Stuart Clarke fell in love with Fifties American
cars at the age of four, after looking at
the pictures on his grandfather’s cigarette cards.
Who says smoking is bad for you?

Photography: Mike Key, Words: Nigel Boothman

‘It’s true,’ says Stuart. ‘To keep me quiet, my granddad used to let me look at these cards he had, which were fantastic photographs of late Fifties American cars. I’m pretty sure now that they were based on contemporary GM publicity photos. I’ve never met anyone else who’s seen such cards, and I’ve no idea how my granddad got them, but they’ve influenced my interest in cars and a large part of my life ever since. They’ve cost me a lot of money, too!’



When you know that Stuart has owned a ’56 Pontiac Starchief, a ’58 T-bird hardtop, a ’57 Buick Century and a ’60 Chevy Biscayne, amongst others, you start to see what a powerful effect those little old pictures have had. Now, of course, he’s got one of the ultimate shapes of the decade in his garage – a 1957 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special. But even this is a less obvious choice than say, a ’59 Cadillac or a ’57 Chevy.
‘I tend to avoid the iconic cars of the era,’ says Stuart, ‘partly due to cost and partly because of personal taste. I really do prefer the looks of my ’57 car even though ’58 and ’59 Cadillacs seem to have a much bigger following. And I reckon the ‘57’s interior, especially the dash and the steering wheel, is the best that Cadillac ever did.’
Stuart’s love of this kind of styling meant that he seized on whatever was closest to Fifties Americana and yet still available and affordable – 25 years ago, that meant British Fords and Vauxhalls from a similar period. He still owns a Consul and a Mk 1 Zephyr, as well as a ’58 Sunbeam Rapier convertible.



In fact, Stuart claims that GM styling chief Harley Earl was his daughter’s vicarious grandfather, via some interesting logic that goes like this:
Stuart loved Earl’s styling of American cars and the influence it had on British designs. The Vauxhall PA Cresta was one such influenced car (‘Wraparound windscreens just do it for me,’ says Stuart) and before he was old enough to drive, he made friends with a guy down the street who owned one. One evening, Stuart was heading round the Huddersfield ring road in this mate’s PA Cresta when he saw another, and the two drivers stopped to compare notes. The other driver was a chap called Mark who became Stuart’s best mate, and he shared a house with another guy called Tim. One of Tim’s friends, Glen, also became matey with Stuart and eventually introduced him to a lady called Louise during an evening in the local. Louise is now Stuart’s wife. No Harley Earl, no daughter. Got it?



Perhaps it’s time to return to the car. The ’57 Cadillacs shared a lot with the styling of the ’54, ’55 and ’56 models, though the bullish nose softened into the bonnet and the fins grew higher and longer, leaping up from little tail-kicks to proper air-slicing fins in ’57. The huge twin bullet-shaped bumper guards that aim forward from the top of the grille remained a feature from ’51 to ’58 in various forms, and those on the ’57 are about as threatening as any you’ll see.



Stuart’s car is one a family of Cadillacs united by a famous model name – the Sixty Special, as explained in the side panel in this feature. In 1957 this meant you’d paid $5539 plus options, which bought you 4755lbs of car measuring 19-feet from tip to tail. The two generous benches gave seating for six and the 365cu.in. V8 was the only power unit Cadillac offered in that year. It made a strong, but quiet 300bhp at 4800rpm via a four-barrel Rochester carb and a compression ratio of 10:1. Hydra-Matic drive, power-steering and power brakes were standard in all Cadillacs, and all the more expensive models had electric windows as standard too.



Stuart’s car also sports six-way power seats, an Autronic eye (automatic headlamp dipper), a heater and a self-seeking AM radio with a power aerial. Underneath, body control and handling in general was improved by the adoption of ball joint suspension, and Stuart reports that his car drives just as well as models from the Sixties he’s also owned. A very strong sale of 24,000 Sixty Specials made up 146,841 units sold in total by Cadillac in the ’57 model year, so you can assume that the big machine looked as good to consumers then as it does to enthusiasts now.
That first consumer was the US Navy, an organisation with no mean purchasing power. There’s still a faded Navy pass sticker in the windscreen. Stuart’s understanding is that it was driven by a Lieutenant Trojan, who took the car into retirement. When he died in 1968 the car remained in the garage until it was sold by the family estate at auction in 1989. From there, it was imported to the UK and sold to a London solicitor until it changed hands to Stuart via another party five years ago.



Its overall condition is very good and very original – despite Virginia not exactly being known as a dry state, the car has escaped the tin worm and is still unrestored. Stuart knows the car was repainted at some point by the London owner, but other than that it’s only received service items and general maintenance, such as a new exhaust. The unworn condition of the interior leads Stuart to think that the 63,000 miles it’s showing could be original.



These days, the car is perhaps even more striking by virtue of its location – Stuart lives 800ft up in a Pennine village, which is a long way from the flat expanses of the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia. On the road, it requires the usual increased concentration to anticipate sudden dangers or unexpected turnings, as fifty-year-old, two-ton American cars with drum brakes don’t put up with panicked changes of direction like a modern hatchback does. But in that, it’s no different from any other car of the era. Well, any other that’s 19-feet-long, anyway.



In every other way, it’s capable of surviving modern traffic with no fuss at all. Fifties Cadillacs don’t overheat, splutter or misbehave like highly-strung muscle cars, and the build quality means important bits don’t come off in your hand. The comfort and luxury are combined in this case with one of the longest pillarless rooflines you could wish for, and the overall effect is to create an elegant car that most would find it impossible to dislike.



At least that’s what Stuart’s hoping, because he’s going to make the graceful giant pay for itself by offering it for hire at weddings, proms, corporate events and so on. The brides of West Yorkshire should be trembling with delight at the thought of arriving in the Sixty Special, assuming they don’t meet any stray furniture in the road, that is. We’ll let Stuart explain.



‘We were on the way down to the Rally of the Giants last year, and I saw the traffic in front of me suddenly brake and scatter. I was doing 70mph in the middle lane of the A1 and I saw something in the road ahead. There were cars and lorries either side of me so I couldn’t change lane, and I just stood on the brakes. I had a long time to wonder if we were going to stop in time while we got closer and closer to this thing, which turned out to be a sofa. We stopped with about 15 feet to spare and leaped out to heave the sofa off the road. It’s situations like that when it helps to have some experience of driving these cars – I could easily have locked the brakes.’
But no harm, no foul, and Stuart continued gratefully on, ensconced in the Cadillac’s own built-in sofas. If you want to try them for yourself,
call 07815 183065 or email stuartlou@hotmail.co.uk.

Sixty Special – Mitchell’s first hit

Stuart Clarke may be a huge fan of Harley Earl’s, but it was Earl’s protégé, Bill Mitchell, who created the daring new model that became a feature of the Cadillac range from 1938, on and off again until 1993. Mitchell was the 23 year-old star who took over the Cadillac design studio in 1936, and one of his first jobs was to design an exciting, even daring new model based on the Series 60 sedan, itself a new budget-priced machine destined for huge sales.
What Mitchell came up with offered just the right mixture of modernity and good taste – lower, wider body, free of running boards and chrome flashes, a long rear deck with the trunk actually a part of the bodyshell, front-hinged doors and brightwork for the slim-but-strong window frames.
For the next few decades, the Sixty Special was the choice of the Cadillac buyer who wanted the best-looking car but didn’t want to pay top-of-the-range prices. Today, the 1941 Sixty Special is one of the most sought-after of all Cadillac classics, but in any year, the name always demands a premium.

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