There is a man in Volo, Illinois, who drives the modified Cadillac DeVille that Elvis Presley drove over half a century ago. And as strange as it may seem, it is a station wagon, even though Cadillac did not build DeVille station wagons in the 1970s. But Elvis needed the space to transport music equipment. So he went searching for a solution.
The car rolled off the production line in 1974 as a four-door sedan. He purchased it and immediately sent it off to a coach builder, American Sunroof Company. The firm took four to five months to complete the build. The model is now 19.3 feet (5,883 millimeters) long and weighs 5,174 pounds (2,347 kilograms).
Elvis needed the extra space to haul his music equipment and luggage back and forth to the airport. His TBC logo, standing for “Taking Care of Business,” which was a motto for him, showed up on both front doors, right under the handles.
The car features a pink vinyl top and a matching double pinstripe along the white-painted body. There is a hump with a luggage rack above the rear seats and trunk. The edge of the bump is where the coach builder welded the extra roof. A Chevrolet Caprice seems to have been the donor for the wagon portion of the DeVille.
There are no pillars between the windows, and the rear window slides up into the roof, while the tailgate slides down at the push of a button, which is probably the coolest feature of the car.
The Cadillac is powered by a 472-cubic-inch (7.7-liter) V8, which generates 205 horsepower and is linked to a three-speed automatic, making the car capable of hitting a top speed of 112 mph (180 kph).
The Cadillac was locked away for decades
The former sedan/current station wagon DeVille now belongs to Brian Grams. But it took quite some time until it got in his hands. A collector purchased the Caddy at an auction three months after Elvis passed away. It had 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) on the clock. He paid $50,000 to take it home.
He stored it in a temperature-controlled garage and that is where it spent its time. He wasn’t driving it, wasn’t taking it anywhere. Just kept it locked away. Nobody knew anything about it. Even the musician’s historians had lost track of it.
Then it was Aaron Van Zandt who bought it from him in 1991 for $100,000. Years later, he decided to sell it through an ad on Craiglist. That is where Brian Grams saw it.
The listing described a 1974 Cadillac DeVille station wagon, which was for sale. It wasn’t until the very end it that mentioned it was previously owned by Elvis Presley. He had been trying to track down that car for ages and, all of a sudden, it just showed up in front of his very eyes.
The car had been intriguing him for quite some time since he saw a photo of several Cadillacs parked in front of the star’s Graceland home. One of them was different: it was a station wagon with quite a story.
One day in 1974, Elvis went to Madison Cadillac in Kansas City to take delivery of a car. But that day he bought not one, but five Cadillacs. He reportedly transferred four of those cars to friends and family, but kept one for himself. One that was eventually converted into a station wagon. Elvis paid $17,000 for the Caddy sedan, plus more than $10,000 for the conversion.
An ad on Craiglist brought the car to Brian
Brian contacted the owner and offered him $200,000. He had to make sure it was the King’s car, so he thoroughly checked the documentation. He saw the original invoice, with Elvis Presley’s signature on it. The owner had the registration forms and insurance, while the Tennessee sticker was still in the window. Everything seemed fine, and they made the deal on the spot.
Now, Brian, the man who runs the classic car Volo Museum, drives the car that Elvis drove, one of the few gazillion Cadillacs that belonged to the King himself but is not stored in some museum across America.
Luxurious, heavy, and very comfortable. That is how Brian describes the car that Elvis used to drive. “I just really wish this car could drive,” he says. If it did, we would probably hear a story about Elvis driving with sunshades on and a hand out the window, blasting music on his way to the airport.
It’s hard for those who see the car to believe that it once belonged to the King of Rock’n Roll. They expected something flashy, flamboyant, something that would turn heads and make jaws drop. This one doesn’t have that effect on people until Brian shows them a copy of the invoice.