Win a Modified 1968 Cadillac De Ville, a 2021 Retro 135 Camper + $15,000 Cash

What you're looking at

Vice Grip Garage's prize this round is American excess pressed into service as a tow rig. One winner takes a modified 1968 Cadillac De Ville, a 2021 Retro 135 travel trailer, and a $15,000 cash stipend — all three together, not a pick-one.

1968 is a meaningful year for a De Ville. It's the first year of Cadillac's 472-cubic-inch V8, the big-inch engine that carried the division into the mid-seventies and eventually grew into the 500. The official rules describe the car only as "modified" and stop there: no body style, no odometer, no engine, no color.

The Retro 135 is the small end of Riverside RV's Retro line, the deliberately fifties-styled trailers with the rounded nose and the diner-booth color palette. It's short and light, which is the whole reason a fifty-eight-year-old Cadillac can be asked to pull it.

Why it matters

Nobody tows with a 1968 Cadillac. That is the entire joke, and it's a good one. The De Ville was Cadillac's volume car — hundreds of thousands of them left Detroit — so nothing here is rare, and nobody should enter expecting an appreciating asset. What you'd be winning is a matched set with a premise: a land yacht and a period-correct camper to go behind it, which is a more entertaining thing to own than either piece by itself.

It is also, mechanically, an honest proposition. A 472 in a full-size Cadillac makes torque in the range where towing happens, and the car's length and weight are the two things that make a tow vehicle stable. The parts of the equation that give people pause on a car this old — drum brakes, sixties-era cooling, a two-speed-feel transmission with a modern trailer behind it — are the parts worth asking the operator about before you daydream about a cross-country trip.

The fine print worth knowing

Start here, because it changes the prize. The Official Rules state that the prize vehicle "is for RACETRACK USE ONLY; they are not intended for use on open roads and do not meet US standards for street vehicles," and separately that the "Prize vehicle may not meet safety or emissions testing required in some states." Read literally, that describes a car you cannot register and drive home — an odd thing to say about a Cadillac paired with a camper, and the plural "they" in a sentence about a single vehicle suggests standard language carried over from an earlier promotion. Either way, it is the operator's own published term, it is the one line on the page that changes what an entry actually buys, and anyone entering for the Cadillac rather than the cash should ask about it directly.

The rest of the winner's side is spelled out plainly. The winner is "solely responsible for any applicable licensing, insurance, title and registration fees," for all federal, state and local taxes, and for transport. Delivery must be accepted at a sponsor-specified location within thirty days of notification or the prize can be forfeited to an alternate. Winner documents have to come back within three days — including weekends and holidays — of attempted delivery, and Canadian winners must answer a timed mathematical skill-testing question unaided. The Sponsor reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value. Entry also carries a binding-arbitration clause and a class-action waiver. On a $40,000 package, the good news is that $15,000 of it lands as cash, which is what the stipend is for.

Mechanics. Entries accrue at one entry for every $5.00 spent at the Vice Grip Garage store, rounded up, with no cap — the cheapest thing on the shelf is a $4.99 sticker, which rounds to one entry. The free route is real and it closes later than the paid one: mailed entries postmarked by September 19 and received by September 23 count as two entries each, with no limit on how many envelopes you send, while paid entries stop at 11:59:59 PM ET on September 18. The full mail-in instructions, including the address and the handwriting requirements, are reproduced verbatim from the Official Rules in the free-entry section of this listing.

Who's running it. The Sponsor is GForce Media LLC of Bradenton, Florida, with Vice Grip Garage as Presenter; Marden-Kane, Inc. is named as the independent judging organization. The drawing is on or about September 25, 2026, with the winner announced on Vice Grip Garage's YouTube channel and/or website on or about October 23, 2026. The giveaway is void in Alaska, Hawaii and Quebec.