Deer Hunter Cadillac - 1959 Cadillac Series 62

I saw The Deer Hunter so many times growing up on Long Island that I developed a kind of cinematic Stockholm syndrome. Back then, HBO had a relatively small library of movies that seemed to play on an endless loop, and The Deer Hunter was one of them. Whether it was the thrill of watching an R-rated movie while my parents weren't around or simply the magnetic performances by Robert De Niro and the rest of the cast—probably both—I came to regard it as something of a "starter kit" on how to be a man. Or at least perpetuate certain male stereotypes. 

I watched it again recently through what I like to think are adult eyes and couldn't help laughing at how self-important and oddly incoherent much of it is.

The Deer Hunter tells the story of three Pennsylvania steelworkers whose friendship is forever altered by their service during the Vietnam War. Along the way we're treated to the blistering conditions inside a steel mill, plenty of after-work male bonding, an extended wedding sequence, a funeral, deer hunting, napalm strikes, and, somehow, all three friends ending up together in a Viet Cong prison camp where they're forced to play Russian roulette.

The film contains many of the ingredients of a great movie, but they're assembled in such a rambling, almost improvisational way that it never quite comes together. At more than three hours long, it often feels less like a cohesive story than a series of scenes searching for one. Spoiler alert: there really isn't much of a plot. Any point the film attempts to make gets buried beneath its meandering structure. It's as though director Michael Cimino and his cast simply made parts of it up as they went along.

For the record, there is no credible historical evidence that American POWs were forced by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese to play Russian roulette. The sequence is one of the film's most memorable—and controversial—fictional inventions.

What The Deer Hunter tackled, whether successfully or not, was a subject that Americans in the late 1970s desperately wanted to avoid: Vietnam. By then, the country had endured years of war, Watergate, political division, economic stagnation, and an energy crisis. Most Americans wanted to shut the door on that chapter and move on. Along with a handful of other early Vietnam films, The Deer Hunter forced audiences to revisit wounds that were still painfully fresh. Whether viewers found it profound or pretentious, they couldn't ignore it.

If the film has one undeniable strength beyond Vilmos Zsigmond's magnificent cinematography, it's the cast. De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, and Meryl Streep would all become legends. Then there's Michael's 1959 Cadillac Series 62.

I've always been somewhat ambivalent toward 1959 Cadillacs, but no other car could have fit this movie more perfectly. Assuming Cimino intended it as symbolism—and with an art-house film like The Deer Hunter, it's tempting to assume everything means something—the Cadillac is much more than transportation. Of course, it's equally possible he simply needed a big car for the hunting trips and found one available.

Symbolism in film is meant to reinforce a story's underlying themes. While The Deer Hunter is ostensibly about steelworkers, its larger concern seems to be America itself after Vietnam. Michael's battered Cadillac becomes a visual reminder of a nation that had only recently been overflowing with confidence, optimism, and swagger.

The irony, of course, is that the story itself is set before the war is over, while audiences in 1978 viewed it through the lens of everything that followed.

Judging by its condition, Michael's Cadillac has clearly seen better days. Much like America after Vietnam, Watergate, inflation, oil shortages, and recession, it's bruised but still moving forward. As for Michael himself, it's harder to explain. He's portrayed as intelligent, disciplined, and emotionally resilient, yet he lives in conditions bordering on squalor. Had De Niro played him more like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, his lifestyle might have made more sense. Instead, it's another aspect of a movie that never quite knows what it wants to be.

Then there's the practical matter. While it wouldn't have been impossible for a steelworker to own a used Cadillac, would a serious deer hunter choose a gigantic, rear-wheel-drive luxury coupe with acres of overhang and delicate chrome trim? Probably not. A pickup or station wagon would have made far more sense. But as a metaphor, the Cadillac works beautifully.

Few American cars have ever been as polarizing as the 1959 Cadillac. Its towering tailfins, rocket-inspired styling, and unapologetic excess represented both the peak and the excesses of Detroit's chrome-and-fins era. Chrysler's dramatic 1957 "Forward Look" designs pushed General Motors to go even bolder for 1959, resulting in what are arguably the most flamboyant production cars America has ever built.

In many ways, the 1959 Cadillac reminds me of The Deer Hunter. Both are visually unforgettable. Both inspire passionate admirers and equally passionate critics. Both have become cultural icons despite obvious flaws.

