It’s ‘50s month in Tokyo, ladies and gentlemen, and we have an embarrassment of riches, with tailfins, fuzzy dices and whitewalls galore. Take the 1958 Cadillac coupes, for instance: I have two in my files, a red one and a green one. The agony of choice. But then, I looked at CC’s previous posts on these, and red’s been done twice already. Besides, I caught the green Coupe de Ville right when the gingko trees were at peak fall colours. From a strictly visual standpoint, the choice was obvious.
And is there a more typically ‘50s colour than this light green that turns almost blue in some angles? It complements the outrageous styling of this Caddy perfectly, in my opinion.
Was there ever a car feature less in need of its name being spelled out than the ’58 Cadillac’s tailfins? It’s true that, by this point in time, a lot of models sported pointy rear ends, but Cadillac fins always stuck out of the crowd, so to speak. They had pioneered them, or at least the postwar American take on the concept.
The front end feels a little more anonymous, by comparison. Cadillacs had a very recognizable face for two generations (1948-53 and 1954-56, arguably stretching into 1957); for 1958, the quad headlights, full-width grille and somewhat downsized Dagmars (sacrilege!) really transformed the physiognomy. The single exception was the Series 70 Eldorado Brougham, which kept its version of the ’57 face for longer – another reason to favour that ultra-rare variant.
But that was true for the entire GM lineup that year: clearly, a rather chunky and ornate design language was the way to go. It was, famously, a one-year-only affair and the entire lineup was again completely re-fashioned for 1959, as soon as GM designers got wind of Chrysler’s far more dynamic Forward Look.
The whole 1958 design drama affected Cadillac the least – certainly compared to the gaudy Buicks and Oldsmobiles. The only new-for-1958 bits of the Coupe de Ville we have before us were the tail and front end. Everything else was pretty much carried over from the ‘57s. Which, in this case, was a good thing.
Well, save for the usual finicky trim changes, of course. The rear quarter panel positively needed to be underlined five times with chrome, did it not? Well, that’s how you could tell without squinting that this was a CdV and not, say, the Eldorado. But let’s count our blessings: it could have been a lot worse, looking at some of the other GM cars of that year or the 1959 Coupe de Ville. Apparently, Cadillac designers realized that Harley Earl’s chrome-by-the-trowel approach for the ’58s was somewhat disingenuous and did what they could to rein it in.
There wasn’t much restraint in those fins, but then the ‘57s forward-canted ones had proven somewhat inadequate, as VinceC demonstrated in his seminal post about the 1958 Cadillacs. Full-fat fins that elongated the car’s line were deemed far more suitable and in keeping with the spirit of the decade. When in ‘50s Detroit…
Luckily, there was still enough in the chrome budget to spread a generous amount of gleaming metal inside the car as well. How anyone thought that blinding the drivers of 2.2-tonnes of sharpened 300hp monstrocar with instrument binnacles made entirely of highly reflective surfaces will always be a source of wonderment for those of us who were born long after this blessed era.
Still, you cannot deny that these cabins had style. With colours to match the exterior, too. I have it on excellent authority (a.k.a Aaron Severson) that the seats and door cards are upholstered in a mix of “light green Tunisian pattern metallic nylon” and “green metallic leather” — so not so much Corinthian as Carthaginian. A welcome change from all those drab ‘80s and ‘90s cabins I’ve been posting these past few months.
Imagine being cocooned in this sea of green, with the gentle wallow of the suspension lulling you to sleep. Actually, this reminds me of one of the Sopranos dream sequences. Fuhgeddaboudit…
The V8 behind that grille is a 365ci (5972cc) unit churning out 310hp SAE. I cannot find an approximate net or DIN rating for it, but it is in what Rolls-Royce owners would call the “sufficient” category.
Incidentally, this was the last year in which the Rolls could only muster a rather old-fashioned straight-6 to match the large V8s of Cadillac, Imperial and Lincoln. It was a similar story for Mercedes-Benz for a longer while yet, but their 3-litre 6-cyl. sported an overhead cam and fuel injection.
No fuel injection for 1958 Cadillacs – at GM, the Chevy and Pontiac were the beta testers for that technology. Besides, there were more than enough issues with Cadillac’s new optional air suspension to keep dealerships busy tending to irate customers in sagging sedans.
