Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special Talisman. Okay. Now it’s time to talk about the car itself a bit, and review it just the way we would review any other car here at TTAC. Problem is? It was the last, and largest, of the full- sized Cadillacs. It represents many of the best, and even more of the worst, qualities associated with American auto manufacturing in the dismal Seventies. Socially, it has significance well beyond what we have room to discuss, or understand, in a short blog post. It’s too important, too relevant, too resonant, too repugnant, too. This feels like too big a task for little old me, even if I have the help of another very interesting Cadillac that you will meet in just a moment. Let’s start with this: thirteen thousand dollars. That’s what this particular car cost. About five times the price of a basic compact car. Cadillac in 1. 97. Sloan Plan. At the bottom was Calais. At the top was Seville (if you were talking marketing), Fleetwood Sixty Special (if you were talking sheer size), or Eldorado (if you still believed in personal luxury). Cadillac sold over 3. It was their best year ever, but the chickens were winging their way home to Michigan for some long- overdue roosting. You’re looking at a Medici velour interior. That’s the stuff Cadillac put in their factory- built Fleetwood limousines, and that’s what makes a Fleetwood Sixty Special a “Talisman”. Dissect the model name. It looks similar, but it’s a few inches longer. Just because. Today, we’d carp that the two different wheelbases for production Cadillac RWD sedans represented a production inefficiency. Back then, it was important to distinguish vehicles which otherwise weren’t all that different. And since Cadillac was still doing the seven- seat limos in- house, it seemed reasonable to offer multiple wheelbases.“Sixty Special” meant that it was a town car. Not a Town Car, mind you, a “town car” as opposed to the Fleetwood Seventy- Five limo. This was an era where “limo” didn’t mean “tacky prom night special”. It meant a car for a man with a driver. There were plenty such men, mostly commuting from places like Rowayton or Sausalito, and plenty such drivers. But this Sixty Special was meant to be owner- driven. Think of a Talisman as a Sixty Special with Seventy- Five interior appointments. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Click to email this to. Forex Margin Call Explained - babypips.com www.babypips.com/./margin-call-exemplified.html Learn what a margin call is in forex trading and watch how quickly you. December 29, 2015. Engine Heat Damage the Focus in Beechcraft A36 Crash. Southern California Car Accident Lawyer Blog — Published by California Personal Injury & Car Accident Lawyers Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys. The option list was still long, and it was possible to spend seventeen thousand dollars — more than half again the ten thousand- dollar base of the Fleetwood Brougham — on a completely- equipped Talisman. A new Seville, basically a Chevy Nova with leather, was thirteen grand.
Thanks to gslippy and CJin. SD for the price note – JB) The pricing had nothing to do with the product, the content, or the value. The pricing was social. It was there to signify Your Place In The World. Vice- presidents stepped into a Calais and joined the world of gentlemen. Respectable country- club fathers drove the Sedan de Ville. Board members were driven in a Seventy- Five, or they drove themselves in a Talisman. Sevilles were for West Coast get- rich- quick types. Eldorados were for women, movie stars, and “bounders”. Now you understand what the car meant, a little bit anyway. I don’t think you can understand it fully unless you were alive back then and understood how quickly doormen, bank tellers, and other service personnel could tell the difference between this year’s Talisman and last year’s De. Ville. It used to mean something. All we can do is drive the car. Open the massive door. The handles, and the mirrors, are heavy, chromed, exclusive to Cadillac. The doorsill is stainless- steel and carries the Fisher logo. There are no window frames. Sit down — down — into the Medici velour. The trim, sadly, is mostly junk. It was junk when it was new. The wood is obviously fake. There’s no excuse for that, nor is there any excuse for the flimsy feel of the controls. It was Seventies profiteering at its worst, aimed at owners who bought a new Cadillac every year, or every two years, irrespective of the merits of said Cadillacs. Too much of this car was destined to fall apart from the moment it was built. And yet the mechanical bones of the beast are solid beyond understanding. The starter sounds like an engine of its own, and it spins the five- hundred- cubic- inch V- 8 into life easily. There is no vibration through the wheel, none of the sympathetic communication provided by a BMW 5. This is a luxury car, in case you’ve forgotten what that means because you never knew in the God- damned first place. Visibility is absurdly good. The windshield is upright, the pillars are narrow. Only the privacy- enhancing sail panels in back keep it from being a perfect vista. No backup camera