{"id":2723,"date":"2007-01-17T05:17:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T10:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/01\/standard-of-world\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:02:03","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:02:03","slug":"standard-of-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/01\/standard-of-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Standard of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Checking<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve owned 40-some cars in my lifetime, but only one Cadillac. In the summer of 1967, in a misguided fit of youthful enthusiasm, I bought a boat<\/a>. Since my Austin-Healey Sprite<\/a> was an inappropriate tow car, I looked around for something heftier. After considering a 1955 Cadillac<\/a>, a 1960 Lincoln<\/a> and the car I should have bought, a low-mileage 1957 Buick<\/a>, I settled for a 1959 Cadillac Sedan de Ville.<\/p>\n

Henry Martyn Leland<\/a> (seen here<\/a> with “Osceola,” his 1905 coupe) was the father of Cadillac and the “Master of Precision.” He developed exacting standards for machine work at Brown & Sharpe<\/a>, then went to Detroit to build engines for the new motor trade. Leland’s Cadillacs were so precisely built that in 1908 three Model K cars<\/a> were disassembled, their parts scrambled, then three cars built from the mixture, all of which started and ran. This earned Cadillac the Royal Automobile Club’s<\/a> Dewar Trophy<\/a> and the title “Standard of the World<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

By 1914<\/a>, Cadillac was a large car, still with four cylinders but with electric starting and lighting. By 1923<\/a>, closed cars were the norm and V8s ruled. As the Depression raged, Cadillac threw caution to the winds and introduced not just V-12s<\/a> but also V-16s<\/a>. In 1938, a young designer named Harley Earl<\/a> penned<\/a> the Sixty Special<\/a>, a design icon to this day. Cadillac grew heftier in 1941<\/a>, and after the war started the tailfin craze<\/a>, and while the Fleetwood limos<\/a> were anachronistic the fastback Sedanettes<\/a> were positively beguiling.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until 1950<\/a> that Cadillac surpassed Packard<\/a> for good as top-selling American luxury car, but from that time Caddy never looked back, though by 1952<\/a> the cars were a bit overbearing. Finer lines in 1954<\/a> improved the looks, and by 1957<\/a> the Cadillacs were low and lithe, the top-of-the-line Eldorado Brougham<\/a> selling for a cool $13,500.<\/p>\n

My ’59 was a camp caricature of a car, one of the reasons I bought it. The fins<\/a> had grown to grotesque proportions by 1959 and the engine<\/a> was now a 390 cubic inch behemoth. Mine was the four-window “flat top”<\/a> style, rather than the more attractive six-window design<\/a>, and had add-on air and gold lamé upholstery. It headstrong on snowy roads and several pairs of skis would fit in the trunk. The previous owner said it would run on Gulftane, Gulf’s<\/a> cheap low-octane brand (it didn’t), and with 130,000 miles on the clock it needed lots of TLC, which included regularly checking the oil<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One Sunday evening I returned home from a weekend of skiing. The transmission had been shifting erratically and I nursed it the last 50 miles. I pulled into the driveway, shifted to reverse to turn it around and my Caddy didn’t move. My Hydra-Matic<\/a> had “Park” and five “Neutrals.” The next day I took off as many saleable parts as I could and called the local scrapyard. I had owned the car for three months and it had cost me, including the purchase price, $300. For $100 a month, I reckoned, I could have a new car. I bought a showroom-fresh Volvo 122S<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve owned 40-some cars in my lifetime, but only one Cadillac. In the summer of 1967, in a misguided fit of youthful enthusiasm, I bought a boat. Since my Austin-Healey Sprite was an inappropriate tow car, I looked around for something heftier. After considering a 1955 Cadillac, a 1960 Lincoln and the car I should….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3351,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions\/3351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}