From an earlier post: “And in other news: normal blogging service should resume tomorrow with the usual mixture of guns, rants, booze, invective and boobs.”
I forgot cars.
This one appeared at C.W.’s place, and for its full story follow the link.
As Longtime Readers know, I am generally leery of American automotive styling, especially during the decades following WWII. This Caddy, however, looks absolutely spectacular, in that “American Excess” fashion. The purple slash on the sides is the only thing which makes me a tad nauseated — white would have been better, to give that “tuxedo” look — but the overall shape of the car is quite lovely.
Even New Wife, who is still more conservative than I in these matters, nodded with approval.
Breath taking.
As Remus once said, “You can drill and tap them fenders.”
Just the thing for a late fall or early spring tour of what’s left of Rt66. I’m assuming that the car doesn’t have air conditioning so you wouldn’t dare to run across Arizona or even Oklahoma in the high summer – although lots of people did back in the day. Sit behind the wheel in a nice suit and fedora and sneer at the peasants as you blow through Glenrio TX.
I’m not one to get all gushy over automobiles, but WOW! Forget the purple color for a minute, look at the lines! That sweeping wave from the front bumper to the rear, that is nose in the air, snobbish, Pride of Ownership. That purple could be any color, (even Pepto Bismol Pink) and it would still be a four-wheeled gem at any car cruise in the nation.
I wouldn’t like to try a tight turn in one of those. And those enclosed wheel arches are a recipe for disaster. Just imagine your cat or dog having a snooze on top of one of the wheels. Or a build-up of mud or ice.
We have nice wide streets in America, and if cats and dogs want to sleep on the tires (tyres), it’s their lookout.
And nobody in their right mind would take such a magnificent vehicle out in the snow and ice, anyway.
Note the early “torpedo tits” on the front bumper. We’d be seeing those less than a decade later, on the comely yet excessive El Dorado Barritz.
This car though, is in a word, “delicious”. Hell, I’d wager it’d be a panty-dropper on par with the legendary Jaguar.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
I remember when Dad had a Caddy with black rubber inserts in the “torpedo tits”. It must have been a ’57, and I think it was the first and last car he bought new (or nearly new – perhaps one of the regular customers of his garage bought it new and unloaded it a few months later).
Two years later, he packed Mom, my six-month old sister, and me into a used green Oldsmobile and took off for Flagstaff, AZ to use his GI Bill at the state college there. From the Omaha area, but IIRC, first we went to my grandparents’ farm in northern Minnesota, and then back south to pick up Route 66. The Interstates were mostly just loops around the big cities at that time. So I never traveled Route 66 from end to end, but I’ve rode on most of it.
Oh, Cadillac changed their gender in 1959 – replacing the tits with quadruple red tail light phalluses sticking out of the oversized tail fins.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/1959_Cadillac_fins.jpg
Dad bought one of those several years later and got one or two long family trips out of it, but at 6 or 7 years old it was nearly worn out. He could get the engine running beautifully, but the wiring must have corroded beyond reasonable repair. E.g., the power windows were apt to spontaneously roll themselves down…
Never knew the Italians made Cadillacs…
Saoutchik was a Russian émigré in Paris who opened his doors in 1906.
There were several French designers who did “large cars”, some spectacularly, some not.
This one is definitely a “keeper”.