1959 Cadillac - The Car's the Star pt2

plenty by 1961 Castro was laughing at American troops in the Bay of Pigs fiasco Khrushchev was giving Kennedy a hard time and Russia had successfully put the first man into orbit and back home the civil rights issue was getting out of hand in a big way suddenly the poor old 59 stuck out like a sore thin Detroit started to clean up its styling and by 1964 the Cadillac fin was a shadow of its former self almost overnight the 59 became an embarrassing anachronism one zero all engine running liftoff we have a liftoff at the time it was viewed as the utmost in a glimpse of the future a future that was expected to be arriving far more imminently then turned out in practice in fact the future that was promised in terms of the 1959 Cadillac here in 1994 I think still is not yet here was it ever a figure of fun I think it certainly became that in the by the early certainly the mid 70s it was used as an example of the excesses of old America a kind of baby boomers parody of their parents generation of everything was wrong with America everything that was wrong with America's sense of arrogance and hegemony over other countries of other areas in the world in the film Deerhunter an essay on how the Vietnam War changed America it was no mistake that the director shows a beat-up 59 as an aging relic of a decadent decade and in due course the 59 was laid to rest at Cadillac Ranch a row of automotive tombstones a haunting memorial to the rise and fall of both America and its tail fins well as you can see from the fins and my pool it has a personal meaning to me as well in some sense it's a symbol of my own life and my own marriage I had a white 59 Cadillac convertible when it was a new car and on April 29th 1960 I drove it to a drive-in restaurant with a best friend of mine and that's where I met my wife I don't know whether she liked the car or she liked me or some combination of both but that's how I met her without that car I never would have met her and it has had a very important meaning for me ever since but the CAD is not just a museum piece in downtown LA there's a woman who loves 3:00 and drives one every day why I will run down my little Toyota truck I do love it it's a very good drug but my my Cadillac is like your and relax and you're comfortable and you're just like in heaven the younger generation wants it as a hotrod because they you know they think it's they could cut it down and trim it down but the older people like it because it's it's the vintage of the year they remember things that they did and it they went to the store that which are the drive-ins and they raised their children in them and and they had to like I say again I'm always back to the room I mean you can't the car is now just I mean cars and I just don't have the room they're all little because everybody's trying to save on gas so if I said here are three brand new cars would you swap them for your Cadillacs no well why not because you can always go out and buy three brand-new cars so even if you don't have enough money you can always get them on time good credit I just you can't replace these just can't replace them if you compare them to later model Cadillacs they're kind of like driving the Queen Mary I suppose the suspension is real soft you know they lean a lot but you don't race these things you just drive them you don't go around 90-degree corners 100 miles an hour so it really doesn't matter how they call her I don't think Q bought a Cadillac in 59 you had some money and they cost you know maybe $4,000 something like that I mean it didn't cost too much more to buy a whole house I mean everybody says that you know they don't make them like they used to and they don't well she's my all the cars I've ever driven this has to be the most glorious if you want a heavyweight ego massage if you want to look and feel like a Texan millionaire just try a trip down to Sainsbury's in the 59 and once you find a space large enough to park it in just look what happens over a period of years 10-15 years later it was ridiculed it was uh people would say how could you have done a car like that that was so cartoony and so exaggerated but now in the 90s that car is is a classic if you don't believe that just go out and price one the 1959 Cadillac convertible here's an expensive car to find out just how expensive there's only one place to go seven six one for Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles Frank corrente has been selling used caddies for the last thirty years this car sold for seventy four hundred dollars and fifty nine up until a couple years ago for a toll car that was totally restored it went through approximately $120,000 now it's down to about seventy thousand so that's a tenfold appreciation yes yes and there's no trouble selling them there's more buyers and cars you've got this car here on your lot what sort of attention does it attract tremendous amount of attention you know we have people coming here from all over the world and they run in here with cameras we have tour buses stopped again here and they never cease to take a picture of a 59 first it's amazing I just sit and watch him and that's the car that attracts in all walks of life all over the world the 59s place in history is as a glorious monument to those final years of unabashed American indulgence the end of an era for one brief historical moment it stood for America's finest hour when life was simple carefree and easy and everybody had a good time the 59 Cadillac says more about America than a whole trunk full of history books it was the American dream

Channel: Cardiff333UK

Views: 57,190

Keywords: classic, car, Quentin, Wilson

Id: RjT0PaMURz8

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2011