The 1959 Cadillac: Cadillac Designs Its Iconic Fin Masterpiece...Based on a Buick!

it's late 1956 and panic is setting in over at GM design in Warren Michigan a number of designers have just gone down the street on Mound Road to the Chrysler plant and seen Chrysler's new forward look design 1957 models live in person parked in the parking lot of the Chrysler plant the cars have an amazingly fresh new look with super light looking roofs large fins and overall elegant styling and while the Chrysler vehicles do indeed look futuristic as their ad campaign would exclaim suddenly as 1960. General Motors designers are working on designs for the 1959 model year that they know are simply not up to Snuff and virtually sale proof given the environment that will be created by Chrysler's new vehicles once introduced for the 1957 model year knowing that the 1959 models they are in process of Designing will simply not cut it in the showroom against these Chryslers GM designers start to redo the entire 1959 model lineup and do it quickly when it came to the 1959 Cadillacs the task of redoing these vehicles fell to chief designer Dave holes Dave was one of the individuals who had gone down to the Chrysler Mound Road Plant and seen the new 1957 models and their tremendously large fins being in charge of Cadillac design during this time and given the Cadillac had really started the entire rear fin theme on vehicles in the late 1940s Dave was not about to let Chrysler get the best of Cadillac thus the 1959 Cadillac was going to have the most flamboyant rear fins of any Cadillac produced to date and it would come to have the largest fins of any Cadillac ever produced period in designing the 1959 models Cadillac designers took their inspiration from a number of places the first was from the Lockheed lightning P-38 which really enabled designers to see that they could have an unbroken line all the way from the headlight straight back to the tail fin and while the Lockheed P-38 certainly had some influence on the overall 59 body shape it was jet engines and jet aircraft in general that really inspired the pointy tail lights on the 1959's fins and of course Cadillac being Cadillac it wasn't sufficient just to put one light on the tail fin but instead too simply because two looked more expensive than one and this was after all GM's range-topping automobile however while the 1959 Cadillacs have certainly earned their place as icons in automotive design history there were a number of constraints that were imposed upon designers that they had to work with in order to get this vehicle through to production one of the constraints that Cadillac designers were faced with and indeed General Motors designers all throughout the GM design staff was the aggressive time frame that was required in order to execute a full melt and repor on the 1959 models because work had already started on 1959 models previously in designers as opposed to refining these themes wanted to start from scratch and they did so frankly while their boss Harley Earl was out in Europe there simply was not much time to execute this full redesign across the model lineup work began on the 1959s in the fall of 1956 but the car being set for a fall of 1958 introduction while two years seems like a significant amount of time to execute such a styling change it really was not given the normal GM time frame to do such things in part due to the aggressive timetable and also in order to save costs General Motors designers had to work with a number of profound constraints when they were styling their 1959 models in fact one of the most challenging constraints was arguably that all the GMC body cars had to use a common front door amongst themselves in this common front door would be based on you guessed it the 1959 Buick design and this was not a simple constraint due in large part to the fact that the Buick door had a very nice and elegant feature about it where the top of the door surface actually curved downward as it approached the rear of the vehicle this meant that all the vehicles that employed the door had to be able to interface with that particular surface feature while this circumstance was likely challenging for GM's designers I don't think that many people out there even know that the front doors are interchangeable across the seabody line up and that's due in large part to the designers efforts in incorporating those doors into the overall design theme in fact when it comes to the 1959 Cadillac one could argue that that diving body side line that goes across the length of the vehicle in part helps even better accentuate the height of the rear fins perhaps it was meant to be that the Cadillac had to share the Buick door but the fact of the matter is the entire car's surfacing was really designed around those front doors from Buick a number of other parts were also shared across the 1959 GMC body lineup including roofs particularly the Vista roof and its wrap around rear glass windshields in some cases front door glass vent windows Etc all with the goal of minimizing not only costs but as well as time in order to get these 59s into production on time however despite the constraints it'd be hard to argue that Cadillac stylists failed in their mission to make the 1959 extremely distinctive and most definitively a Cadillac in fact when Automotive historians are asked to specify the key seminal Cadillacs that shaped Cadillac design the 1948 Cadillac is certainly at the top of the list because it's the first Cadillac with rear fins the 1959 however is almost always mentioned because it was the Supreme development of the Finn and the tallest fins that were ever put on a Cadillac and while the exterior styling of the 1959s is what many remember the truth is that the Interiors of these 1959 Cadillacs were also very handsome as well as distinctive and again despite the fact that Cadillac had to share a number of components with its GM siblings more specifically items like the window surrounds and even the seat frames as well as some of the door moldings in the openings were shared across the GMC body lineup the Cadillac and the other division design leaders were very successful in disguising these common components with unique componentry as an example while the seed frame was common across the GMC body lineup the seat cushions and fabrics and the way that they were stitched together was certainly unique to each division and in many cases each model in terms of running gear Cadillac also shared a number of components with other GM divisions including the design of the frame which in this case was an x-frame underpinning the 1959 Cadillacs and also the other 1959 C bodies the x-frame wallet certainly was not great for side crashes did enable the vehicles to be very low in overall height the car is also shared GM's excellent hydramatic transmission although on the 1959 Cadillacs it was standard equipment along with power steering and power brakes under hood the V8 was all Cadillac and unique to the Cadillac Division and for 1959 displacement was increased from 365 cubic inches to 390 cubic inches and the horsepower commensurately Rose from 310 to 325 gross horsepower four barrel carburetor and dual exhaust were standard on this particular model it all added up to one Stellar car and one that would certainly be memorable for many many years as it is today but it all began when the GM designer saw those 1957 Chryslers down at the Chrysler Mound Road Assembly Plant and came back and determined that they were going to redo the 1959s and in order to achieve this objective and do so under strict time constraints as well as cost controls they had to share the Buick doors thanks for watching this video on the 1959 Cadillac design if you enjoyed it be sure to like comment and subscribe and check out the video thumbnails at bottom left and right for some suggestions for you

Channel: Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History

Views: 21,608

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Id: KBILqMNK5g0

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023