The first time I laid eyes on the '59 Caddy it was on display in the CARS OF THE STARS Museum in Buena Park, California.It was billed as the "Sonny and Cher Cadillac," although I doubt they ever owned the car. It was used as a prop on their TV show and Cher sat all over it. Originally a guy named Calvin Weikamp built it, then LA upholstery man Joe Perez acquired it.
I always had a yen to make a '59 Caddy hardtop into a Lowrider. This car was the logical choice as it had already been beautifully customized. In '83 I tracked down Jim Brucker (who owned about 600 old cars simultaneously) only to find that two weeks earlier he had sold it to the retired Chief of Police of Kansas City, who was living in LA's San Fernando Valley. Jim said the guy might like to sell it because his wife complained that every time they pulled up to a stoplight, a different hispanic would ask if the car was For Sale.
I called the owner, jumped a jet from NJ to LA and bought the car for $4,500. So began the adventure of bringing the car across country, sight unseen. It was your basic 3,000 mile "get acquainted" drive. The car had been in storage for years, so the seller put in new brake fluid, oil, ATF, filters, etc. I'll never forget the first time I jumped on the gas, pulling out onto the Hollywood Freeway . . . the throttle stuck wide open! Instantly I knew that owning this car was going to be an experience. Little did I know how true that premonition was.
The car had a few other, shall we say, idiosyncrasies. The gas gauge, clock, speedo and odometer were "cashed" (inoperable.) The four-barrel trickeld gas out of the throttle shafts, resulting in 10-12 mpg fuel "economy." When you're driving across New Mexico and Kansas and there are no open gas stations, you can understand why I ran out of gas five times (even with a few extra cans of gas in the trunk.) And because the front coils had been torched and cut, the bad alignment loved to eat front tires big time.
When we grew up in the 50's we'd see all these fantastic, spotless rods in HOT ROD, RODDING & RESTYLING, and R&C. They were trouble-free dream cars. But when you'd go for a ride in your pal's Pontiac-powered '50 Ford, the wiring would burn up, or you'd lunch the rear end or tranny. That's the stuff you never saw or heard about in the magazines. I've often said that a car wasn't a true Hot Rod if it didn't catch fire at least once!
The Cad turned some heads! When I got the Cad to Jersey I drove it every day, and I've never owned a car that attracted so much attention. Make a left turn through a town and you'd notice EVERY head would swivel, eyes following you, as you cruised through! I took the car to the HOT ROD Meet in Berea OH back when it was a '48 and earlier event, and managed to B.S my way in with the car since I was a former Editor of HRM. But the "discrimination" I experienced there against 50's cars by event management was one major factor that influenced me to start the events for 50's vintage cars I still do today. I drove the Cad to Chicago several times, to Minnesota, to Ohio, etc. I feel that the enjoyment of old cars is in the driving of them, not locking them in some garage and taking them out a few select times a year if the weather is perfect. That is akin to marrying a beautiful woman you love yet never . . . well, you know what I mean.
My wife, possessing good taste, refused to ride in the car or be seen with it. My kids loved it. My daughter was riding with me and I told her to slide over to the middle of the front seat. I told her, "You have no idea how many good looking Mexican women have sat right where you're sitting now."
Cornell Charilla, from Kansas, installed hydraulics on my Cad at the first LEAD EAST in New Jersey in '83. I added dingle balls and obnoxious La Cucaraccia air horns. Some people saw the humor and understood I was having fun with my car. Many didn't. Those who thought I was making fun of Mexicans were wrong. I was making fun of square Anglos with no soul. I think all cars and trucks look better when lowered. The lower the better. I mean, I want to get a backhoe and dig a perfectly designed trench about 5 inches deep at a big Rod Run like York or WOTSRA's so I can park my present '41 Buick (formerly Lee Pratt's) Lowrider in it!
I had a great deal of fun with my car, but on several occasions it tried to kill me. When the hydraulics were first installed on my Cad I'd drop the front end and "BWANG", pop the spokes out of the 15 inch Riviera wire wheels. The tires were planted and I was torquing the spindle so hard when I'd drop the hydraulics, something had to give. Something else that let go was the bolts hoding the lower control arms to the frame. On at least four occasions I'd be on a country road and suddenly the car would lurch across the center line and drop, making a horrible scraping noise of metal against asphalt. I'd replace the bolts with case hardened bolts and it still didn't solve the problem. When I switched to 14 inch wheels (to lower the car more) it solved the problem because now the K-member would crash against the ground when I dropped the hydraulics.
When the car was built in California it got about 30 coats of Candy base coat, toner and clear. The first Jersey winter the paint checked, cracked and crazed like gangbusters. Big souvenir chunks of paint flaked off. It was time to take the car down to bare Bondo and do it over, along with some bumper rechroming. I had the Pontiac Gran Prix door handles shaved and had a set of 6 1/2 foot bubble skirts hammered out of metal. The car was painted the same dark burgundy, but in bulletproof enamel. The personalized plate LO LIFE and MANHATTAN LOWRIDERS (a fictional club I started) plaque in the rear window completed the picture. It was the ultimate Mexican Pimpmobile.
