Poisoned Apple

Take a good, long look at Joaquin Quintanilla's '84 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, "Poisoned Apple," a lethal luxury low cruising out of Chandler, Arizona. Joaquin's been busy concocting this toxic ride for the last four years to give the competition a deadly dose of reality. Joaquin wanted his car to have an alluring look that would captivate anyone and then deliver a fatal amount of venomous envy into the contenders' veins.

It all started when Joaquin purchased the Cadillac a few years ago. Already knowing in what direction he wanted to go, Joaquin delivered the DeVille to his friend D.J. in Chandler, who took care of the car's bodywork, complete with a white vinyl top and Continental kit. D.J. loaded up his spray gun with candy apple red paint and laid it out throughout the body, even taking it into the car's undercarriage, frame and engine bay. The car looked ever so delicious, like a shiny apple in an apple tree just waiting to be picked.

With the car's candy apple paint (including graphics featuring the Cadillac crest) applied and dried, it was time to move on to the next step, that being the pinstriping. For this, Joaquin used the infamous Efrain "Bugs" Gonzales of Mesa, Arizona, who laid out some clean sets of stripes using lavender and gold leafing. Once Bugs was done, it was time to call in his old partner, Abel Izaguirre of Los Angeles, California. Abel ably muraled some hot girls and cold skulls on the trunk, along with some other murals throughout the body, to leave the DeVille looking lethal from any angle.

Putting the "juice" in Poisoned Apple is a custom hydraulics setup that Joaquin had built for his Caddy by Richard Flores of Tucson, Arizona. The tanks are in the shape of a "K" (for Klique C.C.) and the setup includes four Red's pumps with four dumps, a set of 8-inch cylinders in the front and 10-inchers in the rear (fitted with 21/2-ton coils in all four cups), six deep-cell batteries for power and 10 switches for control.

Joaquin was ready to move into the engine bay, where he had Jerry Friello remove the stock Cadillac engine and replace it with a Chevy 350-c.i.d. small-block equipped with a Holley carburetor, Cool-Flex hoses and red sparkplug wires, and decorated with chrome and gold pieces. The chrome was handled by Royal Plating of Tucson, while Metro Plating in Mesa discovered the gold.

The insides of the Poisoned Apple are more than plush thanks to "Mr. Chino" from Chandler, who stitched away at the interior and kept the car's lethal theme alive. Using apple cut-outs for the car's two front seats, Mr. Chino covered the complete comfort zone in red fabric (with black piping) in the wrinkle and biscuit-tuck method. The interior is so comfortable that Snow White could have slept there for as long as necessary after she took a bite of that poisoned apple. There's even a skull water fountain. With the interior all hooked up, Mr. Chino took the upholstery theme into the trunk to complement the hydro setup.

With all of the custom components in place, Joaquin knew that his too-cool Caddy was ready to hit the streets of Arizona in fine style. With that in mind, he slapped on a set of 13x7 all-gold Roadster wire wheels with Vogue tires for good traction.

It took Joaquin four long years to get his DeVille looking this good, but it was time well spent. This killer Klique concoction has proven to be the apple of Joaquin's eye and has taken out the competition at every show that he's entered. It seems that until they find an antidote to that particular kind of poison called envy, Joaquin and his delicious DeVille are virtually untouchable.