It was on our first vacation to Colorado in 1961, in our elderly and dumpy 1954 Ford. It had slowly chugged us up Trail Ridge Road to Millner Pass. In the parking lot was a 1961 Cadillac sedan, and we pulled in next to it. We (all six of us) gladly got out of the crowded car, and while the rest looked at the Alpine scenery I gazed at the Caddy. We got back in, and the Ford wouldn’t start. It was vapor lock, and not for the first time. While waiting (with the hood up, for the Y-block to cool so that the gas would stop boiling), my face was glued to the Caddy’s window. A perfect family of three, including a cute blond girl my age, approached and I quickly moved out of the way. As the girl opened the giant back door, my longing to slide in there was overpowering: “Please take me with you.” But my body language must not have been sufficient (or maybe excessive). The Don Draper-ish dad hit the starter, and the Caddy instantly sprung to life, backed out and whisked them up to the highest point of 12,183 feet with a barely audible whisper from its exhaust. Growing up is a bitch.
And here they are, enjoying all the air-conditioned space in the back of that Cadillac, on their way back to Kansas City (the Kansas side). Meantime, the Niedermeyers dripped on each other, all four kids jammed into the back of the Ford with its itchy upholstery. Yes, some folks knew how to enjoy the driving part of their vacation, although one didn’t ever see Cadillacs at the trailheads. Can’t exactly see Betty Draper climbing a mountain. We all find our pleasures.
whitewall buick caught this 1961 Series 62 four window sedan at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Now that’s the way to see the USA, as no car ever had better 360º vision than one of these flying-wing hardtops. The ’61 Caddy is one of my all-time favorites, and here it is in my favorite element: on vacation. “Please let me in!”
Perfect. The wife and I and our 2.3 kids took a long road trip this spring in our well-chilled Fusion. I forestalled any whining with the tale of your trip to the NY World’s Fair in the Fingerhut Fairlane, with siblings joined at the sweaty thighs. “Remember the Niedermeyers!”
That mom in the ’61 ad could not look any more like Betty.
I’ll bet that Betty Draper’s resemblance to the mother in the advertisement is no accident. That mom represented the “ideal” woman of the early 1960s – blond, slim and elegantly coifed. The producers of Mad Men knew what they were doing when they cast the actress (January Jones) for the part of Betty Draper. If a man had been featured in this ad, I’ll bet he would have looked a lot like Jon Hamm.
It’s from the brochure. Here’s “Don” from the same one, with one of his “girls”.
My Uncle Bob had one of these in Johnny Cash black. It rode like a cloud. It was the most luxurious vehicle that I’ve ever had the pleasure to ride in. Quiet to the extreme, plenty of torque, it soaked up all but the harshest road imperfections and had plenty of room for everyone to stretch out. I can see how someone who is on the road all the time in sales or something would want a sled like this, who wants to be beaten up by the road and go to bed exhausted every night? Yes, I’m sure all the electronic geegaws broke eventually, it got horrible mileage even back then, and it had absolutely no sporting pretense at all, but so what? It did it’s job perfectly.
I can’t imagine feeding it’s X mpg thirst now. Imagine the gasoline bill at the end of the day. What kind of mileage did these get?
These got surprisingly good mileage. The Cadillac 390 was coupled to the 4 speed Jetaway HydraMatic which allowed a fairly tall axle ratio. I have read that these were good for 14-15 mpg on the road, maybe a touch more. When the 429 replaced the 390 in 1964, it developed a bit of a reputation as a gas hog compared to the earlier engine.
My 63 Fleetwood, however, was not a good example. The carb was terribly out of whack and it got me about 7.5 mpg on premium most of the time, and maybe 10 or 11 on the highway. Yuck. But it was fast for a 5200 pound car. Floor the gas pedal from a stop and mine left 3 black streaks – two tires and one exhaust.
14-15 sounds believable. My first car was a ’66 Chevy with 283 and Powerglide, and got 16-17 on the highway, maybe 11-12 in in-town use. The highway mileage could go to 18 under optimal conditions (straight and level road, sticking to the 55 mph limit).
Yes, that is a luxury car. Modern cars that are classified as luxury cars are just expensive, not luxurious.
You said it! I am a fellow labourer under the assumption that a car has to qualify as luxurious to be called a luxury car. Unfortunately, the market tends to disagree with you and I.