Contemporary reviewers praised the Cadillac's luxury and performance while criticizing its enormous size and extravagant styling. Likewise, while Roger Ebert famously championed The Deer Hunter, other critics found it emotionally manipulative, heavy-handed, and surprisingly shallow beneath its ambition.

Yet history has been kind to both.

The Deer Hunter won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Michael Cimino, Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound. The American Film Institute later ranked it among the greatest American films ever made.

The 1959 Cadillac enjoys a similarly exalted reputation among collectors and automotive historians. Love it or hate it, few automobiles better capture America's confidence, optimism, excess, and contradictions at the height of the postwar era.

Perhaps that's why it fits The Deer Hunter so well. Both the car and the movie are oversized, deeply flawed, impossible to ignore, and enduring symbols of an America trying to understand itself after the illusion of invincibility had finally begun to fade.

1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Classic - The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
                                            -Franklin Delano Roosevelt. First Inaugural Address.
 

 

Oldsmobile had some left over 1987 Cutlass' when model year 1988 began so they continued to sell the old car as the Cutlass "Classic".
 

 

I stumbled upon one of these back then at Celebrity Oldsmobile, now  a Lexus dealership, on Sunrise Highway in Massapequa. Seemed odd to me seeing both the all new for 1988 Cutlass next to one of the old ones but I figured it was GM once again hedging their bets that the new model wouldn't appeal to everyone. Similar to what they did with keeping a rear wheel drive Cadillac sedan in the fleet when the front wheel drive models rolled out in 1985. While I liked the notion of keeping the old car around, I scoffed at Oldsmobile for not completely embracing change. After all, when you're 24 years old, all change is good.  What could go wrong?

Seeing how things turned out for Oldsmobile and GM, you have to wonder what it would have been like for them had they kept this car around for another three, five or ten years. At least in "Classic" guise. As archaic as this car was by 1988, the new car, which honestly I was a big fan of, was a seismic change for the better. However,  compared to  the super slick gee whiz '80's cars from Japan it was judged against - not to mention Ford's sensational Taurus, as good as the new Cutlass was (compared to what it replaced), it just couldn't compete. While change in and of itself is inert, with regards to Oldsmobile, in this instant, change was not good. Or at least not good enough.

The older we get the more anxiety inducing change can be since we know that change brings risk. Change can force us from our comfort zone. Fail once, twice or ten times and just the notion of change can induce panic and can be crippling. Change doesn't always mean things are not going to be for the better, though. Go through change enough and see that it can be good can buoy anxiety; but you never forget the times when things didn't work out. Most importantly, the anxiety that comes with change has nothing to do with reality. In times of flux it's best to attempt to keep the eloquent words of President Roosevelt from his first inaugural in mind, "The Only Thing We Have to Fear, is Fear Itself". By the by, by late January 1988, most of the "Classics" were gone. Oldsmobile was gone after 2004.
 

1981 Chrysler New Yorker - I Could Have Done This

  

I'm better at drawing than most people but not nearly as good anyone who could remotely be construed as an artist; my skill level stuck at a third grade level. Speaking of which, when I was a kid, more often than not my drawings were of cars. Not having a clue as to what I was doing and being a fan of ostentatious domestic luxury cars,  my "designs" most often came out like our 1981 Chrysler New Yorker here.

 When Chrysler "downsized" their full size line for 1979, it wasn't so much a downsizing as much as they just moved their mid sized "B-body" cars "up", the best they could do was blocky, awkward, derivative designs like this. Shoot, I could have come up with this.

I always found it odd, unfortunate and sad that Chrysler came out with these cars that bore no semblance to the magnificent dreadnoughts that came before them. Would it have saved the company? Of course not but still. GM did a great job of making a downsized Cadillac still be a Cadillac, they stubbed their bumper on just about everything else they shrunk, but Chrysler either didn't have the designers on staff anymore who had the ability to pull off better designs or...I honestly don't know. Surely the same staff that came out with this car could not have been the same staff that crafted some of the most memorable designs of the twenty five or so years prior to this car. Lincoln's downsized for 1980 "Panther" based line up suffered from much of the same proportion and balance issues our New Yorker does but for some odd reason those designs "worked". At least through my eyes.

No surprise that these cars sold terribly - didn't help that Chrysler priced them against Cadillac and Lincoln rather than say Oldsmobile or Mercury. Oh, who's kidding who. Even at a discount these cars would have sold like ice tea to Eskimos. Chrysler pulled the plug on them half way through the 1981 model year making our subject here, ironically from New York (like me), quite rare.