necessary, and this is a vehicle which stretches to nineteen and a half feet. I drove this car thirteen hundred miles and never used full throttle. It wasn’t required. Isn’t required. In 1. Cadillac offered fuel- injection on the 5. We don’t have it here, but we still have 3. The mighty Talisman weighs slightly less than a modern Escalade and, truth be told, is somewhat more pleasant to guide down a freeway lane. I saw an average of fourteen miles per gallon in my driving, about what one might expect from a . Where’s the progress? I wish I could put every TTAC reader behind the wheel of this Fleetwood. In a flash, in a single kinesthetic moment, you would understand what you don’t now. You think a Town Car is a “boat”. A modern Town Car has the reflexes of a Lotus Elise in comparison to a ’7. Cadillac. You think a Camry has a “floaty ride”. You’re wrong. The imports, the “compacts”, the Car and Driver editors, they were all fighting to bury THIS CAR. This is a car which can barely match posted cornering limits around offramps. There isn’t the slightest bit of enthusiast appeal to the Fleetwood. It loafs, it sags, it leans, it doesn’t want to turn. When the 1. 97. 7 Cadillac Fleetwood appeared on its downsized chassis, it was an utter revolution compared to this car. Every “full- sized” car most of you have ever driven is, instead, a full- on reaction to the massive GM and Ford boats. Put this and a 2. Grand Marquis on a racetrack, and the Marquis would lap it in under ten minutes. The difference between this Fleetwood and a 1. Fleetwood is greater than the difference between a 1. Fleetwood and a BMW M5. That’s not hyperbole. It’s fact. Now let me show you the revolution which followed the 1. Sanjay Mehta, the Talisman’s owner, also has a Cadillac limo. Mea culpa – JB) It’s far more spacious inside, both front and back. Carries seven people better than the Talisman carries five. Let’s take a look. Only eight years separate these two cars. In eight years, Cadillac changed its world. The Fleetwood dropped from 5. An aluminum V- 8 half as large as the ’7. Amazingly, the cars became larger inside, more spacious, easier to operate, easier to park, just plain better in most respects. Like an Apatosaurus poked in the hindquarters, GM was slow to react to the legitimate criticism of its big car but powerful in the magnitude of its response. From dinosaur to mammal in the same time it takes Honda to build two different kinds of substantially similar Civics. And the mammal is just so much better at nearly everything. Everything, that is, that has nothing to do with the core values of Cadillac. The smaller car, even when it isn’t a “limo”, has odd, dwarfish proportions. The vastly more efficient passenger compartment looks like the proverbial ten pounds in the five- pound bag. The public had barely accepted the 1. Ville as a necessary reaction to desperate times. It looked like a joke, like a child’s drawing of a car. Cadillacs didn’t need to be excellent, but they needed to be prestigious, and this was anything but prestigious. Sales fell dramatically as GM scrambled behind the scenes to “upsize” the car again, to put a little hood and trunk on it, to stop it from looking like a clown car that still, by the way, cost much more than twice what a normal family sedan did. They never returned to the massive, impressive look of 1. They couldn’t even make it back to 1. The current DTS looks like what it is: a sad attempt to expand the “Antares” not- quite- Aurora- but- had- to- be- second- generation- Aurora- due- to- budget- cuts G- body into something vaguely Cadillac- esque. Next to a ’7. 6, it looks like a sick joke at its own expense. The wood inside may have become real, but the car itself has become false, forgettable. So. The Fleetwood goes, but it barely stops, it doesn’t turn. It rides well enough, but the Grand Caravan I drove last week is better- isolated from impacts, even if a modern CTS isn’t quite as good as either. It isn’t a “good car” in any sense of the word, and in the years after its introduction, these old mid- Seventies Caddies slumped, rusted, and disintegrated their way from the suburbs to the ghettos to the roadsides and junkyards, delivering perhaps the final coffin nails to the brand’s embalming. Why, then, do I love it so much? Why do I love its styling, its sheer sweep of sheetmetal, its unapologetic stretch past the borders of parking spots, common decency, and personal accountability? Why would I buy one myself, in a heartbeat, if I had a place to put it? Think of the men who played music on the deck of the Titanic as it sank. They knew their world was ending, they knew they would not live through the night, but while one was alive, one would conduct one’s self with decorum and a touch of style. It’s too much to ask of this Talisman that it be a talisman. There’s nothing magical about it. Rather, there’s something majestic. A sad majesty, the band on the Titanic, the lion in winter, the great general in defeat, holding on to his sword for one last moment. Once upon a time, Americans built these cars. Not good cars. Not great cars. Only sad, and majestic, and, in the final analysis, wonderful. Phoenix traffic headlines - 3. TVUpdated: Saturday, July 1 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTDrive sober or get pulled over. The DUI Task Force will be out in full force this Fourth of July weekend to remind all motorists that driving while impaired is illegal. More > Drive sober or get pulled over. The DUI Task Force will be out in full force this Fourth of July weekend to remind all motorists that driving while impaired is illegal. More > Updated: Saturday, July 1 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA purse snatching involving at least two teenage girls ended in a deadly crash in Phoenix Thursday morning. More > A purse snatching involving at least two teenage girls ended in a deadly crash in Phoenix Thursday morning. More > Updated: Friday, June 3. