This image was meant to appear on my Rides For The Upscale Cowboy post a few days ago, but on second thought I felt it should stand on its own. After all, there’s just too much goodness on this one.
Vintage Ad: Cadillac DeVille – Taking’em Bales Of Hay In Style
– Posted on July 26, 2023
Another use for a funeral flower car, I guess.
Nice catch.
I wonder if hearsemakers tried selling their flower cars as luxury utes? Seems like a good way to amortize the labor and tooling. Henney had plenty of imagination, so they’d be the most likely suspect.
I don’t believe so. Flower cars had a raised platform in the bed so that people could see the flowers. A few companies, usually NOT the ones in the Professional Car (hearse, flower car, car-based ambulance) business made (mostly) Cadillacs into pickups, station wagons, and other body styles that GM chose not to build.
I’m old enough to remember when CB radios switched from 23 channels to 40 channels. Users with older 23-channel sets obviously couldn’t communicate with people on the new upper channels.
Judging by the FCC disclaimers, this ad is right at the beginning of the 40-channel rollout.
I think extending the vinyl top over the bedrails was a masterful idea that (I hope) never saw a chance to really come good over the life of the car.
A Coupe de Ville has a much roomier cabin than a regular pickup cab, and this one looks like the bed starts just forward of the quarter glass. That allows for full driver comfort unlike some professional cars I’ve seen.
Anything that reduces the metalfinishing required for a custom car is good business practice.
Maybe he’s CB-ing for some help for his cousins who took their Sedan DeVille through a redwood grove
Or possibly he’s CB-ing her:
Talk about truth in advertising. Just wow. Like we said yesterday, and many times before, sex sells.
Is that a young Rene Russo?
Maybe, but why is she holding the mic to her ear? 😉
Mic? What mic? 😉
Good catch!
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageads/comments/o4nnqc/president_ad_with_rene_russo_1977/
She was 23 at the time. 🙂
Everyone has to start somewhere. Breaker breaker.
That’s not the kind of girl that you talk to on a CB radio. That’s the kind of girl that you talk in person and you bring a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers and a bowl of pineapple. Nothing is going to happen over the CB.
“Nothing is going to happen over the CB.”
Clearly you weren’t there during the CB craze in America as I remember plenty happening .
-Nate
I was there but it wasn’t my thing. Curbside Classic is the highlight of my Internet searches. Technology has never been my thing.
I’ve always wanted an old flower car .
-Nate
No one has thrown around any CB lingo yet!
So here goes…
What’s your 20, good buddy?
That’s a big 10-4!
Portable parking lot.
Commercial beaver.
County Mountie.
Passing out green stamps.
That’s more than enough. I don’t miss any of it.
Put it in a plain brown wrapper and hammer down!
How many of these were in Ckedus Maggard’s Convoy?
“Cledus”
Loading/unloading hay in a fur (mink?) coat?
Looks like JOCK EWING might have used this to drive Miss Ellie around SOUTH FORK. Believe his car was a Mark V.
Nieman Marcus had Cadillac pick ups listed in their catalog for many years. I think they sold mostly to Texans. Don’t believe that they were flower cars.
Do a search on the Cadillac Mirage. I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, someone in the south part of Arlington had one I’d seen fairly regularly long before I knew of this site. Definitely did a double-take the first few time I saw it “Whoa! Did someone get creative with an el Camino and a Caddy front clip?” Nope, it was a for-real thing, and I’m sure the existence of the Flower Car probably helped.
During the 1980’s in Melbourne there were a couple of Jaguar XJ’s converted into utes getting around. Now they were classy hay haulers, I think the two or three remember were all used by garages for collecting parts and running errands.
It looks more like straw (dry wheat stalks) than hay.
It’s not a flower car. It’s a Mirage pickup conversion designed by customizer Gene Winfield and sold by Traditional Coach Works in 1975-76.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2022/01/rare-1976-cadillac-mirage-pickup-sells-for-41k/
At some point I came across the pricing on these. Anyone who bought one of these definitely wanted it, since when new the conversion cost on top of the original Eldorado coupe was enough to buy a nicely optioned El Camino.
I remember reading an issue of Motor Trend in 1971 that featured an article about a company in Texas (where else?) that built pickup and station wagon conversions for Cadillacs. Obviously I don’t recall the name of the company but it would have been just the thing for someone who wanted to show off his f*** you money.
This Cadillac pick-up conversion was not a flower car.
Back in 1978, went to a party in Houston. Host had been a cattle farmer, hit oil. His new home was exquisite.. Arriving I happened to park my 1976 white Eldo conv. next to his Cadillac pickup. in the auto court. Later that evening, the host asked who made my Eldo convertible. I said GM.