1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - Eye of the Hurricane

  

Things were looking up for America in the first couple of years of the Carter administration. Gas prices had stabilized, the economy was finally beginning to recover and adhering to the adage of what's good for General Motors is good for the nation, the first wave of GM's great downsizing was generally regarded as a success; critically and commercially. That first wave of downsizing included our black on red, 1979 Cadillac Coupe deVille. However, like the eye of a hurricane, the break in the bad weather for the country, the auto industry and Cadillac in particular would be short lived.

At first downsized for model year 1977, the new Cadillac's were more than a foot shooter and nearly a thousand pounds lighter than the elephantine 1971 vintage models they replaced. Despite being smaller, the "'77's" were marvels of packaging efficiency as they had more interior room than the "'71's" did. 

The new "small" Cadillacs also had a new "small" engine. Based on the Cadillac engine the previous models had, which was based on the legendary Cadillac V-8 that debuted in 1967, the new Cadillac engine still displaced a substantial 425 cubic inches. While certainly no economy car, the down sized Cadillac's got approximately 20 percent better mileage than the cars they replaced.

A more manageable package that got better fuel economy that still oozed "Cadillac"? No surprise that these cars sold as well as they did. Happy Days were here again. Albeit, for a brief time.

The 1979 Iranian revolution exposed the United States' reliance on foreign oil just like the 1973 Yom Kippur War did. Not only doubled the cost of a barrel of crude oil, which was already historically high post first  oil crisis, it pushed the cost of a gallon of gas past the mythological breaking point of more than $1 a gallon. The subsequent second dip recession the second oil crisis caused put the Carter administration in a tailspin which it never recovered from.

 

Suddenly it was 1974 all over again but for Cadillac, times were even worse. Sales of 1980 Cadillacs, which received a (opinion) handsome restyling, were down almost thirty percent - far more than the decline in sales during the first energy crisis of 1973-74. What's more, another reduction in bore and stroke to the famed Cadillac V-8, done so to improve tail pipe emissions and adhere to CAFE requirements, did nothing for performance. That new for 1980, 368 cubic inch V-8 was not in and of itself a "bad" engine but it was the basis for the infamously problematic model year 1981 only, "V-8-6-4". The V-8-6-4 the first in a series of almost comically bad roll outs at Cadillac in the 1980's that ruined the brand's once seemingly invulnerable image.

1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88 - Planned Obsolescence

 

"Car spotters" are able tell what model year a car is by knowing what minute and somewhat disparate styling detail distinguish one model year of an automobile from another. They have a lot easier time doing so on older domestic cars since back then, all manufacturers made significant enough changes to their cars each model year to make it fairly simple to distinguish, for instance, a 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88, which our brown on black subject is, from a 1968 Oldsmobile 88. These days, if not for a new generation or a mid-cycle "freshening", it's all but impossible to tell what a year a car is by simply looking at it.

Reason for the year to year changes back then being due to what was referred to as "planned obsolescence". Planned obsolescence, according to the economist.com, is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete—that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones.

An example of planned obsolescence today is cell phones; don't be caught with an iPhone 6 these days - people will think you're poverty stricken. I just got a "6" and while the upgrade from my ding, pinged, dented, cracked and sluggish iPhone 4 is seismic, the only difference buyers got when they upgraded their 1968 "'88" to a 1969 were slight changes in sheet metal.

That year to year massaging of sheet metal rarely was to the benefit of a car's original design. This 1969 Delta 88 was part of General Motors 1968 update of their 1965 full size model lineup. While I think Oldsmobile did a great job updating the '65's in 1968, save for the gruesome "cow catcher' front end that all Oldsmobiles had from 1965-1970, "planned obsolescence" reared it's ugly head on the 1969 models. 

What had been a graceful, semi fastback profile in 1968 became as fussy, clumsy and cluttered as the front end of the car. Seeing that GM changed their cars so much year to year back then, it's fair to say that this design element was approved before any perceptual research was done to gauge the public's reaction to it.

Seeing that sales of the Oldsmobile 88 were slowly dissolving in the late '60's, you could point to styling gaffs like this 1969 "88" as the reason. Maybe we're not alone in thinking this car ugly as sin but that's more than likely not the case.  

It probably had more to due with the fact the Oldsmobile's loyal customer base was dying off and the customers they did have buying Oldsmobile's somewhat smaller and far more manageable to handle Cutlass.

