
El Camino is short for the Spanish el camino real, the Royal Highway, alias US highway 101. The exhaust configuration, windshield, roof saddle, spoked wheels, quad headlights, fluted side panel, gull-wing bumpers with bullet tips all turned up the following year on the production prototype for the Eldorado Brougham; the shape of the tail-fins [as used also on the Cadillac La Espada roadster, below], turned up on the production Eldorado models of 1955, 1956, the Eldorado Brougham of 1957-1958 and the standard 1958 Cadillac production models. The pointed bullet-shaped, gull-wing front bumper was shared with many Cadillac show cars of the period; the bullets were sometimes rubber tipped; these rubber tips [I call them the Dagmar bra] appeared on stock Cadillac models in 1957 and 1958. El Camino was finished in silver-gray and featured a brushed stainless-steel roof.