The Cadillac Mirage Is The Coupe DeVille Pickup Truck You Forgot Existed: Holy Grails

Whether you’re opting for a lower trim level or spec’ing out a fully loaded model, today’s pickup trucks all do a good job of combining daily-driver comfort and convenience with genuine get-stuff-done utility. This wasn’t always the way, however. Set the controls of your time machine (DeLorean, Victorian style, hot tub … whatever works) to the middle of the 20th century, and you’ll find the pickup trucks of the era were much closer to pure work vehicles, with the rough rides and dearth of carlike features to match. If you wanted a truck that had the luxuries and handling of a car, your options were a handful of coupé utilities – that is, a car with a pickup bed behind the front seats.

Cadillac didn’t join in on the mid-century American ute craze, but people were still interested in driving a truck with the luxury only a Cadillac provided. The aftermarket stepped up to the plate and a few companies created absurdly rare pickup trucks out of 1970s Cadillac Eldorado land yachts. Don’t adjust your monitor, this is real!

America is seeing a resurgence of the car-based pickup, but things are a little different nowadays. Today’s car-based pickups are based on the platforms of sedate crossovers. They also try to look more like burly trucks, but they still drive like cars and leave the heavy hauling to the body-on-frame truck affairs.

It would also appear that the purpose of the car-based pickup has shifted. Many of the pickup trucks of today are basically luxury cars with huge payload ratings and hefty towing capacities. You don’t need to buy a car-based truck to get carlike gear. Instead, today’s car-based trucks are affordable alternatives to big trucks.

In the 1970s, the American coupé utility was hitting its stride. While the coupé utility concept had already existed for several decades by that point, Ford successfully sparked public interest in the concept in December 1956 with the launch of the Ranchero. General Motors responded with the Chevrolet El Camino in 1959 and then the GMC Sprint in 1971. Notably absent from the race was Chrysler, which wouldn’t throw its own coupé utility into the ring until the 1980s, not long after Ford gave up on the niche class of truck in 1979.

In the 1970s, the GM coupé utility twins were leading the pack. The Ford Ranchero’s best sales year ever was 1973 with just 45,741 units being sold. Meanwhile, GM had no issues selling well over 50,000 units a year with the El Camino. Yet, both of these utes were basically a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the American auto industry, where automakers were used to selling hundreds of thousands of a single model a year.

Cadillac itself never entered into this market. While there was never an official explanation given, it isn’t terribly difficult to estimate why. Trucks were still work vehicles in these times and Cadillac’s image is not one of work. That didn’t stop a Cadillac dealer and some enthusiasts from making it happen and somehow getting Cadillac’s blessing in the process.

General Motors Sells Its Take On A Popular Idea

While the coupé utility took off in the late 1950s, it was not a new idea. Some of the very earliest American cars were sold with the option to equip them with practical trays. Buyers were able to buy Ford Model Ts with trays on the back and then there came a type of car called the roadster delivery. As the name suggest, these were seriously slick roadsters but with a utility bed bolted to the back. The coupé utility has been a part of American culture for longer than a century.

However, as is commonly reported, the concept of the coupé utility really took off when in the early 1930s, a Ford Australia engineer answered the call of farmers by making a car that could work during the week and then go into town after. The coupé utility took on its own development path in Australia.

Here in America, the car-based truck gained enough traction in the 1930s that Studebaker launched its own entry with the Coupé Pick-Up and Chevrolet had its Coupé Delivery.  Mac’s Motor City Garage says the Coupé Pick-Up sold 3,000 units in its first year and remained in production through 1942.

Moving to the mid-1950s, the coupé utility had waned and pickup trucks like the F-Series and the Chevy Task-Force series pickup trucks were hard at work. But Ford still saw demand for a truck that for more than just for work. The Ford Ranchero rolled out onto the scene in the last days of 1956 and the public was enamored.

As In The Garage Media writes, it’s been suggested that designer and executive Harley Earl suggested the creation of a GM coupé-based pickup in as early as 1952. While GM did experiment with variations on trucks like the 1955 Chevrolet Cameo Carrier, it would take the Detroit giant until October 16, 1958 to actually deliver a coupé utility to the public.

