1969 Cadillac DeVille Convertible

O.K. it's true, the car did strand us once. Before you start ah-hahing and saying I told you so, it's important to know the facts. Yes, we were on a trip to the coast to stay with friends and yes we were only half way. As we would be driving I noticed that it would feel like it was losing power just for a second. As it wasn't too terrible and seemed to not affect things I put it down to bad gas or something. Then it started cutting out more and more. And then, on a fairly remote road it just quit. There was a perfect place to pull over and we just coasted to a stop. Trying to start it was futile and so there we were. I reached for the cellular phone and one call to our local dealer gave me the number for the Cadillac dealer in Roseburg. I called them and they said they could look at it and gave me the name and number for a towing company. I called them and gave them directions to our car. A final call went to the people we were staying with to let them know what was happening. Her husband was coming up from Medford later and was going to stop at the dealer and give us a ride if we needed it. Everything was taken care of in less than ten minutes and we sat down to enjoy the scenery by the river.

The truck came and delivered us to the dealer. They suspected fuel filter or fuel pump problems. After a while, though, they had it running but were unsure whether it would make it. We waited for our host and then pulled off in front of him. We made it a ways up the road and then it was cutting out again. Then there was a big backfire and it blew the muffler completely off! Now we were driving in this old Cadillac with no muffler. We felt like the Clampet family.

We left it at a Chevy dealer in Cottage Grove and piled into the back of the host's 4-Runner (not very comfortable) for the rest of the ride to the coast.

It turned out that there had been a loose ignition wire in the steering column shorting out and in effect turning the car off and on. They fixed the wire and put on a new muffler and a couple of days later I went up to get it.

As I was getting ready to go a guy walked up and asked, "Does the navy know that's out of the yard?"

It has never stranded me since.