The
Little Caddy That Could
"YOU'RE GONNA DIE CLOWN!!!"
- Happy Gilmore
Make: Cadillac
Model: Coupe DeVille
Year: 1980
Engine: 368 w/4bbl
This was Jim's first derby and this was his first derby car. You should know a little about the car and how he came to wreck it. I bought the car in 1996 for $850 to be my everyday driver. The car had a few issues, but drove wonderfully. It had a beautiful white leather interior with an awesome burgundy exterior, plus a kicking stereo. Due to a resouces issue the car would be forced to sit through most of the winter in my dad's driveway. I drove the car through out the spring, summer, and winter of '97. In the spring I noticed that the rear bumper started sagging. I looked under the car and discovered that rear frame on the driver side had all but rotted away! This was not how it looked when I bought the car! I could only surmise that the frame was weak to begin with and just fell apart as the car was used more. Trust me, it really sucked to have found that. The car had some memories in it. I brought my baby daughter home in it. Jim and I used to drive down to the train bridge in Wareham and go striper fishing until four in the morning. We knew the car was essentially crippled, but she still drove like a lady. I made an attempt at trying to repair the frame, but it was just too extensive. From the bumper mount to the hump was, for the most part, gone. It was pretty much hopeless. In 1998, just about when the sticker was about to run out, we decided to try to sell it as a running parts car as it would never pass inspection. The car sat for sale for close to three months and we only recieved one phone call and THAT person never showed up. My wife and I agreed that if the car was still not sold by May then I could derby it as all it was doing was taking up space and was technically illegal to drive. I had been building our Olds Regency 98 into a monster and I started slowly tearing the caddy down.
Along comes Jim. He had been interested in the derbies that I was involved in. I really wanted to get someone - anyone involved, other than myself. The caddy had already been consigned to be trashed so I figured what the hell. It would keep the boy out of trouble and I knew he would have fun. So I offered the car to Jim. I told him if he could finish building the car then he could have her. I was pretty straight with him. I told flat out that I thought the car would last all of three seconds on the track. He didn't care, he just wanted to have fun. I helped him alone the way when I could. I was still putting the finishing touches on my Route 98.
After a long look-see at the rear, we decided that Jim would go on a wing and a prayer. The whole bumper was secured with a single bolt. I was, more or less, hoping that the bumper would just fall off. I showed Jim how to drop the battery where the A/C is and various other 'little' things that would make a world of difference. The caddy came along slowly, so slowly, that I thought that Jim might not drive it. So, I resumed building it with the intention to drive it myself. I drove Route 98 and the poor olds got rearraged rather nasty like. Jim finally reappeared and assured everyone that the caddy was his. Sure enough, ol Jim was true to his word. After helping me piece my Olds back together, he went to my folks house and finished building our version of 'Cadzilla'.
The infamous Caddy. Jim did the awesome paint job.
She's a formidable looking beast. That blue and white front tire came off of Route 98.
Another view of the Caddy.
The Caddy was running superb on race race. We could not find a single mechanical fault with the car. My dad and I were mainly concerned with keeping the car drivable as long as possible. We told Jim that he should use his nose at all costs. The biggest worry was that the initial reverse hit would put the rear down in the dirt. Well, the car still had one somewhat solid frame rail so I told Jim to angle the first shot so the weak side wouldn't take the full brunt of the impact. Otherwise, he was to destroy the car, as it was the last day of the derbies. The Everett's guy that we paid to tow the car to the track was horrendously late. In fact, we were the last car there and the officials were even waiting for us. The Everett's had radioed ahead and told them that there was one more car on it's way. Needless to say, they were a bit pissed at us when we arrived. The car failed inspection on only one violation. We had forgot to remove the wheel weights, so that was easily fixable.
A good shot of the Caddy's rotted out rear. See the bumper sag?
There's Jim rearing to go. The boy's adrenaline was through the roof that day.
Another shot of an excited Jim.
Yup, she looked mean. We all hoped she did as good as she looked.
There's Jim painting his number on. He was frothing at this point.
The Caddy is now ready to do battle.
