As of May 20, 2025, this is the information we have about this car:
[Feb.01.2017] Car #314 was mentioned by Mano as being in England, owned by the Homan family; its VIN is#5362-72694]. He kindly supplied this info and the photos below that he got fromStewart Homan, the current owner: We found the car in Pittsburgh PA in the summer of1986; the owner was a guy named John Magraw and he collected pre-war dual-cowlphaetons. He said that he bought the car from the original owner in 1960 and used it as a daily driver until 1968. During that time he bought all new chrome and accessories from the local Cadillac dealer. Later, he then parked the car, with 42.000 miles on the odometer, until 1982 when he carried out a mild restoration on it. He sold the car in early 1986 to a guy from northern California [that "guy" was Todd Todd;he identified himself to me in 2010] who flew in to Pittsburgh, drove the car as far as Chicago, where the transmission went bad; he called John Magraw and demanded his money back in full. When we saw the car it was at the transmission shop; we were trying to do deal with an English buyer but the car got sold to Jerry [Dr. Gerald] De Persio2, in Newport Beach, California. A year later, we were in southern California and saw a white 1953 Eldorado for sale. When we spoke to the owner (it turned out to be Jerry De Persio) it was the same guy. We asked Jerry if he would keep the car until we sold our 1959 Eldorado Biarritz. He agreed to this and about eight months later we finally got the car. In the meantime both Todd Todd and our original English buyer tried to acquire the car. We have done very little to it. We have put about10.000 miles on it in 13 years, restored the wires and purchased a personalized license plate (53 ELD); this is a relatively cheap process anywhere in the world except in the UK where you may only get existing numbers issued by the motoring authorities. Our plate cost us around $ 4.000 ! This is the car on the cover of the book "California Classics"; it was used as "Spice Girl" Mel B's wedding car. Best regards, Stewart. Stewart may be interested to know that in the mid-eighties I exchanged correspondence with Dr. De Persio on the topic of the1959 Eldorado Biarritz; he had three of them at the time, all in beautiful condition. I was preparing a roster of survivors of these models too; unfortunately I lost it in a computer crash! I may get around to creating another one, some day.
[Feb.01.2017] Car #314 was mentioned by Mano as being in England, owned by the Homan family; its VIN is#5362-72694]. He kindly supplied this info and the photos below that he got fromStewart Homan, the current owner: We found the car in Pittsburgh PA in the summer of1986; the owner was a guy named John Magraw and he collected pre-war dual-cowlphaetons. He said that he bought the car from the original owner in 1960 and used it as a daily driver until 1968. During that time he bought all new chrome and accessories from the local Cadillac dealer. Later, he then parked the car, with 42.000 miles on the odometer, until 1982 when he carried out a mild restoration on it. He sold the car in early 1986 to a guy from northern California [that "guy" was Todd Todd;he identified himself to me in 2010] who flew in to Pittsburgh, drove the car as far as Chicago, where the transmission went bad; he called John Magraw and demanded his money back in full. When we saw the car it was at the transmission shop; we were trying to do deal with an English buyer but the car got sold to Jerry [Dr. Gerald] De Persio2, in Newport Beach, California. A year later, we were in southern California and saw a white 1953 Eldorado for sale. When we spoke to the owner (it turned out to be Jerry De Persio) it was the same guy. We asked Jerry if he would keep the car until we sold our 1959 Eldorado Biarritz. He agreed to this and about eight months later we finally got the car. In the meantime both Todd Todd and our original English buyer tried to acquire the car. We have done very little to it. We have put about10.000 miles on it in 13 years, restored the wires and purchased a personalized license plate (53 ELD); this is a relatively cheap process anywhere in the world except in the UK where you may only get existing numbers issued by the motoring authorities. Our plate cost us around $ 4.000 ! This is the car on the cover of the book "California Classics"; it was used as "Spice Girl" Mel B's wedding car. Best regards, Stewart. Stewart may be interested to know that in the mid-eighties I exchanged correspondence with Dr. De Persio on the topic of the1959 Eldorado Biarritz; he had three of them at the time, all in beautiful condition. I was preparing a roster of survivors of these models too; unfortunately I lost it in a computer crash! I may get around to creating another one, some day.