But being late didn’t hurt the El Camino. The launch El Camino benefited from the freshest styling of 1959 and was based on the new GM B platform Brookwood station wagon. This meant the El Camino had the footprint and superb styling of a full-size car, but as GM was proud to advertise, it also had a hefty payload of 1,150 pounds. But more than that, the original El Camino wasn’t just a wagon with its roof chopped off. The pickup featured an all-steel double-wall bed plus steel skids to protect the bed during loading.

Of course, the El Camino was still a car, too, so to complement the beautiful styling, El Camino buyers had access to 13 solid colors and 10 two-tone paint choices. When was the last time you’ve seen a truck for sale with a choice of 23 colors? Those buyers also had their choice of a 235 cubic inch straight-six that made 135 HP up to a 348 cubic inch V8 good for 315 HP. Of course, these power figures are in gross numbers rather than net.

Chevy was also clever with marketing. The El Camino wasn’t sold as its own pickup, but as part of the Task-Force truck series. Likewise, Chevy also wasn’t terribly creative with the El Camino’s marketing. GM says Chevy marketed the truck by calling it “more than a car — more than a truck,” which is exactly how Ford marketed its Ranchero. Despite being late, the work paid off because in its first year the El Camino sold 22,246 units.

While that’s not a lot of pickups, it was outstanding for this niche. Ford sold just 14,169 Rancheros in that same year. Heck, Ford sold 21,706 Rancheros in the first year of that ute. So, in its first year, the El Camino immediately became the market leader. Despite that, the El Camino’s sales cratered in 1960 due to a shrinking economy and the market moving toward more compact options. By this time, the Ford Ranchero maintained its sales after moving to the Falcon platform.

Chevy axed the El Camino after 1960, but the model came back swinging in 1964 right in time for the muscle car craze.

This time, it was based on the intermediate Chevelle, and once again the El Camino immediately regained the sales crown. The El Camino would remain the king of the utes until Ford finally gave up in 1979.

While the El Camino was a clear winner, some believed it didn’t go as far as it could. These coupé utilities mixed truck practicality with car comfort. But what if you took it further and turned the “Standard Of The World” into a truck?

The Luxury Ute

As the story goes, in the early 1970s, James Kribbs was the manager of Wilshire Cadillac. One day, Kribbs has lunch with a friend and artist named Jack Patrick. Over lunch, Kribbs talked about how cool it would be to have a Cadillac pickup truck and a Cadillac station wagon.

That might seem like that big of a deal today, when some pickup trucks are more luxurious than high-end cars. But this was the 1970s when trucks were still work vehicles and luxury cars were as far away from that as possible. These guys wanted to combine the concepts together, because I mean, what working person doesn’t want to glide down the road in comfort?

Anyway, Patrick was apparently excited about the idea and he spent that weekend sketching up what Cadillac trucks and a wagon could look like. He presented the sketches to Kribbs the following week, who loved what he saw so much that he founded a company, Traditional Coach Works, ltd. of Chatsworth, California, to make the sketches into real vehicles.

The next part involved finding someone who had the skills to make these vehicles real. For that, Kribbs and Patrick found famed car designer and fabricator Gene Winfield. You might know Winfield’s work best for his contributions to the film industry. He was the man behind the Shuttlecraft Galileo from Star Trek, the 6000 SUX from RoboCop, and over two dozen cars seen in Blade Runner.

Traditional Coach Works would get its wishes and get both trucks and wagons. The wagon was the Traditional Coachworks Cadillac Castilian, a long-roof six-seater Caddy built from 11 1976 Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham sedans. When Traditional Coachworks sent these rare wagons to dealers the price was $30,000 to pick one up, or close to double the price of a loaded Fleetwood 60 Special Brougham of the day.

The Traditional Coach Works model that was made in a greater quantity, but still absurdly rare, was the Cadillac Mirage pickup. For this one, Winfield started with a 1975 Cadillac Coupe deVille. Now, in case you were wondering, the Coupe deVille shared its platform with other C-body cars like the Buick Electra, not the A-body like the El Camino. Still, the Coupe deVille offered a front engine, rear wheel drive, and an optional 500 cubic inch V8 that was even bigger than the largest engine in the El Camino.