Ah, the hilariously misguided pronunciation of coupé as “coop,” because it’s spelled without the accented “é” (which actually means “cup” in French, not coupé). I wonder if Cadillac can be credited for that quintessential Americanism. The CdV name dates back to 1949, so it’s at least that old – or did Americans already say coop before the war?
Nowadays is no better, to be fair. I’ve heard quite a few folks my age and younger tend to pronounce cache as “ca-shay.” Same mistake as coop, but in reverse. All one can say is toosh. I mean, too-shay. Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
There were a lot of nice cars on the Meiji Jingu Gaien on that sublime November day. Most people were not there for that though: the crowd, and it was a large one, wanted to see the autumn foliage.
Some did take a pic or two of the odd classic Porsche or Alfa, but the only car that actually attracted the attention of those leaf-peepers was this green Caddy slathered in chrome reflecting the bright yellow leaves and clear blue sky. A feast for the senses!
Related posts:
International Dockside Classic – 1958 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible in Sweden, by Robert Kim
Curbside Comparison: 1958 Buick Limited vs 1958 Cadillac Series 62 – Chrome Plated GM Luxury, by Stephen Pellegrino
CC Outtake: 1958 Cadillac Roadster – Get Shorty, by PN
Cohort Pic(k) Of The Day: 1958 Cadillac Series 62 – Up For Auction, Any Takers?, by Rich Baron
COAL: 1958 Cadillac Series 62 Sedan – Owning Someone Else’s Car, by Stephen Pellegrino
RE: I’ve heard quite a few folks my age and younger tend to pronounce cache as “ca-shay.”
I believe your friends are saying “cachet,” meaning “prestige” and pronounced “ca-shay,” as the “t” is silent.
“Cache” is something hidden or perhaps related to computer memory.
No, they do mean to say “cache,” as in hidden, but overcorrect to “caché” because many don’t know how to deal with a silent ‘e.’ Another word I frequently heard butchered is “epitome,” as well as less common Japanese words or names that end in ‘e,’ like Masamune or chonmage.
Admittedly, it is a bit confusing, especially if you don’t know a few basics of etymology or foreign languages. And the way English is written makes absolutely no sense, which doesn’t help.
Haha, that’s right; it must be easier to govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese than to try to master English. There may be close to a million words in English (nobody is sure) although only 15-20% are in common or occasional use. Because it’s a “vacuum cleaner” of a language (some prefer “slutty”) which just “sucks-up” foreign words and phrases which seem handy, it has evolved in an anarchic way, thus the lack of consistency. There’s no centralised authority which defines right and wrong as the Académie Française and Goethe-Institut respectively provide for French and German, evolution of English being organic and quite democratic. Those learning English who understand the difference between “exact” and “inexact”, must ponder how a language in which “flammable” and “inflammable” can mean the same thing ever became the planet’s lingua franca.
Tatra, This Was, and ACB —
You guys are prime candidates to check out the NPR show, “A Way With Words.” If you haven’t already found your way(s) there ….. great fun, you’d enjoy it !
Also, as a podcast:
https://waywordradio.org/
P.S. — The Caddy is spectacular, as are the Gingkos.
Many (most?) languages incorporate foreign words; French and German do so in spades (as does Japanese), probably as much as English does. The main issue is how English is rendered in text form and read back. That system was codified at a time when the language was undergoing a major vowel shift, so it became very complicated and partly irrelevant, but stayed that way because of the inertia of tradition.
German, Italian or Spanish spelling is extremely user-friendly by comparison; French spelling, though rather complex, is bound by a set of ground rules. English spelling features multiple contradictory rules, there are tons of exceptions and a bunch of regional variations on top of it all. Every word also contains a stress somewhere, but it’s not written so when you see a word you’ve never heard, you just don’t know how to pronounce it. It’s not democratic, it’s anarchic.
That’s not to overlook English’s considerable advantages: very little conjugation, no gendered nouns, virtually no cases/declensions, relatively simple grammar… But again, those are not unique features and there are sizeable drawbacks, such as spelling. English did not become the lingua franca because it’s easier to master, just like Latin wasn’t inherently easier than other languages in its day.
