Hiraeth (pronounced “here-eyeth”): a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
By the early 1970s, people in America were burned out with what was going on in the world and wanted to reminisce about times that were simpler and still made sense.
When American Graffiti came out, it started a retro renaissance. Then came a slew of entries that emulated that mid-century atmosphere. Grease, Peggy Sue Got Married, Happy Days, Sha Na Na, Back to the Future, and many others were like warm blankets for those looking to relive their lost innocence.
- Engine: Original 331ci V-8
- Transmission: Original Hydra-Matric transmission
- Exhaust: Reproduction original
- w/Smithy’s glasspacks
- Wheelbase: 129 inches
- Length: 223.3 inches
- Width: 79.8 inches
- Weight: Approx. 4,600 pounds
- Interior: Reproduction original from SMS Auto Fabrics
- Tires: Coker L78-15
Having grown up on a steady diet of oldies music as well as TV and movies that were a nod to my parents’ generation, I romanticize anything 1950s. Dating still involved chivalry, instead of being reduced to swipe left or right. The radio was a feast for the ears because musicians still recorded their own voices and instruments before they began fudging their talent with software like Pro Tools and Auto-Tune. And then there’s the cars.
Back then, the industry still offered up options that were as timelessly attractive as Hitchcock blondes. Nowadays most cars look ubiquitous and are built to be disposable because the focus has shifted from visceral appeal to soulless marketability. We’ve gone forward in reverse, haven’t we? “Progress” is a subjective term.
I bought this 1955 Coupe deVille for several reasons. It’s a bit like Veronica Lake — it has an alluring appearance, it’s distinctly American, and it likes to drink … a lot.
To me, this particular year also coincides with the birth of rock ’n’ roll, and its bodylines are the intersection of the 1940s bulbous Art Deco look and the space-age Googie architecture the ’50s became known for. Somewhere along the way, however, the brand lost its mystique. Nowadays, you’ll find nary a coupe, nor convertible in the Cadillac fleet. They primarily rely on glorified Suburbans to keep the brand afloat.
If you owned a Cadillac like this in 1955, you were living high on the hog. Young, hip trailblazers drove Caddys, as they were the epitome of luxury and power. A quick internet search will turn up a sultry photo of Marilyn Monroe posing with her black ’54. Hank Williams passed away in the back of his blue ’52.
A famous image of Sugar Ray Robinson shows him leaning against a pink ’50 convertible outside his eponymous Harlem club. Even gangster Mickey Cohen shelled out a king’s ransom to have his ’50 Fleetwood customized with enough armor to make Patton blush. Off the lot, this ’55 cost around $4,305. While that may not sound like much now, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average yearly American family income in 1955 was $4,400.
I’ve kept this car fairly stock with a few exceptions. Custom front disc brakes were made by Classic Performance Products and adapted to work with the factory power brake setup. It’s been lowered slightly with cut coils in the front and 2-inch blocks in the back. Sierra Classic Car Audio kitted out the original radio with Bluetooth, AM/FM, and an auxiliary input for a phone or iPod.
And a New Port Engineering electric wiper motor replaced the factory vacuum version. Although upholstery can be tricky to find, I’ve restored various pieces back to reproduction original. The car came with power seats, heat and air conditioning, power windows, power steering, and power antenna, among other bells and whistles that hadn’t become standard on most of its contemporaries yet.
If you’re looking to restore one of these, my advice is to be patient in your undertaking of that endeavor. Although vintage Cadillacs were pampered by their owners, kept garaged, and have comparatively lower miles than other makes of that era, for some reason there’s just not as high a demand for this brand among classic car buyers.
Much of the reason is due to a chicken-and-egg situation. There aren’t many aftermarket parts for these cars available because people aren’t restoring them as much as other makes; they’re not restoring them because there’s not much aftermarket support. After nearly 30 years of owning this car, I’ve learned where to look for what I’m after.
Let’s face it, you don’t buy a car like this for practicality. You do it because of how it makes you feel. Being behind the wheel of a vehicle from a bygone era like this is a euphoria akin to having Debra Paget be your dinner date.
Although I’ve spent untold thousands over the years keeping this car on the road, I’ll take an old Caddy any day over something newer that’s collecting info on what you say, where you go, and how you drive that gets sold to data brokers. Not only that, but no one will be restoring the cheaply made, forgettable exotics of today driven by forgettable people who smell like Dior Sauvage and hot yoga.
My disdain for anything modern and trendy is also rooted in my skepticism about our so-called advancements.
According to a study done on rats, the National Institute on Drug Abuse had this to say: “The researchers gave rats the option of pressing one lever for a drug infusion or a different lever to open a door and interact with a social peer. The rats opted to open the door more than 90 percent of the time, even when they had previously self-administered methamphetamine for many days and exhibited behaviors that correspond to human addictive behaviors.”
In other words, rats prefer a sense of community over getting high, because, like people, rats are social beings. However, rats don’t have the option of pandering for virtual acceptance on social media while simultaneously furthering their own sense of isolation.
This is where “progress” has brought us. I’m not optimistic about where it’s headed and would gladly give up 70-plus years of technology to go back and live in those times. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the simple pleasure of driving around in my time machine, blaring some doo-wop on the radio, and pondering one of Rod Serling’s epilogues …
“Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives — trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there’ll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he’ll look up from what he’s doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past.
And perhaps across his mind there’ll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he’ll smile then too because he’ll know it is just an errant wish. Some wisp of memory, not too important really. Some laughing ghosts that cross a man’s mind.”
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