bagwell

Below: 1960 Series 75 Fleetwood Limousine
This vehicle is the ultimate in luxury and opulence. Costing $100,000, it was customised by George Barris with gold plated interior gadgets such as a phone, shoe buffer, refrigerator, entertainment console with a ten record automatic changer RCA record player, swivel TV and tape deck. Forty coats of exterior paint made with pearl, diamond dust and oriental fish scales were used on the outside. Hubcaps, wheel covers, headlight rims and the front grille are gold plated in 24kt gold. Gold lame drapes were used to cover the back windows and to separate the front and back seats. Truly a vehicle fit for a King!

Elvis used it occasionally in the early 60's but towards the end of 1966, Colonel Parker talked RCA into buying it for $24,000 as a promotional tool. The car tour (which included Australia in 1968) was a great success. Bob Hayden has been researching the Australian tour, click here for lots more details and pictures. In Houston, 40,000 came to take a look and take home a free `Elvis Presley's Gold Car' postcard. In Atlanta, the car was the guest of honor at a dinner for 250 dignitaries. In the late 70's the car was donated to the Country Music Association Hall of Fame in Nashville. When you press a button, the roof lifts off so you can see inside it.






the dude definitely had some cool cars....

mmarshall

Elvis also liked pink Caddies...especially the the outlandish '59, which was one of the most ostentatious-looking production cars ever built.

In those days, BTW, pink, especially on cars, was not necessarily considered a gay or female color like it is today. A number of American cars in the mid-late 50s had single, two-tone, or even three-tone pink paint and interiors. Bruce Springsteen sang about pink Caddies as late as the 1980s.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

man America really knew how to design a car back then (seemingly getting out of a dark period in recent times) but look at that. Gorgeous and the attention to detail

mmarshall

Those huge pointed fins, though, could be dangerous. A number of cyclists were hurt or impaled on them. The 1960/61/62 fins were almost as high, but toned down a little. Ralph Nader wrote about those Cadillac fin-injuries in his famous book "Unsafe at any Speed"...the same book where he also panned the early-60s Corvairs for their many safety-problems.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Might be dangerous but I don't think that makes it un-cool. in part design suffers because people in general are unobservant and easily distracted, human nature at its finest

again directed at the picture. that is some mighty fine sheet metal

bagwell

1959 BMW 507

bagwell

In early March, 1955 Elvis bought his first Pink Cadillac. It was a pink and white 1954 Cadillac and provided transportation for Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys for about three months. The car went up in smoke when a brake lining caught fire, on the road between Hope and Texarkana, Ark. on June 5, 1955.

mmarshall

Fins, of course, had grown to huge proportions on big American cars by the late 1950s, but the concept itself, with small fins, was first done by noted GM stylist Harvey Earl on the 1949 Cadillac. And that idea was taken from the famous twin rudder/boom Lockheed P-38 fighter-plane of World War II, which Earl had a fascination with.

03 ES

The man had excellent taste in vehicles, but hes no steve mcqueen...

VIPG35

iTrader: (6)

Beautiful cars

96SC4

iTrader: (2)

so much chrome on the cars back then.... now all we get is crappy plastic

kikcaffine

iTrader: (3)

plastic covered in chrome!

mmarshall

Well, I grew up with those chrome-loaded cars. The chrome had to be replated every few years...especially in damp climates and where road-salt was used. It was prone to corrosion, rust, pitting from gravel/stones, and, in some cases, simply loosening up and peeling right off the bumpers. The brown rust-patches in the chrome would make it look awful. Most of those potential problems don't happen with today's chrome-coated plastic, and if it does deteriorate, it's usually cheaper just to buy new (or used) chrome-plastic pieces that to actually re-plate a bumper or trim-piece with real chrome.