The modern pronunciation of “cache” also upsets the pedants. According to them, cache (a hidden store of stuff or the place where the stuff is hidden) should be pronounced “kash” (dating from the sixteenth century). However, when IBM and Microsoft in 1988 included the SmartDrv disk cache with the dreaded DOS 4.0, the word spiked in use and the convention emerged to pronounce it as “caysh”. That the pedants probably would have accepted as an industry-specific convention but “caysh” seems now entrenched for all purposes.
The only ’58 GM car I like, and better than the cartoonish ’59 Cadillac. Compared to Lincoln in ’58, this is somewhat restrained.
Nice Tank de Ville! Your ramifications on the English language are much appreciated. 1059 was a wonderful year to celebrate HIDEOUS. Beside this 1958 Cadillac, we have the Edsel with the vulva front. YIKES!
How prescient of you! The ’58 Dread-sel will be featured later this week.
Dreadsel…love itl!
Oh, the babes I could get with a ride like that ! Then as now, the car proclaims one as a gentleman of taste and distinction. Not to mention a wad of cash (pronounced cachet).
or did Americans already say coop before the war?
Of course. Coupes were perhaps even more popular before the war than after. Do you really think kids in the ’30s called their jalopy a Ford “coupay”?
Americanization of French words in particular was almost universal, right down to the pronunciation of Cadillac. French was seen as snobbish or effete going way back, most likely because it used to be taught to the elite here, especially young women (think Jackie Kennedy) due to its once standing as the language of the educated global elite. There is a rather deep streak of anti-French sentiment in the US which has been well reflected in the prejudice against French cars here. Yet of course Americans love Paris, champagne, and quite a few other decidedly French things. It’s just one of the many contradictions of the love-hate feelings so rampant between most countries.
FWIW, I pronounce coupe “coop”. It would feel quite forced or stilted or pretentious of me to say “Coopay De Ville”.
Body styles were a lot more varied before the war, so I’m not so sure. The Brits and Ozzies have always said it the “pretentious” way.
You say “coop” in English, but how do you pronounce that word in your mother tongue?
If we take the immensely popular Ford Model A as a proxy, coupes made up about 50% of its total closed body production. That would not be the case in the 1950s.
I pronounce words according to the language I am using, so yes, in German it’s pronounced “coopay”; in American English it’s pronounced “coop”. If I was talking to Americans about a coupe and pronounced it “coopay”, they might not even understand what I was saying or look at me in a very odd way.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans.”
Can you imagine the Beach Boys singing “Little Deuce Coopay”?
Wow, that’s a great question about whether Americans pronounced coupe as coop before WWII! Never thought about that before.
I was able to find a 1944 Merriam-Webster dictionary, and for the Coupe entry, it says the word is “often incorrectly Anglicized kōōp” – so I guess the “coop” pronunciation predated the war, though I bet the Coupe de Ville’s emergence accelerated that trend.
When I lived in Japan, I was often amazed at the collector vehicles I saw. The featured Cadillac is case in point. Such a car would be a real hassle to park in a place like Tokyo. I doubt it would fit in the parking carousels that are common in Japan.
Was there a real advantage to four headlights instead of two, or was it just ‘more is more’? Perhaps with 1950’s technology there was a rationale. But the single headlight 1957’s always look better to my eye than their immediate successors.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the magnificence of this monster. More and more, these cars tell us huge amounts about the unique era that created them.
Generally yes, BUT, there was an interesting, quixotic attempt on prewar radio to enforce the “couPAY” pronunciation. There was a lot of pressure on radio actors, and particularly radio announcers, to use “correct” pronunciations, even if no one actually said it like that. (A representative example: Radio announcers would insist on pronouncing “Los Angeles” with a hard “g,” although NO ONE here actually did that, and anyone in California would have looked at you very strangely if you did.) So, if you listen to old radio programs, you will occasionally hear something like, “The suspect is escaping in a black coupay,” although in the real world, Americans would be far more likely to say “a black coop.”
I wasn’t around, but apparently some Angelanos did use the hard-G pronunciation, including 1950s Mayor Fletcher Bowron — all his life, he said.
https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2011-jun-26-la-me-0626-then-20110626-story.html
Too bad we can’t go back and listen to everyday conversations!
I had a German student stay at my place a few years back – she called my car a Be Emm Vay. Laughed at me saying it was actually a BMW. It was a coupé too.
A glorious example of conspicuous consumption .
When too much is not enough .
I love these cars as long as I don’t have to drive them =8-) .
-Nate