Pink Cadillac's - Blame it on Elvis

  

As famous as pink Cadillac's are in song, film and the cosmetics industry, it's ironic that Cadillac never sold that many of them. In fact, they only offered a shade of pink they called "Mountain Laurel" in 1956 and 1957 and it didn't sell well. So, where did all the hoopla surrounding pink Cadillac's come from?

Blame it on Elvis Presley. Elvis bought this aftermarket painted pink, 1954 Cadillac for his band to use in March of 1955; 9 months before the release of his first hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel". As Elvis' star quickly rose and every facet of his life became literally bigger than life, his taste in cars became famous as well.

Elvis actually had two pink Cadillac's before he became an international superstar. After his first one was destroyed in a car fire, he replaced it with this light blue, 1955 Fleetwood 60. He had such a penchant for his first pink Cadillac that he had a friend paint it pink for him. That shade of pink became known as, "Elvis Rose". 

Elvis later gave the car to his mother. It's on permanent display at "Graceland", Elvis' home in Memphis, Tennessee. It's subtle, but take note that "Elvis Rose" was a slightly darker "pink" than GM's "Mountain Laurel" is. Yup, that's my boys with the car at Graceland in the summer of 2007. 

There is no correlation, however, between Elvis' pink Cadillac's and the pink Cadillac's of Mary Kay cosmetics fame. The story behind the relationship between the cosmetics giant and pink Cadillacs dates back to 1967 when Ms. Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay cosmetics of Dallas, Texas, wanted to treat herself to a new Lincoln and have it painted the color of her company's compact cosmetic cases. When a salesman at a Lincoln dealership in Dallas told her to "go home and bring back her husband", Ms. Ash went to a Cadillac dealership and bought a new 1968 Cadillac instead. What's more, the Cadillac dealership in Fort Worth where she bought the car painted it the since retired, "Mountain Laurel" at her request. While "Mountain Laurel" is a considerably lighter shade of pink than her cosmetics cases are, Ms. Ash was quite happy with her pink Cadillac. When a number of Mary Kay sales representatives also bought Cadillac's and had them painted pink, or "Mountain Laurel", Ms. Ash began giving her highest performing sales reps their own pink Cadillac's custom painted by General Motors.

Since 1970, there have been more than 22,000 Mary Kay pink Cadillac's and there are approximately 1,300 in use today. The cars, which are leased for 24 months, are repainted by GM something other than "Mountain Laurel" before they're sent to auction. Today Cadillac's "Mountain Laurel" shade is exclusive to Mary Kay.

Bruce Springsteen would be the first to tell you that the B side to his 1984 hit, "Dancing In The Dark", was not about a car, Elvis or cosmetics. Springsteen says the song, which he claims to have written in, ahem, 15 minutes was, "a song about the conflict between worldly things and spiritual health, between desires of the flesh and spiritual ecstasy."  That said, the song's obvious metaphor would have been even more egregious had it not been for the pink Cadillac's of Elvis and Mary Kay. 

The song was a minor hit for Springsteen while the late Natalie Cole's version of it was a top 10 hit in 1987. The video for the song featured a 1957 Cadillac Coupe deVille resplendent in historically correct "Mountain Laurel".

The legend of Pink Cadillac's and "The King of Rock and Roll" came full circle when Clint Eastwood insisted that the car central to the 1989 film he starred in with Bernadette Peters be an automotive tribute to his late friend Elvis. However, rather than use a historically correct 1956 or 1957 Cadillac like the producers of the Natalie Cole video did, they painted a white Series 62, 1959 Cadillac pink, or "Mountain Laurel". 

That car sold at auction in 2014 for more than $83,000. And no doubt, Elvis, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Cole, Mary Kay Ash and Clink Eastwood were quite pleased.