The 1957 Eldorado Brougham cost more than a Rolls-Royce and came with perfume
Cadillac's hand-built 1957 Eldorado Brougham sold for $13,074, double an ordinary Eldorado and more than a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Buyers got memory power seats, air suspension, magnetic silver drink tumblers in the glovebox, and a leather vanity kit complete with lipstick holder, comb and an atomiser of Lanvin perfume.
The Eldorado name, Spanish for the gilded one and a nod to the mythical city of gold, won an internal contest for a 1952 concept car marking Cadillac's golden anniversary. The production convertible arrived for 1953 in just 532 examples, 0.5 percent of Cadillac's sales that year. It introduced the wraparound windshield and a dipped beltline beneath the side windows, touches adored by GM styling chief Harley Earl and widely imitated. At $7,750 it cost nearly double a rival Packard convertible.
Then Cadillac chased volume. For 1954 the Eldorado lost its special body and shared sheet metal with ordinary Cadillacs, relying on trim to stand apart, and at a lower price sales nearly quadrupled to 2,150. Sharp, slender tailfins arrived for 1955 as sales almost doubled again. In 1956 a hardtop called the Seville joined the Biarritz convertible, both named after glamorous European places, and of 6,050 Eldorados sold that year, 2,150 were Sevilles.
The Brougham was a different beast, designed under Ed Glowacke and built by hand in Detroit. It wore a brushed stainless steel roof, rear-hinged back doors and the first quad headlights, which were still illegal in the United States at the time. Its all-transistor signal-seeking radio from GM's Delco used 13 transistors. Buyers chose from 44 leather trim combinations. Yet only 400 sold in 1957 and 304 in 1958, and the air suspension proved so troublesome that some owners swapped in ordinary coil springs rather than keep paying for repairs. Afterwards, building the special bodies moved to Pinin Farina in Turin.
The nameplate outlived the fins by decades. From 1967 the Eldorado became a high-volume two-door personal luxury car, still near the top of Cadillac's price list, and production continued across twelve generations until 2002.
Source: Cadillac Eldorado