We had a good chance to observe the competition when he got there. There wasn't a lot of cars there, with the majority of them being survivors of the mud pits from the previous week. We also noticed that not only did Jim have the slickest paint job there, but his car was the biggest on the field. Absolutely everyone there was staring enviously at the car and not a single one of them knew it's fatal weakness. We lept our mouths shut and gushed at how well the car ran. We were asked at least 20 or so times about what heat we drew and we were told that they were glad not to be in our heat!! Since Jim had drawn the second heat, we were able to play up some of this psychological warfare some more. The second consisted of a couple B-body GM's and a bunch of Oldsmobiles that ranged from mid-sized to downright tiny (one brave fellow in a mid '80's Cutlass Ciera).
Jim started the heat off just as planned. On the way in, he cut his wheel and took the first blow the the good half the bumper. After that, 'Jim Fury' took over. He never even thought about using his reverse gear. I think he forgot about it. He was plowing into people left and right. Since he never went into reverse, he simply shoved folks out of the way and kept going. The car ran beautifully, as he never stalled it and it was running relatively cool. I was nervous about that. The 368 has all of it's components mounted on the front, distributor and everything. The damage he was inflicting to the smalled cars was horrendous. Cars were scattering before him like birds. He did get a couple of warnings for administering a few love taps to the driver door. That big caddy was holding up remarkably well and wasn't getting any weaker, whilest eevryone one else was getting battered into the ground. He did take a few shots to the rear, but these surprisenly didn't force the rear down like I thought.
There's Jim busting somebody's truck open.
KILL! KILL! KILL!
The track is so full of tasty victims!
The heat was a mean one. It really looked as though Jim might run away with the whole thing. He was hitting folks with a unrestrained fury. Honestly, he put on a hell of a show, especially for a rookie. His demise, however, was one of his own doing. In his excitment, he had a full 50-60 foot run across the track at this poor unsuspecting victim ... err driver. Everyone who was in the way got out of the way quick, except for one fellow, who was smashed out of the way. Jim could have angled his hit into the the guy's (who was in a late 70's Impala) front tire and destroyed his front end and knocked out a contender, but that was not to be. He broadsided the Impala so hard that the Impala flipped up in the air and landed on Jim's hood. Jim kicked it in reverse, but the Impala's frame got hung up on one of the Caddy's front bumper mounts. Jim valiantly tried to free himself, but it was not to be. He was told to shut it down.
The Caddy with the Impala on it's hood. He could of had it all!
When the heat had come to a close, the front end loader had lifted the Impala off of Jim, Jim started the Caddy up with ease, jammed the gas was did a police, 180 reverse and drove off the track to the crowd's cheers. I could hear a loud rattling sound coming from the Caddy as it drove by me. Upon a closer look, the damage to the Caddy was extensive, but repairable. The bumper was pretty mangled, but still on solid and in one peice. The nose though, was at a hideous 45 degree angle. The radiator had been pushed into the fan (that's what was making the noise) and one front fender was hanging on by a bolt. The rear had sagged some, but it also started pushing in. A closer look showed us that the body simply started pushing in (something Caddies don't do naturally) The car still ran fine and even though the fan had been pushed into the radiator, it had not punctured it. With a little work, that car could have been peiced back together. Unfortunatly, this was the last night of the derby and there was no way of getting it home. So it, like Route 98, still had life, but it's time was inveriably done.
Jim's inaugeral derby season had come and gone. When he climbed out of the car, his face was aglow with excitment. When I asked him how it was all he could say was "When I was behind the wheel, all I saw was red!" He loved every minute of it. There was only one bit of negativity that night. One of the kids that Jim gave a love tap to had flipped out that Jim wasn't DQ'd for doing it. The rules state that only the winner could be challenged, and Jim didn't win, so the officials told him to buzz off. He started threatening physical violence against the officials (real smart move there guy) and they banned him from derbying there for life and had the cops drag him out of there. The kid made it a point to come over to where Jim and I were and start mouthing off at us. It didn't go much further than that however. Both my brother and I towered over the kid. So, after that, we stripped the car of it's valuables and left. Jim's first season had been a memorable one.
