Cadillac Eldorado 3rd Gen

Harley Earl still ran GM Styling and Ed Glowacke still had the Cadillac studio, and 1957 is where their rear-end idea finally landed. The fenderline drops away behind the door and finishes in fins that point inboard rather than standing upright, with broad sculptured stainless panels wrapping the lower quarters and running into split wraparound bumpers. A version of that tail, without the fins, had appeared years earlier on Cadillac's postwar Interceptor prototype. The front bumper was shared with every other 1957 Cadillac, which is the giveaway that this car spent its budget from the doors back. For 1958 the front clip changed and the Eldorado changed with it: quad headlights across the range, a full-width jewelled grille, dagmars set lower and further apart, ten vertical chrome slashes ahead of the rear wheel openings, and crest medallions on the flanks of the fins. Glowacke's Brougham is the more important drawing. Four doors with no pillar between them, the rear pair hinged at the back and latching onto a stub that stops at the beltline, a roof of brushed stainless steel that carries structure rather than covering it, and quad headlights a year before anyone else had them. It came out of the Park Avenue and Orleans show cars of 1953 and 1954.

There is no Eldorado competition record for these two years, and 1957 is the year that stopped being an accident. On 6 June 1957 the Automobile Manufacturers Association voted unanimously to end factory racing support from the first of July: no team backing, no pace cars, no advertising a race result or a speed figure. General Motors signed it. Congress had been leaning on Detroit since the 1955 Le Mans disaster, and two 1957 NASCAR cars going into the grandstands finished the argument. So even if Cadillac had wanted to campaign a two-and-a-half-ton four-door hardtop riding on air springs, and it did not, the door closed halfway through the generation. What competition history this family owns belongs to the engine, one size down. The 331 that preceded this 365 was what Sydney Allard bolted into the J2, and in 1950 Allard and Tom Cole finished third overall and won their class at Le Mans with one, spending most of the race in top gear after the other two broke. The Eldorado inherited that engine's lineage and none of its ambitions. The nameplate does not appear at a racetrack in any official capacity until it paces the Indianapolis 500 in 1973.

The Brougham did its cultural work through who bought it rather than where it appeared. Frank Sinatra's was a 1958, chassis 58P011421, described as the first car he ever owned, ordered in Wimbledon Grey and resprayed Cordovan Red later; Bonhams sold it at Carmel in August 2009 for $117,000. At least two Broughams went to the Derham Coach Corporation to be rebuilt for a Rockefeller, with canvas tops and smaller rear windows. That was the entire point of the exercise. Cadillac was not selling 704 cars, it was selling the fact that those 704 buyers existed. The kit inside makes the argument more plainly than any advertisement did: six magnetic silver drink tumblers, a leather vanity case holding a gold mechanical pencil and a comb, and an atomizer of Arpege Extrait de Lanvin, in a car you could order with white mouton sheepskin carpet. The 1958 Seville had a job too, standing at the head of GM's fiftieth anniversary line beside the Buick Limited Riviera, the Oldsmobile Starfire 98, the Pontiac Bonneville and a brand new Chevrolet called the Impala. The Brougham's afterlife is scale models, from Hot Wheels at 1:64 up to Brooklin and Franklin Mint.

A Biarritz or a Seville is an ordinary 1950s Cadillac in every way that matters to a mechanic and an unusual one in every way that matters to a body shop. The 365 is understressed and shared with tens of thousands of other cars, the Hydra-Matic is tough and rebuildable, and the 12-volt system behaves itself once properly sorted. Expect rust in the floors, the lower quarters and the trunk drop-offs, a power top whose hydraulics weep and slow, and chrome that has been replated at least once. Then expect the Eldorado tax: the rear quarters, the fins and the stainless beauty panels are unique to this car, so damage back there becomes the restoration rather than a line inside it. A Brougham asks a different set of questions. No panel, no piece of trim and no glass interchanges with anything else Cadillac built, so a missing part is a search rather than an order. The air suspension is the famous one. Bladders leak, the car settles, and enough owners converted to coil springs in period that Cadillac sold a factory kit for the job. Modern systems have made originality practical again. Roughly half the 1957 cars survive, which for a hand-built 400-car run is a good number.