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe dust- detection system, which is scheduled to be installed along a portion of I- 1. Phoenix and Tucson by 2. ADOT and the DPS an early warning of storms. More > The dust- detection system, which is scheduled to be installed along a portion of I- 1. Phoenix and Tucson by 2. ADOT and the DPS an early warning of storms. More > Updated: Friday, June 3. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTMc. Dowell Road reopened between 1. Avenue and I- 1. 7 at approximately 6 a. Friday morning after being shutdown Thursday due to a train derailment. More > Mc. Dowell Road reopened between 1. Avenue and I- 1. 7 at approximately 6 a. Friday morning after being shutdown Thursday due to a train derailment. More > Updated: Thursday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe Arizona Department of Transportation will not have any highway construction closures during the busy travel period of Independence Day weekend. More > The Arizona Department of Transportation will not have any highway construction closures during the busy travel period of Independence Day weekend. More > Updated: Thursday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe evacuation for the community of Mayer will be lifted as of 1. Thursday, June 2. Please note there are significant road closures still in place. More > The evacuation for the community of Mayer will be lifted as of 1. Thursday, June 2. Please note there are significant road closures still in place. More > Updated: Monday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTOne man is dead after he collided with another vehicle Monday morning in Phoenix, according to the Phoenix Police Department. More > One man is dead after he collided with another vehicle Monday morning in Phoenix, according to the Phoenix Police Department. More > Updated: Monday, June 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTWhile traffic has increased with growth, the Arizona Department of Transportation is smoothing the journey along State Route 6. Prescott Valley using the latest in traffic- management technology. More > While traffic has increased with growth, the Arizona Department of Transportation is smoothing the journey along State Route 6. Prescott Valley using the latest in traffic- management technology. More > Updated: Sunday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTStretches of northbound Interstate 1. Phoenix area will be closed over several nights starting June 2. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Stretches of northbound Interstate 1. Phoenix area will be closed over several nights starting June 2. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Saturday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe Arizona Department of Transportation reported on Saturday morning that Interstate 1. Arizona will be closed due to strong winds and blowing dust in New Mexico. More > The Arizona Department of Transportation reported on Saturday morning that Interstate 1. Arizona will be closed due to strong winds and blowing dust in New Mexico. More > Updated: Friday, June 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTClosures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 2. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Closures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 2. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Friday, June 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTAn overnight rollover accident on State Route 2. Friday morning, according to Department of Public Safety. More > An overnight rollover accident on State Route 2. Friday morning, according to Department of Public Safety. More > Updated: Friday, June 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe brush fire that burned about 4 square miles in far north Phoenix and closed two freeways for hours on Thursday has been contained. More > The brush fire that burned about 4 square miles in far north Phoenix and closed two freeways for hours on Thursday has been contained. More > Updated: Thursday, June 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA new report says traffic fatalities on Arizona’s roads and highways has risen for the second straight year and driver behavior continues to be the leading factor, according to Arizona Department of Transportation. More > A new report says traffic fatalities on Arizona’s roads and highways has risen for the second straight year and driver behavior continues to be the leading factor, according to Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Tuesday, June 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTPolice say six people are dead, including an infant and her parents from Phoenix, after a multiple- car pileup on Interstate 1. New Mexico near the Arizona state line. More > Police say six people are dead, including an infant and her parents from Phoenix, after a multiple- car pileup on Interstate 1. New Mexico near the Arizona state line. More > Updated: Friday, June 1. