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I needed to get around to putting this up ... it appears to be the house blend at the Confeitaria Nacional is Lisbon, PT, a 100+ year old coffee and tea house with tasty and sensibly priced cakes and pastries. Happy Sunday ...

Always a good idea to know where you came from.

In December, no less. That's a little early for a big storm in Portland, OR. They are not equipped to deal with snow and ice, so they just shut down the town. As does the Seattle-Tacoma area. The hills don't help, either. That top photo really threw me for a Cadillac. That sort of curvature was not common for them. In the following DTS that came along, the car became more rectilinear. They did a nice job with it. I remember checking out the car dealerships (after they closed in the evening) on Pensacola Blvd. around '07 and saw some DTSs. I remembered thinking that it wasn't any bigger than a mid-'70s Cutlass Supreme (because the space was more sensibly used) and thought it was a really nice car, given that I don't much like Cadillacs. I also remember thinking how I wouldn't have wanted to pay for the repair bills for all those bells and whistles and that the Northstar V8 under its hood was too sophisticated for my understanding of car mechanics ... and possibly a little thirsty after driving several V6s. Sloped back grille, no hood ornament, slab sides, balance in its 3 volumes, engaged rather than finned taillamps ... less is WAY more, in this case. Kudos for some gauges in the instrument cluster (Cadillacs often had temp. idiot lights, which I've learned are scary). Kudos for having a console standard in the DTS. The passenger side of the dash seems a little too tall, but, overall, I thought this was really nice for a Cadillac.

I’d love to find a final year of the first Gen Aurora, but they are almost always beat to hell. People didn’t preserve them.