This Week on Hagerty Marketplace: Three Flavors of ’70s Americana

Welcome to This Week on Hagerty Marketplace, a recurring recap of the previous week’s most noteworthy cars and significant sales from the Hagerty Marketplace online auctions.

This week’s selection of recent sales on Hagerty Marketplace showcases the diversity of the ’70s, a decade that often doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves. Including a personal-luxury coupe, an uncommon Trans Am, and a Cadillac you may never have seen, this list of well-kept, original classics is bound to surprise and delight.

26K-Mile 1976 Ford Thunderbird

Sold for $8560

If the Thunderbird introduced the personal-luxury genre, the sixth-generation model, introduced in ’72, took its combination of poshness and power to new levels of opulence. With a 460-cubic-inch V-8 paired with a three-speed automatic, a vinyl top with opera windows, and button-tufted seats, this ’76 Thunderbird checks all the boxes. The interior trim and the paint have some imperfections here and there, but with only 26,000 miles, this car can float its new owner around for many years to come.

1970 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Ram Air III Four-Speed

Sold for $59,385

Now for something more hardcore. The 1970 model year was the first time that the Trans Am became its own model, and, in our humble opinion, it was also one of the car’s most handsome iterations. (No offense to the screamin’ chicken.) This example is one of only 1769 cars built in 1970 with the combination of 345-hp, 400-cubic-inch Ram Air III V-8 and four-speed Muncie transmission. The engine in this car may have been a dealer warranty replacement, because it is correct but not original to this specific Poncho. We dig the color scheme: white with blue stripes over a blue-drenched interior complete with engine-turned dash.

1975 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Caribou

Sold for $27,285

And now for something very, very different. Cadillac has a long history of working with third-party companies to build bodies for or to modify its cars, and this is perhaps the most striking example of the latter: A 1975 Cadillac Coupe DeVille with a pickup bed. The work was done by Caribou Motor Company of Grover City, California, which converted Cadillacs into the El Camino’s bougier cousin between the ’50s and through the ’80s. Fewer than 100 of these were built in 1975. This one is unusually well-kept, with fresh paint, a new Edelbrock carburetor and intake manifold, and wood paneling for the pickup bed.