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTClosures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Closures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Friday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA pedestrian was struck and killed after an SUV veered off the road onto a Tempe sidewalk late Thursday night, according to Tempe police. More > A pedestrian was struck and killed after an SUV veered off the road onto a Tempe sidewalk late Thursday night, according to Tempe police. More > Updated: Thursday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA young woman in her 2. Jeep at a Scottsdale intersection Thursday morning. More > A young woman in her 2. Jeep at a Scottsdale intersection Thursday morning. More > Updated: Tuesday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTAn overnight truck fire shut down a major Phoenix avenue Tuesday morning, according to Phoenix police. More > An overnight truck fire shut down a major Phoenix avenue Tuesday morning, according to Phoenix police. More > Updated: Tuesday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA semi- truck driver lost control and veered off the Interstate 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > A semi- truck driver lost control and veered off the Interstate 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Tuesday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe state Transportation Board has approved a $3. Interstate 1. 7 that will detect wrong- way vehicles on the Phoenix freeway. More > The state Transportation Board has approved a $3. Interstate 1. 7 that will detect wrong- way vehicles on the Phoenix freeway. More > Updated: Monday, June 1. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTOfficials say the state highway from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon is closed because of a wildfire on a mountain north of the city. More > Officials say the state highway from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon is closed because of a wildfire on a mountain north of the city. More > Updated: Monday, June 1. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA multi- vehicle crash closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 1. Interstate 1. 0 ramps for almost an hour, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation. More > A multi- vehicle crash closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 1. Interstate 1. 0 ramps for almost an hour, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Friday, June 9 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTChandler police responded to a two- vehicle accident near Price and Elliot Roads at around 8 a. Friday morning. More > Chandler police responded to a two- vehicle accident near Price and Elliot Roads at around 8 a. Friday morning. More > Updated: Friday, June 9 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTClosures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 9- 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Closures or lane restrictions for Phoenix- area freeway improvement projects are scheduled this weekend (June 9- 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Wednesday, June 7 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTTwo people are dead after an apparent wrong- way crash on State Route 5. Interstate 1. 0, according to Phoenix fire. More > Two people are dead after an apparent wrong- way crash on State Route 5. Interstate 1. 0, according to Phoenix fire. More > Updated: Wednesday, June 7 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe eastbound U. S. 6. 0 ramp to the southbound Loop 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > The eastbound U. S. 6. 0 ramp to the southbound Loop 1. Arizona Department of Transportation. More > Updated: Tuesday, June 6 2. AM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTThe Arizona Department of Transportation says lane restrictions and weekday closures along State Route 7. Globe have ended with the completion of work to remove overhanging rock. More > The Arizona Department of Transportation says lane restrictions and weekday closures along State Route 7. Globe have ended with the completion of work to remove overhanging rock. More > Updated: Monday, June 5 2. PM EDT2. 01. 7- 0. GMTA motorcycle accident leading to serious injuries has closed US 6. Loop 1. 01 Price Freeway, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation. More > A motorcycle accident leading to serious injuries has closed US 6.
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