Planned obsolescence, in addition to it making it easy for car spotters to tell what model year a car is also crushed resale values of automobiles. With a bevy of "one year only" models out there, it also makes for a scarcity of parts these days which, heaven forbid your old and unique classic car got into a fender bender, what would be a routine repair on a more mainstream "oldies" might mean a trip to the crusher.  



1983 Buick Electra - That DOES Look Like a Buick

Sales of Buicks have increased recently and some pundits site their "That's Not a Buick" ad campaigns for the uptick. Sorry, not only is this (old) Buick loving early fifty something not buying a new Buick, I'm not buying that that insular ad campaign has anything to do with increasing sales. What has increased sales? Let's start with a fairly robust economy giving people the confidence they need to spend the boatload it costs these days to purchase a new car, solid, contemporary automobiles and a significant decrease in choices domestically post GM bankruptcy.

So, back to granny; if the new Buick Regal doesn't "look like a Buick" then, what does look like a Buick?

 

How about a 1983 Buick Electra Limited coupe? Seems about right. If the Granny in those "That Doesn't Look Like a Buick" ads is approximately 80 years old, then thirty some odd years ago this car would have been the car of her and her husband's aspirational dreams. Way to go, Buick; making  fun of old people. Nice. And let me tell you something, sonny, there's a big difference between making fun and poking fun. I'm all about poking fun but when you start making fun of anyone and anything is when I get up from the Early Bird Special and walk out of the restaurant.  Check, please.
 

Seriously, though, Buick's wrestled with a "old person's car" image problem for decades now and those god forsaken "Granny ads" do nothing to help define them as a brand for hipsters. Or anyone under the age of 60.
 

So, what is Buick attempting to be? It would appear they're trying to be what Lexus is to Toyota, Chevrolet being Toyota in this instance. Now, while Lexus is an "old brand", young people aspire to it. Can't say that young people aspire to own a "Buick". They may like the new Regal or one of their inexplicably popular little cross overs, for instance, but they appreciate the vehicle as opposed to the brand. That's the big difference between Buick and Lexus and one that I question can ever be completely changed. The Lexus brand is so strong right now that they could market just about anything and it would sell.

Let's get back to our luscious Electra. Isn't it awesome? Wish it had more than that puny Olds 307 to motivate it but, I digress. Anyway, back in 1983, despite it's updated for 1980 aero styling and snazzy aluminum road wheels and white walls (oye), this Electra was an oldster's car back then as it is now. An old person's car from a brand that at the time also offered the Regal T-Type. While that T-Type had all of 180 horsepower from it's blower fed V-6, the image of the T-Type ran counter to what this car was all about. It seemed Buick was confused about what their image was back then and one thing's for sure; if they were confused, so were buyers. And you know that if Buick offered the turbo V-6 on the Electra, they'd do a silly paint and stripe job on it to make it look sporty. Please see Buick Rivera T-Type here. Imagine, turbochargers underhood for no other reason than to increase the car's performance and with minimal badging. What a concept.



Buick's on again, off again attempts to cultivate a hip, dashing, sporting, youthful image is nothing new. In 1975 and 1976, a Buick Century was the pace car at the Indianapolis 500. Several years prior to that, Buick offered the Skylark GS with tire shredding, 455 V-8's. Talk about duality - have you ever seen what pre downsizing Buick Electra's looked like? The only times, arguably, that Buick has been able to merge youth, sporting pretensions and affluence was with the original Buick Riviera. Then again, even with that car, it's price point was out of reach for many. If it's expensive, it's for older people with money. Hence, "Buick" is for old people.

Can you be all things to people young and old? Today's booming cute-ute craze not with standing, the answer is no, you can't. And the post GM bankruptcy Buick of today highlighting their past image of being an "old brand" by using Granny in their ads only reinforces their old image as opposed to "hippening" it up. Buick needs to be less concerned about what they or perceptual studies perceive their brand image to be and let their vehicles speak for themselves. They're actually excellent.
 

 

Can you tell that I loathe everything about these granny ads? Everything about them except the snappy dark red Regal GS this hipster doofus is using to take Granny back to the nursing home. It's not his fault, he's just an actor in some ill conceived commercial who's trying scrape together a living let alone make enough to make a (hefty) monthly payment on one of these things. As if this kid has the where-with-all to not only afford a new Regal GS but to live in this tony neighborhood and afford to keep Granny holed up in assisted living. Oh, this commercial is just all so wrong.