Great Ride – 1961 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible in Green Paint

Restoration shop owner Luciano ‘Lucky’ Lacerda built this 1961 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible specifically to showcase his own shop’s work at SEMA, finishing it in a deep green that stands out even at a packed Scottsdale cars-and-coffee. It’s a deliberate choice in a SEMA field dominated by trucks and muscle cars. Watch to see what a restoration shop owner picks when the whole point is to prove what he can do.

A man who repaints and restores cars for a living doesn’t choose his own personal show car by accident. When Luciano “Lucky” Lacerda went looking for something to bring to SEMA — the single biggest stage in the industry for showing off exactly what a paint and restoration shop can do — he didn’t pick something safe. He picked a 1961 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible, finished in a green that stops people mid-sentence at a Saturday morning cars-and-coffee meet, and turned it into the calling card for his entire business. What does a professional restorer choose when the whole point is to prove what he’s capable of?

Why a Scottsdale Cars & Coffee Matters

The setting matters here. This isn’t a car parked quietly in a garage — it showed up at the “101 & Scottsdale” Cars & Coffee in Scottsdale, Arizona, one of the more consistently well-attended weekly meets in a state that draws serious collector-car traffic almost year-round thanks to nearby events like Barrett-Jackson and the broader Arizona auction week. Bringing a car to a meet like that is itself a statement; bringing a car you built specifically to showcase your own shop’s work is a much bigger one.

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Cadillac’s Design Language at a Turning Point

The 1961 Series 62 sits at an interesting point in Cadillac’s design history. It followed directly on the heels of the famously finned 1959 and 1960 models, arriving at the moment Cadillac’s design language was pulling back from peak tailfin excess toward cleaner, lower, more restrained lines — while still carrying enough late-Fifties flourish to feel unmistakably of its era. A convertible variant, with its top down, shows off that transitional silhouette better than almost any other body style in the lineup.

The Case for a Rare, Bold Green Paint Job

Green convertibles from this era are a much rarer sight than the black, white, and pastel colors that dominated Cadillac’s original factory palette. A deep, saturated green paint job on a car like this isn’t just a color choice — for a restoration shop owner, it’s a demonstration of color-matching, clear-coat depth, and panel prep skill that a more conventional color wouldn’t showcase nearly as effectively at a car show, where lighting and reflection do a lot of the selling.

Betting on Craftsmanship Over Trend at SEMA

Lacerda’s decision to bring this specific car to SEMA rather than a newer build says something about where he sees value in his own portfolio. SEMA exhibitors overwhelmingly lean toward modern trucks, muscle cars, and late-model performance builds; a beautifully finished early-Sixties Cadillac convertible stands out precisely because it isn’t chasing the same trend every other booth is chasing. It’s a bet that craftsmanship on a genuinely classic body style will draw as much attention from industry professionals as another lifted truck or pro-touring Camaro.

The Series 62’s Place in Cadillac’s Real History

The Series 62 nameplate itself carried real weight inside Cadillac’s lineup through the 1950s and into the early 1960s — it was the volume model, the car that introduced more buyers to the brand than the flagship Eldorado ever did, which makes a well-preserved or well-restored example a meaningful piece of the brand’s mainstream history rather than a museum-only halo car. Restoring one properly means representing what most Cadillac buyers of the era were actually driving.

Local Meets as the Best Advertising a Shop Can Get

This is also a reminder of how much of the collector car hobby runs on word of mouth generated at exactly these kinds of local meets. A shop owner bringing his own restoration to a Scottsdale cars-and-coffee isn’t running a paid ad campaign — he’s letting the car itself do the marketing in front of an audience of people who are already deeply invested in exactly this kind of work, which is about as targeted an audience as a restoration business could ask for.

What Luxury Restoration Shares With Muscle Car Builds

For viewers who care about this era of American luxury convertibles as much as they care about muscle cars, a car like this is a useful counterpoint. It’s proof that the same obsession with correct color, panel fit, and mechanical soundness that defines a top-tier muscle car restoration applies just as rigorously on the luxury side of the collector market — the standards don’t change, only the silhouette does.

A Shop That Puts Its Address Behind Its Work

Lucky’s shop is based out of Phoenix, and the video points viewers directly to his address and phone number — an old-school, direct-to-customer approach that stands in contrast to how most restoration businesses market themselves today through social media alone. That kind of transparency, putting a physical shop address behind the work shown on camera, is itself a form of confidence: it’s an open invitation to come see the operation behind a car built well enough to represent it at SEMA.

The Convertible Top Mechanism Is Its Own Restoration

It’s also worth noting how the mechanics of a convertible top factor into a restoration like this. Getting a folding top mechanism from this era to operate smoothly again — after decades of wear on the linkages, hydraulics, and fabric — is often a more demanding piece of a restoration than the paint itself, since it involves both the visible finish and a fully functional mechanical system that has to work reliably every time the top goes up or down at a show.

The Car the Muscle Car Era Was Reacting Against

There’s also a generational angle worth noting. A 1961 Series 62 predates the muscle car era by several years, arriving before the GTO, the Mustang, or the 442 redefined what American performance meant to a younger buyer. Cars like this represent the segment those muscle cars were partly reacting against — big, comfortable, luxury-forward American iron — which makes seeing one freshly restored and parked among newer performance cars at a mixed cars-and-coffee meet a useful reminder of just how much the definition of a desirable American car has shifted since 1961.

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