1959 Coupe de Ville
Chip Lord writes......
Stanley Marsh 3 assisted by Hugh Russell bought a brown four-door sedan de
ville with a "square top" as the first purchase towards the construction of
Cadillac Ranch. The square top was a design feature that included a wrap-around rear
window. When we got to Amarillo, we decided that the 1959, being the most important
of all the Cadillacs, since it had the largest tail fins, should be represented by a
Coupe de Ville. We searched for one, and finally found a white one in a junk yard on
the north side of town. The salesman said: "it ain't got no papers, and I'll
give it to you for a hundred bucks". We replied - "..if you deliver it, you got
a deal." I guess he towed it over, but then we were able to get it running, and when
it came time to bury it, we staged a "drive-up" for the benefit of a film
crew, put a brick on the accererator, and waited for the enguine to seize- up, but
it didn't. Just sort of sputtered to a stop, and we started to back-fill.
This is the car that became the logo for Cadillac Ranch and the same model that Peter
Morton put on the roof of his Los Angeles Hard Rock Cafe. We sued him in 1984 for
ripping off the Cadillac Ranch idea, but that's
another story. The other
four-door wasn't wasted - we filmed a scene with Stanley playing a drunken Leo Wyoming out
at his ranch, Toad Hall. Stanley doesn't drive, but the shot called for him to get
in the car and drive off. He did this on a hill, and the car rolled all the way down
the slope and into a pond, where it sank with the tail fins sticking out of the water as
Stanley crawled out.
Last edited on January 23rd 2000 by Rik Gruwez
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