Another swell memory of the car occurred when the car was going from the shop where the fender skirts were being made to the body shop. Someone thoughtlessly tossed the stainless side speares in the trunk, arcing across the batteries. Fortunately the guy driving the rollback had a fire extinguisher and was able to put out the blazing inferno in the trunk that resulted, on the side of I-80. Like I said, it ain't a real hot rod if it don't catch fire! This is a good lesson on why you use battery boxes . . . and don't carry cans of gas in the trunk!
Another bad experience began when cruising the fairgrounds at Larry Kramer's HOT LEAD AND OTHER BAD METAL event in Ohio. I had the hydraulics down as low as possible while moving and when we encountered a change in the pavement height the car emitted a loud BLANG! We laughed it off and foolishly drove off to Minnesota and THE 50'S NATIONALS. But enroute to the Columbus STREET ROD NATS (after putting a center driveshaft bearing in the car in Minnesota) I had another, more convincing "MY CADDY IS TRYING TO KILL ME" episode.
The idler arm bracket that we had cracked in Ohio finally let go in Wisconsin- at 65MPH on the freeway. It was a religious experience. The front tires suddenly towed-in radically, there was a partial loss of steering control, and the steering cross-link was digging a groove in I-94. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a cloud of black asphalt grindings spewing from my ill-fated Lowrider. I guided the wounded Caddy to the side of the road like belly-landing a B-29 with no nose wheel, getting it off the highway without hitting the guard rail or any other vehicles. All the while there was this unforgettable sound of chassis component digging Wisconsin asphalt. As I sat there by the side of the road, saying a prayer for still being in one piece, dozens of Street Rods whizzed by enroute to Columbus and the Nats. But the adventure had just begun.
I managed to come up with a rollback and trucked the Cad back to friend Tom Balliargeon's house in Coon Rapids, MN. He knew an incredible boneyard where we got the parts needed. We got the car glued back together but neglected to have the front end aligned because it was Midnight and I was hot to start for Columbus. I got as far as the I-694 ring route around Minneapolis/St. Paul when the right front wheel decided to part company with the rest of the car.
Of course I was in the fast lane doing 65, at night. Perhaps it was the lack of alignment, or it may have been the junkyard wheel bearing we had put in several months earlier up at Ed Reavie's fabulous event up in St. Ignace, Michigan? In any case it was that old familiar growl of metal vs. asphalt at speed again! It was like fingernails on a blackboard played through a giant sound system as the adrenaline screams through your brain. All the while you try to guide this scraping hulk of Fischer bodywork to the side of the road without getting T-boned or looping into the Armco barrier. It was that old religious experience Deja-vu all over again. The right front wheel came off the car, miraculously got trapped in the front wheelwell, but didn't harm any body sheet metal. The tire was history, but the car was once again at the side of the road. Nobody stopped to help, so I rolled into the back seat and snoozed 'till dawn. Another rollback ride to Tom's house. This time I told him to fix it and put it on a car carrier . . . I was taking a plane back home to Jersey. But the story doesn't end there.
When the guy came to unload the car, it had been on the upper level of this 18-wheeler car carrier. As he rolled it off the trailer, a ramp slipped, the car lurched, and it put a 5 foot scrape down the side of the otherwise wonderful body and punctuated it with a 6 inch dent in the quarter panel. So much for the candy paint job. I had this distinct feeling my car was trying to tell me something.
Where's the car now? I put an ad in LOWRIDER Magazine, a guy from Pico Rivera CA called, I sent photos and I sold him the Caddy for $13,000, sight unseen, dent and all. He immediately sold it to a Japanese Tycoon. The car is now in Japan, probably trying to kill its new owner.
I loved and hated that car. It was one of the neatest looking rides ever, especially when it was down (51 inches off the ground, unchopped.) The good times outnumbered the bad. Driving it in New York City and dropping the hydraulics at a stoplight blew people away. Or you pull up to a girl in the next lane, drop the hydraulics at the stoplight and ask her, "Wanna get Mexican?" Once at the York Street Rod Nats East I was driving across the Fairgrounds to put it in an Exhibit building. I pulled up to a rope strung across the road, dropped the hydraulics and drove under the rope and slid on in. I always liked cruising the events with the hydraulics as low as possible, once, when in this low stance, somebody yelled, "Hey, raise it up!" (obviously wanting to see it "bounce.") I yelled back with the car still down, "UP, THIS IS UP!" Or the time six of us were crowded into the caddy cruising the KKOA Springfield OH event. I was doing about 4 MPH and a friend in the back seat shouted out in broken pidgeon Spanish, "Hey man, slow down . . . you're going too fast!"
One thing I can say about owning that car . . . it was never dull.
-Terry Cook
DecoRides@aol.com
http://www.decorides.com/
Special Thanks to Terry for letting me publish this story on a badass cad! -A
0 comments:
Post a Comment