Is this what it's all about?

Montage of '59 stuff from my collection:
Prestige color catalog, Eldorado "V" tail-light inserts,
scale model,  pair of tail-light "bullets",  '59 photo album

Here's a Chevy Impala from 1960 with custom "59 Cadillac" tail-lights
[ Photo: Internet, 2013 ]

What is THIS for a '59 Cadillac "nightmare"?

Cadillac Art, Paintings, Sculptures

   
Left: Evolution of the Cadillac convertible, from 1930 to 1959
Right: artist's view of the 1959 Series 62 convertible

    
Left: a 1959 cartoon; right:  a 1959 Eldorado Xmas card;


Left:  1959 Cadillac front clip

             
Various 1959 art photos and drawings

   
These two posters are from the 1987
Del Greger/Philip Kaake collection of San Francisco


(unidentified) all things must pass

   
These four rows: Some Cadillac art involving the 1959 Cadillac

  
Here is an interesting print (left)  and a close up detail (right) painted by Patrick Sullivan of Wilmington,
NC. The location is Carolina Beach, NC.  The car was stored in the artist's hometown; now it has gone.

Someone sent me this picture many years ago; I understand it depicts a "sculpture"
on display on an American University campus. Later I got a cutting from the LA Times
describing the work of Englewood artist, Dustin Shuler; it is called Death of an Era

The ultimate folly is this 1:1 scale replica, in Fiberglas, of the two-door coupe model
(seen for sale on eBay in December 2002). The vendor claims it is unique
and weighs "ruffly" 300lbs. Any takers ?

The roof of Los Angeles' Hard Rock Cafe
(since that photo was taken, in the early nineties,
the car has been repainted in a psychedelic motif)

Media Burn by Ant Farm, San Francisco, July 4, 1975.
A 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz crashes through a wall
of burning TV sets, all in the name of "art"
[ Photo:  © John Frederick Turner (Yann Saunders collection) ]

       
Popular decoration for a popular fast-food chain: the Hard Rock Cafe
[ Photos: © 2000, Yann Saunders ]

 

Anybody know the month/year of this cover?

     

 

This is the cover of a Newsletter issued
by the Cadillac Club of Finland (CCOF)
[ Photo: © CCOF ]

 
This bumper sticker is a souvenir from Japan

    
Why this PC depicting Geneva's Grand Theater? Well, if you look carefully in the lower RH corner, you'll see a 1959
Series 62 convertible [blown-up, right].  It belonged to a Geneva doctor [more details about it in the 1959 Dream Cars section]

       
These two photos were taken inside the same theater during a much later staging of  Don Giovanni (in the nineties);
the car on the stage is ALSO a '59 convertible; it is NOT the car photographed outside the theater twenty years earlier!

"Eroti-Cad"
[ Source:  Unknown (possibly Internet) ]

     
The attire of the person on the rear deck (left) and the card's message suggest that it was intended for members of
San Francisco's gay community.  It reads I love you so f***ing much, it hurts! (pardon my French!)  It was published
in 1982 by Exposed Cards.  I assume that the person featured in the other  card (right) is a cross-dresser [man's hands
and legs] and that the card, again, was intended for the gay community.  There is no message or indication of the publisher

I believe the movie was called
Breathless, in English
[ red 1959 Eldorado Biarritz ]

    
(Left) this rear clip of the 1959 Eldorado Biarritz was used for an advertising poster for a large shopping mall
outside Paris, France, called "Parly 2".  It features an artist's rendering of a car formerly owned by Ed Berry
of California, originally photographed by Alberto Martinez for a French language book on American cars. The gal on
the right leaning nonchalantly on the RH tail-fins appears to be a giant with a shriveled right arm. Business as usual
(right): choice acreage was being offered in this 1959 ad by Lee Ackerman Investment Co Inc of Phoenix, AZ.
We have friends who live about a mile from where this photo was taken.  It sure does not look like this any more!

     
(Right) Some time back (!) you could rent the car on the left from John Powell's Rent a Wreck
for just $14 a day.  The car on the right was available from a competitive outfit, also in California

 
This publicity shot for England's Austin Mini, designed by Sir Alex Issigonis, takes a snide swing at the Cadillac
by showing that you could fit the diminutive car into the passenger compartment of the spacious Fleetwood limousine

Along the same lines as the preceding photo, this one sets off the "bulky"
'59 convertible and the more trim Chevrolet Chevette.  Personally, I still  prefer the Cadillac!
[ thanks to Dave Burden for correcting me on the Chevette, that I had listed as a VW Rabbit ]

    
Gracious living is perfectly illustrated in this seventies ad for a private jet
[source:  "Good Life", May 1983]

       
Left and center, a ceramic box and a wall clock decorated with the tail end of a '59 Cadillac
Right: VHS Video tape of Rude Dog and the Dweebs (Dweebin around in a pink Cadillac)

    
More ceramics

  
Popular telephone handset in the shape of a 1959 Eldorado Seville

Now isn't this something else?
A working 1959 Cadillac electric guitar!
[ Photo: courtesy Quentin Hall (owner), Australia ]

           
Left: key fob with cartoon Cadillac, Center, a fridge with 1959 Cadillac tail-lights
Right, from Classics Collection, the Mini Car Musical,  a music box that plays Pink Cadillac ]

