For 1956, Cadillac expanded the sensational Eldorado line with a two-door pillarless hardtop called the Eldorado Seville.

First seen as a dream car at the 1952 GM Motorama and then as a retail offering in 1953, the Eldorado became the star of the Cadillac product line. The limited-production convertible represented “the best of everything,” the copy writers declared. And since it was based on a standard 62 Series platform but sold for significantly more, it was a profitable enterprise for Cadillac as well, we can guess.

So for 1956, Cadillac decided to expand the Eldorado line to include a two-door hardtop. (The hardtop received a preview of sorts in a 1955 Motorama show car, a customized Coupe de Ville called the Celebrity.) To distinguish the open and closed body styles, the convertible was now called the Eldorado Biarritz, while the hardtop was named the Eldorado Seville.

The Seville was very much a hardtop copy of the Biarritz—in fact, they were identically priced at $6,556. The major difference was the Seville’s fixed steel top from the Series 62. However, standard equipment was a top covering of Vicodec, a fine-grained vinyl material with a finish resembling a convertible top. Available colors were black, white, beige, light blue, and light green. Along with a few others, this was an early example of the vinyl roofs that became so popular in the ’60s.

The Seville featured the same distinctive tail fin design introduced on the 1955 Eldorado, which was later adapted to the 1958 Cadillac standard line. Sabre-spoke cast aluminum wheels (officially known as Turbine wheels) were also standard, in silver or anodized gold with exterior trim details to match. For the interior, buyers could choose full leather or Florentine-pattern metallic nylon with leather bolsters in five colors. The standard engine was a 365 CID V8 with dual four-barrel carburetors and 305 hp, coupled to a Hydra-Matic transmission.

In the inaugural year, the hardtop Seville outsold the convertible Biarritz by a fair distance, 3,900 to 2,150 cars, though the margin would close over the next few years. There was a Seville four-door hardtop in 1957, but only four were built, while the ultra-luxury Eldorado Brougham joined that same year. The final year for the Eldorado Seville was 1960 as sales dwindled to barely 1000 cars, but the Seville name was revived in 1975 and remained in the Cadillac lineup through 2004.