Fleetwood Brougham
Imperial
Deville
Toronado
98 Luxury Sedan
Continental
in that order...
For the Brougham, I think that's the very best year in the car's entire history. The lines are flawless, and the interiors flawless. As late as the mid-Nineties, there was a very old lady in our part of town, who had one in that gorgeous aqua color, with a white top. It was in great shape, and I'd see her at a shopping center built in the Sixties, that I'm sure she'd been frequenting since it was new. I'm sure she lived in a modernish ranch house in a Sixties neighborhood, and was barely getting by, financially. But, even in that snooty part of town, in that car, she still looked like a VIP. She looked absolutely REGAL, creeping through the parking lot of Maywood Mart at 1MPH. It was a timeless design. And, of course, the quality of the car was without equal. Rolls Royce only DREAMED of building something so fine. The picnic tables and footrests and reading lamps in a '68 Brougham made those in a Rolls Royce Phantom look like something that had been done as a jalopy project by a boys' high school shop class.
Imperial's interior for that year was so mysterious, with those compartments hiding the functions built into the dash. And the exterior made the car look like a
bank on wheels - a bank whose Trust Department handled the best families in town.
The Deville was really beautiful that year, too. A close friend half-a-generation older than me has told me about a crucial episode in his life, when he was 14, and nearly bullied to death in a public school. He had found an old concrete anchor, and was preparing to drown himself in the lake in front of the family's farm. But a glamorous aunt picked him up that friday, to spend the weekend with her family in town. It had been a particularly bad day in that school filled with violent rural white trash, and his self esteem was completely gone. He was so depressed he could barely move. He'd been told by grandparents at home, peers, teachers, 'administrators', that he was
less than zero... all day... all week. But there was his beautiful aunt, in a brand-new '68 Deville she'd gotten just that morning
(baby blue, & a black vinyl top).
"It was like being pulled out of my living hell, and driven away, to my REAL WORLD, in that incredible car. The happy surprise of that car, at that moment, was like applying electroshock to someone whose heart has stopped. It very well may have been what saved me."
And I remember the Toronado from that year. Quite a singularly beautiful car. I was only two or three when it was made, but by the time I was old enough to appreciate fine things, those cars were old enough for people in our backwoods mudhole to afford them. One of Mama's johns had one. The grille was distinctive
(like a giant piece of Art Deco jewelry), and so I know that was the year. Mama was a lush and falling apart. But she loved her work, and excelled at it. Some beautiful young men were among her regulars. The guy with the Toronado was really fine. Half-Indian like the rest of us, he was in the looks bracket with Channing Tatum and Gary Taylor - maybe not quite as muscular, although he'd been a local football hero... but he had a nice moustache - and fine black cowboy boots, and a big buckle. And he had a nice leather baseball jacket. He smelled good, and was sweet to me, waiting on Mama to get ready, so he could drive her farther out in the woods and do her. I'd explore that car's interior. It was jazzy and hard, compared to the insides of the Cadillacs I perused. The sound of the power windows was exciting to me. But that
gorgeous grille...
In Mississippi,
Nice People did not drive Cadillacs
(The aunt of my friend whose life was saved by that Deville had, in order to save her family from impoverishment, married the son of a prosperous criminal, and had had the Cadillac 'foisted upon her'. She considered it a gauche embarrassment.). That was true across much of America. Electras and 98s were what
Nice People drove
(and if you went to a Methodist or Presbyterian Church, or a Reform Temple, you'd see elderly ladies getting into Electras and 'Luxury Sedans', and being driven like Miss Daisy). If you think of that moment at the end of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, when Bette Davis is being driven away in that GORGEOUS black '64 Electra
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/73...920c2c9752.jpg, you'll understand just how good a lady could look in one of those cars.
http://pics.imcdb.org/0is832/vlcsnap...31m51.3791.jpg Anyway, the '68 was arguably the best year of all, for that car. The lines were at peak refinement, and the hump at the C-pillar
(as with the Deville and the Fleetwood) looked like the haunches of a powerful horse
(and allowed for a stately, tall back seat). Interiors were quite plush, and at top trim levels rivaled the Fleetwood Brougham in limousine-like appointments.
As for the Conti... What can I say? It's one more year from what was probably the most timelessly beautiful series of any car, ever: although '68 may not have been the peak year.
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