The ladies in the middle picture are lounging in the back of a Fleetwood Sixty Special. Ahhh, luxury. Around the time I had my 63 in the late 1970s, a neighbor kid got a 61 Coupe DeVille that his dad bought from an elderly client. A silver-blue car with a white roof. The 61 had some bondo along the tops of the front fenders, but was a pretty nice old car for having lived almost 20 years in the salty upper midwest. The thin roof pillars of the DeVilles was a very different look from my formal black Sixty Special.
I, for one, love that metallic pink. We had family friends with a 62 LeSabre in that color. The wife must have been persuasive to get her husband (a former WWII bomber pilot) to pick the pink one.
Well, if he was in the 12th Air Force (North Africa), his bomber may well have been painted “sand” (which looked somewhat pinkish). Maybe he liked the color!
Well I can empathize with your hot sweaty moments in the summer of 1961. I was in Navy boot camp and probably would have traded places with you.
I owned several 53 fords and avoided the 54. I didn’t think the small y block was an improvement. In fact, I think I would have preferred the six for that year.
I think I need to go take a nap now. Memories of 1961 always do that to me.
I had a very similar vacation experience when I was fourteen, in 1961. We were on a summer driving trip through Northern California in our 1959 Ford Galaxie, and Dad decided to treat us to a stay at the Mammoth Mountain Inn at Mammoth Lakes. The hotel was relatively new and very luxurious, and this promised to be a rare experience for us. As we pulled into the hotel parking area in our dusty, dirty, bug splattered Ford, and as my brother and I (both very tall at this age) extricated ourselves from the 2-door back seat, there sitting side by side under the hotel porte cochere were a 1960 and a 1961 Cadillac. I was enthralled to see these two models (can’t remember now if they were sedans or coupes) looking like an image out of a Cadillac brochure. I stood there for the longest time, mentally comparing the design differences between the two years (the ’61 won hands down, in my young mind). We felt a bit like the Clampetts just arriving from a cross-country odyssey, our Ford spilling over with the kind of detritus a family accumulates on a long road trip, pillows, food wrappers, Kleenex boxes, water jugs (no plastic bottles in those days), and more. These cars were so pristine in this elegant setting, we felt very out of place. Never did see who the lucky people were who owned these leviathans, but once we hit the hotel swimming pool, we settled in and had a great time.
I have always thought the ’61 and ’62 Cadillacs were the pinnacle of Cadillac design, and I’ve told the story how my father very nearly acquired a ’62 Series 62 coupe the next year, until my mother put the kibosh on things. What could have been!
I’m a big fan of those GM roof lines. Did the ’61-’62 designs ever seem out of place on the Cadillac design trajectory to anyone else? The ’63 & ’64 Cadillacs looked like an update of the ’60, but the ’61-’62 seemed more modern than its successors until ’65. There has to be a story there, and I was born a decade too late to see it first hand.
Hank, I think you described the styling trajectory very well, but to my eye, the ’61 and ’62 models did not look as good as their predecessors or successors. While the earlier ones were beautiful in their over the top way, the ’63 and ’64 were cleaner and more elegant. This will sound weird, but when I was a very little kid (late 60s) there was something about the ’61 and ’62 that sort of scared me! It amazes me how aware I was of different cars and the year to year model changes at the ages of 3 or 4!
I can see that. I always favored the ’64 and the ’60, and this design took a while for me to warm up to.
This brings back memories. I remember looking for the telltale puddle of water under cars in the late 1960s or early 1970s during the summer months..that was the sign that the car had air conditioning. Which was still a big deal in small-town Pennsylvania at that time. By that point, we also knew that all Cadillacs had air conditioning (even though I believe that it was still technically an option).
Our 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 Holiday sedan had a black vinyl interior – and no air conditioning. Yes, it was very hot in the summer. I only had one sibling, so we could at least give each other plenty of room in the back seat.
And, with apologies to Zackman, that is why I didn’t care that the rear windows didn’t roll down in the new Colonnade coupes. I didn’t want to ride around with the wind in my hair (I could do that in my parents’ creaky old 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air wagon).
I wanted to roll up to the Tropical Treat (the town’s main take-out restaurant) in a snazzy new air-conditioned Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme or Pontiac Grand Am.