   
Cadillac blank "gold" keys in presentation gift box [top left of larger image]
These items are from a Cadillac Merchandising Gift Catalog from 1959
[ images provided kindly by Bob Millian, CLC resident expert on '59-60 Cadillacs ]

   
These images also were provided by Bob Millian; I'm not sure if the year is 1959;
The "dipped V" Cadillac crest first appeared on 1964 Cadillacs

   
Left:  believed to be from the Franklin Mint [anything to make a quick buck!], this decorative pocket knife
Right: THE number plate for the '59 Cadillac buff

    
Left: Neon-lighted Cadillac sign [there exists also a simpler version without lighting]
Right:  From Car and Driver comes this card set, including one that depicts the '59 Eldorado convertible 

   
1959 Cadillac (tail) radio and tape deck

   
This first day cover, celebrating the 1959 Cadillac tail-fin,  issued March 17, 1995,
features an unknown artist's impressions of that year's Series 62 convertible model

   
(Left) This cute wood and card model of a 1959 Cadillac Series Sixty-Special sedan is "parked" beside a rare 1959
Cadillac Eldorado Brougham in Paris, France [ex-François Laurent car, now Robert Keyaerts Cadillac Museum at Langeais]; as you
can see, the toy is about three feet long.  Right, this classified ad appeared in the Swiss weekly Automobile Revue;  a real car is being
offered for sale but the ad seems to features a '59 Cadillac toy (one that I have never been able to properly identify)

This paper bag design was used by
a Swiss department store in the eighties

   
I wanted a pair of fancy Cadillac bookends.  At left, this is how the junk yard operator removed them
from the "donor car", an unhealthy 1959 ambulance.  On the right, this is how the tail-lights were
used to decorate the music room in the basement of our former home in Chambésy, Switzerland
(Below) This rear bumper off a 1959 Eldorado - with working lights - graced the outside of our garage.

    
(Left) the tail end of this thirties-based Ford (?) hot-rod caught my attention at a car meet in PA in 1991.  These
1959 Cadillac tail-light lenses have been adroitly converted to the "blue dot" kind,  popular in the thirties.
On the right, these two blue-dot '59 tail-light lenses were offered for sale at auction on e-Bay in January 2000!

    
Champagne anyone?
"Glasses" by Peter Wilding Frey
[ Photo by Mel Melcon ]

 
Matchbook cover from the collection of   Jean-Michel Roux, Switzerland

 

This couch was made for R&B artist, Fats Domino, by CLC member, Bob Millian

       
Left: Fats autographed this photo of him seated on the custom-made couch
Plaque (right) hides behind arm rest of Fats' couch (left)

The 1959 Cadillac couch is a popular home furnishing for the car nut.  One of our friends in Switzerland has one 
[see "Shark 59" story].  I witnessed the "delivery" to his penthouse apartment in Geneva;  they had to get a crane
to hoist it onto the terrace and four strong men to carry it through the French windows into the lounge;
Lower pic: miniature ceramic couch with Elvis, reading


In this painting you can see a 1959 Cadillac couch  (lower right)

      
This hotel in Miami Beach features a snack-bar with fancy booths like this one

     
Don't discard your '59 when you are through driving it!  It could make a comfortable
"Cadillac-King"-sized bed (left) or an ingenious, log-burning stove for the lounge (right)

On show in Paris
Cars of the American Car Club de France

   
Left:  this superb Series 62 convertible belonged to my friend the late Philippe Dauliach, a modest potter in one of France's
most barren and remote areas (Lozère).  Philippe wanted to get away from the humdrum of city life ...but he also wanted to
keep the '59.  The beautiful setting is the Dauliach pottery.    Right:  my former '59 Coupe de Ville in company
with Roger Zimmermann's mint '56 Sedan de Ville at the European office of the U.N., in Geneva, Switzerland.
  Since I took that picture (in the mid-eighties)  a barbed wire fence now surrounds the austere building, with observation
posts at various strategic locations, all manned by the Swiss military.  What are the "united nations" coming to?

We admired yet another Series 62 convertible (this one from Germany),  when we
were guests of Magali and Genevieve Keyaerts at their Château home in France in 1992

          
This sad looking Eldorado Biarritz was snapped in Damascus, Syria,
in September 2001,  by Joelle Leuba, a former neighbor of ours in Switzerland;
note that the trunk lip "ELDORADO" trim has been  put on the front hood!
[ Photo: © 2001, Joelle Leuba ]

Dreams are free ...but not this triple Persian Sand
Eldorado Biarritz that Gita and I  drooled over in Ohio, in 1994

   
On a Channel cruise in 1999 [ touching on England, France, Belgium and Holland], Gita and I were treated to this
1959 Series 62 convertible belonging to Frits Mast, a member of the Dutch Cadillac-LaSalle Club

   
This 1959 Eldorado Seville coupe is known as the "murder car" 
because its defunct owner was shot in it.

This Series 60 Special caught fire and was all but destroyed
[ Photo:  Courtesy Cadillac-LaSalle Club of Australia ]

     
I hate to end on a dramatic note, but I took these photos of a 1959 Cadillac 6-window Sedan de Ville
in France, in July 1961. Sadly, six people lost their lives in this wreck when the car skidded out
of control on France's treacherous 3-lane "N7" road near Valence, wrapping itself around a tree
[ Photos: © 1961, Yann Saunders ]