Dan Proudfoot/The Globe and Mail
Like a whale easing past a deep-sea diver, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville cannot be taken in in a single glance. Emerging from winter storage prior to being trucked to the Canadian International Auto Show, Gary Nolan's magnificent monster just goes on and on.
"I have my harbour papers," Nolan says from behind the wheel, charting a course between the garage door frame on one side and his 1970 Corvette on the other.
And what a spectacle as the Hampton green metallic monster emerges into a winter afternoon's light. First, the hooded quad headlamps hold your eyes, then the chrome complexity of the grille, the massive front bumper. The Cadillac purrs and preens as Nolan guides it forward.
Now a stainless steel spear guides the eye from the outrageously curved windshield pillar rearward down-down-down to jet exhaust backup lamp housings: and above them, the climax, the tail fins. They tower over all others – a moonshot a decade before Apollo 11 landed.
The 1959 Cadillac was the most extremely styled car ever mass-produced, an obituary for Chuck Jordan, chief designer for Cadillac in the 1950s, suggested in 2010. Jordan himself acknowledged the fins were over the top. "Even before the '59 hit the street, we had already completed the '60 design where we cut the fins off," he said in a Los Angeles Times interview. "That tells you we recognized that we probably overcooked it."
Jordan blamed Chrysler for the excess. In the summer of 1956, he happened to drive by a lot full of 1957 Chryslers awaiting shipment to dealers. They were longer, lower, wilder than anything in the GM pipeline, so Jordan took his boss, Bill Mitchell, for a look and the fuse was lit. Reach for the sky.
Nolan originally said no to this car when another collector called in 2009 to say it was available, knowing he'd sold his '62 Cadillac. "A big chrome car like this, you don't want to buy it to restore, you buy it already restored," Nolan says, "because the front bumpers are such, like 500 pieces, you're probably looking at 80 hours lining everything up and that's just the front end."
Then he thought some more. Cadillac only made 975 Eldorado Sevilles in 1959, this being No. 846, and "the uniqueness of the car came into play … next thing I knew I was in dismantle mode. And six years later … it was finally done last spring."
When he drove to his favourite gatherings – such as Tim and Brenda's Cruise for the Cure in King Township last summer – he found boomers loved the massive fins. From "Eyesore to Icon," the Cadillac database website's headline for its 1959 Fin Follies page, pretty much captures the widespread change in perception.
Nolan and his specialists at Diamond Auto Trim in Aurora, Ont., restored the interior. Clients' cars currently in Nolan's shop are testimony to his reputation: a Lamborghini Murcielago and a one-of-a-kind Bugatti Type 57, a Volvo P1800, Jaguar E-Type and a Mercury Cougar.
For the Cadillac he chose Scottish leather for its "hand" or feel, seven hides in total. The Bugatti, by the way, called for ostrich leather from South Africa. Many hours of labour went into making the Cadillac's interior look as it did new in 1959.
Specialists did everything else. "My belief is that you can't be good at everything," he says, so the chrome, for example, went to The Plating House in Concord, Ont., where imperfections were smoothed away and chrome-upon-nickel-upon-copper plating applied for just the right hue.
He took pleasures in the details. The new door window glass, for example, was etched with the correct date coding. Unquestionably, the finished car is finer than new, from the wonderful depth of its finish to its air ride suspension that was problematic in 1959 and made worse by age-related bladder weakness. "I used to start the car and burn $10 worth of gas just waiting for it to rise, but it's flawless now."
Six inches short of 20 feet long – there's nothing metric about a 1959 Cadillac – Nolan says it's like driving a sofa on wheels. "Boomers ponder the fact that women used to manoeuvre these cars around in parking lots. Not any more: parking spots are much smaller today."
Nolan won four best-in-show awards at last summer's cruises. The car will be invited to participate in the Cobble Beach Concours d'Elegance in September. Toronto auto show-goers, be advised to budget a quarter of an hour, minimum, circumnavigating the Eldorado Seville. There's so much to see.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram
Add us to your circles
Sign up for our weekly newsletter