Texas Cadillac (pickup truck or Chevy Suburban)
A “Texas Cadillac” was originally slang for a “pickup truck” of any variety. In recent years, a “Texas Cadillac” has meant a Chevy Suburban. The Suburban is huge.
See also Cowboy Cadillac.
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-slang-terms-for-automobiles
Truck:
Pickup truck (Texas Cadillac)
Sport Utility Truck
Utility vehicle
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412162a.html
Composite Character
Jay Akasie, 11.15.99
THEY DON’T CALL THE CHEVY Suburban the Texas Cadillac for nothing. Next year’s model holds nine people in the lap of luxury. General Motors plans to build more than 400,000 of these monsters. And nearly every one of its 5,760 pounds is steel.
http://www.edmunds.com
The Real Texas Cadillac
By John DiPietro Email | Blog
Date posted: 05-20-2003
We knew it was just a matter of time before Cadillac offered a bigger Escalade. Actually, we’re surprised the company didn’t introduce this longer-wheelbase version first. Just as the standard Escalade is essentially a tarted-up Chevrolet Tahoe, the Escalade ESV is essentially Cadillac’s uptown version of the Chevy Suburban.
For the elder staffers here at Edmunds, the introduction of the bigger Escalade seems most appropriate. Long before SUVs took over our roadways (indeed, even before the term “SUV” became part of our vernacular), the semiofficial vehicle for the Lone Star state was a Chevy Suburban — nicknamed the “Texas Cadillac.” The naming of this newest member of the Escalade family is a little illogical to us; this is the Escalade that the “EXT” badge should have been used for (as in EXTended) instead of being applied to Caddy’s fraternal twin of the Chevy Avalanche.
Google Books
Strategy 2000:
Making Disciples for the Next Millennium
by Aubrey Malphurs
Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications
1996
Pg. 9:
A quick tour of the immediate neighborhood reveals a number of dilapidated houses with an older-model Texas Cadillac (a pickup truck) parked squarely in an oil-soaked, weed-infested front yard.
Google Books
BOON!
by Gerald Pirkle
Xlibris Corporation
2002
Pg. 172:
Maria heaped the boxes into the rear of the Srburban whole extolling the virtues of the vehicle. While Texas was the pick-up capital of the world, Maria preferred the versatility of the utility vehicle, which Texans so fondly referred to as the Texas Cadillac.
Google Groups: bit.listserv.banyan-l
From: Stephen Lee
Date: Fri, May 3 1996 12:00 am
Down here in Texas, those things are just pis-ant toys… if you want to
drive a Texas Cadillac, you get a Suburban… otherwise, just a plain ol’ full
sized truck will do ya.
—Robert (native Texan)
Google Groups: rec.music.artists.springsteen
From: dawn_eileen
Date: Mon, Jan 15 2001 9:48 pm
> - This party is so big the door prize is a Chevy Suburban - the
> so-called Texas Cadillac valued at more than $40,000.
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From: Anonymous
Date: Fri, Jan 24 2003 1:19 am
However, currently it is being used MUCH more often by business people who
use the loophole to buy SUVs and decked out, luxury pickup trucks (“A Texas
Cadillac”) instead of farm equipment.
Google Groups: misc.rural
From: Jeepers
Date: Sun, Nov 30 2003 11:24 am
In Texas, everything has a different name. My truck is a Texas Cadillac.
It may be spelled barb, but it’s said bob, as in bob-war.
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From: Grandpa
Date: Tues, Feb 17 2004 9:19 pm
I washed my Texas Cadillac (Chevy Suburban) today too!
Google Groups: sci.electronics.design
From: Jim Thompson - view profile
Date: Sun, Apr 24 2005 10:07 pm
>Country folk out here often do with just one vehicle. Either a crew cab
>full size truck with dual tires, Cummins turbo, illuminated running
>boards and the whole works, or just a “Texas Cadillac”. It used to be
>the El Camino but that doesn’t really work for people with lots of kids.
16 January 1953, Delta Times-Democrat Greenville, MS), “Brodie Crump’s Mostly Old Stuff,” pg. 4:
But that conflict in color-schemes worried Old Stuff not even a little bit, in an era when new pickup trucks were scarce as hens’-teeth. One day, as we drove down the street at our customary ten miles an hour gait, a muchly sombreroed man in a Texas Cadillac pulled alongside.
“Do you want to sell that pickup, Bub?” shouted the Texan, even as he reached beneath his other arm for what we feared might be a hidden holster and a gun.
18 December 1983, Los Angeles Times, pg. 104:
“They did,” La Muse repeats,” but may I remind you that, blockbusters aside, the East Coast museum scene was slower and duller than usual while Los Angeles was running on more cylinders than a Texas Cadillac.”
4 March 2001, New York Times, pg. SM132:
Roger Clemens is big: 6-4, 240 pounds. He comes from a big state, Texas. He drivers a big car, a Chevy Suburban, known as the Texas Cadillac.