1978 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz by Stamp

With the occasional exception, I've not been a great lover of Cadillac styling. Not am I a fan of the 1970s era of full-size car styling - excessive length and ludicrously long, boxy noses. So you wouldn't expect this model to feature on my wish list, but I rather belatedly caught JK's video"unboxing" and I guess the combination of glorious excess and and an attractive colour scheme temporarily overpowered my critical faculties, and I ordered one.

I got it from Legacy Motors. Their basic price was pretty good, but their regular store doesn't ship to the UK. Maybe their billing system doesn't let them add UK import tax (VAT) at the point of sale. Or maybe they can't be bothered. But their eBay store was happy to calculate the tax and ship the package, although I was less happy with their $33 shipping compared with Goldvarg's $19 shipping to Europe. But there you are.

I know this model has featured here before but I thought it was worth showing again, because I think that even if the subject matter is a bit OTT, it is exceptionally well modelled. And because I wanted to take some photos. And having taken them I thought I would post them. So there.

The bodywork on this Stamp model is crisp, the shape looks accurate and well-proportioned (allowing for the fact that the car's actual proportions are preposterous) and the paint is flawless. The dark areas are an extremely fine-grained metallic paint which doesn't look crude or "sparkly" from any angle.

For a moment I thought there was a casting flaw on my model

but they are on both sides, and turn out to be the housings for the headlamp/indicator tell-tales. A bit of a silly gimmick that spoils the flow of the body line, but that's what it is.

The front end is nicely done, and the grille has a deep, solid texture rather than being a flat, 2-dimensional P/E piece.

The black dot in the centre of the windshield isn't a defect or a reflection, by the way, it's the mounting for the interior mirror.

Is that full-colour hood emblem over-scale? Maybe by a couple of percentage points, but it's still pretty impressive.

Wheels, pinstriping and interior are all well represented.

Although this particular colour combo took my fancy, I did wonder about the 2-tone blue, which looks particularly cool and sophisticated and maybe a touch less "in your face".

The 2-tone beige also looks quite restrained and tasteful. Or dull, depending on taste.

The only one that didn't appeal at all was the red version. The colour makes the car look quite heavy (as indeed it was) and the rear roof section - in pictures at least - looks unfortunately like an unpainted white plastic insert. But I can hear someone gearing up to tell me never to trust internet photos!

Anyway, if you're not too keen on this particular period of car styling (quantity rather than quality) , but want something representative of the era, this is a great specimen to have.