Today’s offering is a throwback in so many ways. A beautifully brief craigslist ad, a fair price and a massive American sedan. Last post’s ECHO certainly is a car. Unfortunately the econobox category doesn’t quite tug at the heartstrings. The whole false promise of the automobile in America is potential, and even if those potentials are never realized, if the car can inspire even a brief respite of fantasy, I think it’s going the extra mile in perpetuating the great myth. Transcending that functional demand of its existence for a fleeting moment. Transporting us somewhere beyond. Not all are up for the task. This might just do the trick.
This is your grandpa’s Cadillac. Occupying space beyond any logic or reason. Sitting at 19 feet, it is as long as a Suburban. The Last of the Land Yachts. Seating for six. Fins, chrome, hood ornaments, wearing a suit to the airport, drunk driving . A quiet, sophisticated parlor, effortlessly floating down the highway. Gliding past you like the years.
A Fleetwood , named for a turn of the century metal plant in Pennsylvania that stamped out early Cadillac bodies. Located in the borough of Fleetwood, named by an American railway surveyor in 1859 after the English seaside resort town of Fleetwood in Lancashire county. A town built for tourism in the 1830s on the empty ancestral lands of a minor British baron. Gary, Gretchen, and Barbra? No relation, named for the Fleetwood telephone exchange in Olympia.
PILE IN, bring your friends, we're going somewhere in The Fleetwood. You deserve so much better than a leased Subaru. The Queen rode in a Fleetwood Limousine on her royal tour of Canada. They stopped making anything this comfortable. Switch off sleeping in the back for an all night drive down the coast. Prowl Palm Beach, engage in some roadside hanky panky, silently idle in front of a 711 at dusk smoking virginia slims (you’ve come a long way baby) , or just take everyone out for dinner and ice cream. You can’t get much more for much less.