The 61 is one of my favorite Cadillacs. The horizontal side fins are neat. I’ve loved Cadillacs my entire life. The earliest recollection I have of a Cadillac is when I must have been about 3. (About 1955) My Dad and I were sitting in his 51 Chevy at a parking garage in Pittsburgh, PA, waiting for my mother and aunt to return from shopping. My Dad and I took a walk around the garage, and I immediately zeroed in on a gray sedan with amber fog lights built into the grill. I asked my Dad what kind of car was that, and he replied a Cadillac. (I’d guess about a 51 or 52. I can still see that beautiful car in my memory.)
He told me that my mother would not let him buy a car like that. It cost too much money. I told him I’d buy one some day, and let him drive it.
Well, at age 28 I bought a nice but troublesome 14 year old 1966 Deville convertible. I was hooked after that. Have had some sort of Cadillac since then, mostly nice old models.
That 66 got 8 MPG, had the 429. I kept my promise to my Dad, he drove one until he passed.
At my high school summer job in 1966, one of my teenage co-worker friends was from Detroit and his family stayed at their cabin at our lake resort area in the summer. He had the use of their dark blue 1961 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. Detroit winters had already taken their toll as rust had invaded various lower body panels, and the exhaust system was sounding pretty rough. The A/C no longer worked, and the pale blue cloth upholstery was somewhat worn and faded.
But it was a still a beautiful car in my eyes, one of my favorite Cadillacs of the era, so svelte and stylishly trim compared to the porky 58-60 models. We had a lot of fun bombing around in that car with all the windows down listening to 60′s rock and the V8 burble. Good times.
Today I wouldn’t mind having a 61 Coupe DeVille in the rose metallic that was so popular in the day.
How funny to see this in such nice condition. The same model parks near my home, though the color is primer-gray, the shiny bits are askew, and the upholstery looks like it fell into a volcano. Oh, and one tire is huge and blocky and ancient–like something you’d expect to find on a 4wd cornbinder gathering dust in a barn.
Anyway, the weird thing about this 50-yr-old Cadillac on my street is how BAD its condition is. Around here (Boston), there is simply no space to store a junky old jalopy that you tinker with on weekends. So all of the classics in town are show-ready toys belonging to the local plutocrats (or at least the solidly upper-middle class) who can afford plenty of garage space. Though it’s a bit sad to see how rough that Caddy is, it’s also wonderful to see a rusty rocket ship driven by… just some guy. He could’ve chosen a 1996 Pontiac Grand Am, but for some reason, he picked this. There’s nothing else like it in town.
My earilest childhood memory is automotive! I was a sickly toddler and was fighting some kind of pneumonia where I spent time in an oxygen tent. From what my mother tells me, I was seht home, but had a relapse of sorts.
I remember the pediatrician driving up to the front of our house and I remember he pulled up in (what I now know the year of) that old GM metallic fuscia . . . ’61 Cadillac. A coupe – probably a series 62 . . . anyway, I remember he came in and right in the living room gave me a shot (penicillin) in the rear.
I was maybe about two and a half, so this must have been early 1962.
Fast forward to October, 2008 in Alameda, California. That annual car show that lines Park Street in downtown Alameda. I saw my first (and only) vista roofed four-window ’61 Caddy (Sedan de Ville) ever. Through the years, I saw many series 62 1961 coupes and six window sedans, Coupe de Villes, Sedan de Villes (all six window) and some Fleetwood Sixty Specials. This one in Alameda was a white four window with black and silver thread jacquard seats with white leather/vinyl bolsters. No a/c – but this was typical of Northern California (Bay Area) cars, including most luxury cars then. This was a well preserved survivor.
Personally, my favorite ’60′s Caddies are the ’63 and ’64.
One of my favourite cars Paul. The Park Avenue (with short rear deck) is even better. However, what did you mean Mr. Draper `hit’ the starter? Even a Caddy had one of *those* GM starters?
“Hit the starter” was a common expression, its origins going back to the time when almost all cars had a starter “button” on the floor. But it’s anachronistic now.
My paper route for the Independent Journal (1972-74) – one of the streets of my San Rafael route (Jewell Street) had a ’62 Park Avenue – metallic green over green. The only “shorty” Cadillac I ever saw in the flesh.