Another old friend. The surreal 1956 Cadillac Eldorado. This gleaming beauty always makes me think of the famous Tom Wolfe essay “Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby.” He details how cars had moved into their Surrealist Art phase. Cars were symbols from the beginning: symbols of mobility, freedom, status, sexual liberation. In other words, abstract ideas. Even then, though, the design was practical. They weren’t personal statements. But then came the Surreal phase when cars were still symbols but the symbols were harder to decipher. They came from a very specific sub-culture. Art for art’s sake, basically. Let’s fuck around with design. Let’s exaggerate everything. Let’s shout our individuality, our freedom, let’s dominate the road, let’s pepper our cars with meaningless fins and curves. This Eldorado is in that tradition.
There are so many stories associated with this monster. My favorite: The car was white when he went to look at it. Elvis was eating purple grapes, and he smushed them on the hood. He asked the dealer, “Can you make it that color?” They could and did. It’s purple with white detailing. I love the little antenna.
How does one TURN in this thing?
Elvis bought this one just as his fame exploded. He was well-known in 1954, 55, but then 1956 happened. 1956 was a whole other level, unknown to human fame until that point. This car is all ABOUT that.
This car meant a LOT to the guy born in a sharecropper’s shack, who lived in a housing project not even a year before.
Elvis’ Cars
1971 Stutz Blackhawk
