05/30/2026
"The whole thing started over dinner in Beverly Hills. A Cadillac dealer named James Kribbs and his associate James Patrick were sitting at a table when Patrick laid out three hand-drawn sketches showing what a Cadillac Coupe de Ville would look like with the back seat and trunk replaced by a pickup bed. Kribbs liked it enough to found an entire coachbuilding company on the spot.
He called in legendary custom fabricator Gene Winfield from Chatsworth, California. Winfield cut each Coupe de Ville, stretched it, widened the rear section, and grafted in a proper pickup bed with a tailgate. He even included a separate compartment specifically sized for a set of golf clubs. The 500 cubic inch V8, all 8.2 liters of it, stayed completely untouched under that enormous hood, backed by a three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic. GM never officially endorsed the conversion, but Cadillac dealers sold every single one of them with a full factory warranty anyway.
The very first completed Mirage was snapped up by Evel Knievel, who liked it so much he immediately ordered a second one to feature in a film. The El Camino and Ford Ranchero were the working man's car-truck. The Mirage was built specifically for the man who felt both of those were beneath him. Traditional Coach Works built only 204 examples across 1975 and 1976 before the operation folded. Nobody needed a Cadillac pickup truck. Two hundred people bought one anyway. That's America in 1976 in a single vehicle."
