat belts.
The 429 cubic inch OHV V8 under the hood was brand new for 1964 Cadillac's largest displacement to that point, up from the outgoing 390. It ran a Carter four-barrel carburetor, 10.5:1 compression, and was rated at 340 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque. Backing it is the Turbo Hydra-Matic 400, which is itself a one-year-only curiosity: for 1964 only, Cadillac sourced the transmission from Buick and fitted it with an adapter ring while its own version was being finalized. The Eldorado, de Ville, and Sixty Special got it that year; the Series 62 and 75 carried on with the old Hydra-Matic. Cadillac's own THM arrived for 1965.
The 1964 Biarritz also carries one distinction within its era: it's the only year from 1959 onward that the Eldorado ran without rear fender skirts. Open rear wheels had been an Eldorado tradition dating back to the original 1953 car a deliberate way to set it apart from lesser Cadillacs but Cadillac standardized skirts across the line in 1959 and the Eldorado followed suit. For 1964 only, they removed them again before restoring them for 1965 and 1966. Combined with 1964 being the seventeenth and final year of Cadillac's tail fin, it makes this a genuinely singular car in the Eldorado lineage. With 71,000 original miles showing, this example presents as a legitimate survivor-quality driver rather than a trailer queen.
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