Now, just looking at the Mirage, you might think that Winfield just gutted the roof and the seats before installing the floor, but there’s a lot more custom coachbuilding going on here than meets the eye. Winfield indeed cut the car from behind the front seats. However, his metalwork involved widening the rear of the Coupe deVille’s body, patching in some length, and giving the truck a real bed with a real tailgate.

Sadly, while Traditional Coach Works published a brochure, it didn’t include any stats such as just how far Winfield stretched the Coupe deVille or what they suspected the payload was. However, an issue of Peterson’s Basic Bodywork & Painting printed in 1975 stated that Winfield achieved factory-quality results using a large planishing hammer to achieve smooth compound curves in minutes that would otherwise take several hours hammering out by hand.

Winfield’s other work to the Mirage included a secret spare tire carrier and about 15 examples had an additional hatch just behind the cab that fit something roughly the size of a golf bag. As for the bed, it was large enough to carry 4x8s flat or two dirt bikes.

Under the hood, the Mirages came with the largest engine available to the Coupe deVille. That 500 cubic inch V8 lump made a sad 210 HP and 380 lb-ft of torque. But hey, this was deep in the Malaise Era, so it might as well been a hot rod. Also unchanged from the factory Cadillac was the Turbo Hydra-Matic 400 transmission. The interior was also largely left alone until the backs of the front seats.

Next came selling the things and Traditional Coach Works would sell the trucks from Wilshire Cadillac but as well from other Cadillac dealers. Allegedly, while Cadillac was not involved in the project, it was willing to warranty everything not touched by Winfield’s hands. So, your powertrain and options were still covered. Technically, this means that for a short time, approximately 1975 to 1976, you could walk into a Cadillac dealer and buy a new truck. Sadly, Traditional Coach Works itself fizzled out after just a few years.

Of course, these utes were not cheap affairs. A base model Coupe deVille was $8,600 in 1975. The truck conversion added $9,000 to that price. So, if you really wanted a Cadillac truck, you had to pay the value of two Coupe deVilles to get it. Famed daredevil Evil Knievel didn’t care and he took home the very first Cadillac Mirage.

They Weren’t Alone

Surprisingly, Traditional Coach Works wasn’t the only company trying to get into this niche within a niche. The Caribou Motor Corporation, which was located in San Francisco, specialized in turning luxury cars like the Lincoln Mark series and the Cadillac Eldorado into pickup trucks. This company lasted longer, too, managing to do its craft from the 1960s into the 1980s.

The Caribou Motor Corporation created the Egidi Roadster Sportsmobile, which to the untrained eye looks similar to the Cadillac Mirage. But it isn’t. This one is even weirder because the Eldorado it was based on was a front-wheel-drive car.

Yet, there was even another Caddy pickup in the 1970s. Another was called the Cadillac Eldorado Comstock Pickup by Formal Coach Corporation. Not much is known about the Formal Coach Corporation, but it followed a similar path as Traditional Coach Works, making Caddy-based trucks and wagons in the 1970s. Of course, the aftermarket conversion game spread to Ford, too, with the also incredibly rare Durango Fox body pickup.

Despite the plethora of aftermarket companies offering luxury car truck conversions, it’s believed that none of them sold particularly well. No production numbers are offered for the Comstock or the Egidi, but it’s believed that just somewhere around 204 Mirages were built. Only 15 of them have the golf bag compartments.

If you’re lucky enough to find a Mirage, it looks like you can expect to pay $40,000 to $50,000 if you can find it in good condition. That’s not too bad for a crazy rare classic car.

Today, the concept of a luxury pickup isn’t anything special. All of the Big Three are willing to sell you a truck with the accoutrements of a luxury car, but that wasn’t always the case. If you wanted luxury, you had to get weird. I’d love to see something like this happen with today’s cute car-based trucks. Maybe a Lincolnized Ford Maverick?