“I felt like destroying something beautiful.” That line is from the movie Fight Club, and that is currently the conundrum I find myself in as I stare at the pictures of this 1973 Cadillac DeVille Caribou. We’ve seen many 1970s era Cadillac utes before…some flower cars, others from the motley collection of coach-built specialty cars that are difficult to track, even for the most hard-core wreath-and-crest fan. Traditional Coach Works, Caribou, Paris…and that doesn’t even touch the flower-car builders, far as we know. But they exist in small numbers, and we’ve seen one in person (parked alongside a highway in Arizona as some kind of advertisement deal, from what we can tell) and the proportions look pretty good. Think of it as an El Camino XL with better interior materials and much more torque and you’re pretty much spot-on.

But a ute, even a Cadillac ute, needs to have a work side to really be proper…at least, in my mind. I’d have no trouble putting an engine on a stand in the back of an Elky or a Ranchero, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use a Rampage to do some minor hauling around the house. But unless you believe the seller of this particular Caribou regarding it’s ability to haul a motorcycle around, there is just no way I’d believe that this Caddy has ever seen a difficult day in it’s life. It’s too clean. Too perfect. So what if the A/C isn’t working? It’s high time the R-12 system gets updated, anyways.

Sure, it’s a stunner in person, but I won’t be happy until I see a bed full of swap-meet scores being hauled home. Does that make me a bad person?

eBay Link: 1973 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with coupe utility conversion by Caribou

(Courtesy: Bring a Trailer)