Nethercutt Cadillacs!

When I was a kid (and that’s reaching back into the 1950s), there was no finer automobile than a Cadillac.  That’s the way it was back then, and even though I’ve never owned a Cadillac, I’d like to someday.  The thought that a Cadillac is the best stuck in my mind.

Today if you’re snooty it’s all about BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Infiniti, and maybe one or two others.  All foreign stuff.  I don’t know if foreign cars are really better or if tastes just changed, but back in the day, a sure sign of success was driving a Cadillac.   Mercedes was a weird one in the 1950s, and nobody in America had heard of BMW.   Lexus and Infiniti were way in the distant future, and if you were to tell somebody you had a Lexus back then, they would most likely assume it was a medical problem.

I still think the 1959 Coupe de Ville was one of the best-looking cars ever made (anywhere, at any time), but that might be because it’s what I knew as a kid.   Let’s see, I would have been 8 years old in 1959.   Yeah, those big fins and bullet tail lights were cool.

So I grew up knowing that Cadillac meant the best something could be (as in “the Cadillac of…”).   Cameras, guns, bicycles, whatever…fill in the blanks, and if it was really, really good, it was “the Cadillac” of that product line.

Sooooo…….when I saw a series of early Caddies at the Nethercutt last Saturday, I was all over them.  The Nethercutt had fabulous cars of all kinds, but the Caddies really did it for me.

I had been there just a few weeks earlier, we had company in from out of town who wanted to see the Nethercutt, and I was prepared.  I had my Nikon D3300 walking-around camera, I had my 16-35 lens (it’s bigger than the camera), and I had enough light to dial in ISO 1600 and get me some Caddy photos.

So there you have it.    The Nethercutt Museum has about 250 vintage automobiles, of which 150 are on display at any time.  I’m guessing they have a few more Caddies stashed away, and that gives me a reason to go there again (and I will).   If you’re ever in So Cal, you don’t want to miss the Nethercutt.  It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  You might even say it’s the Cadillac of vintage auto collections.