Fellow Brougham Enthusiasts

I often use the illustration below in order to help people to better understand the true relative value of the Brougham, then and now.

Any given 1957 Chevy Bel Air cost about $2,500 when it was new, the cost of living then doubled every ten years for five decades. That would make the modern day inflation adjusted dollar equivalent approx. $80,000. This is a reasonable sum of money people pay often and gladly for a restored 1957 Chevy. Recently there have been even higher prices at Scottsdale auctions for convertibles, quite a lot of them too! Personally I do not understand what people see in those cars. They have about as much class and distinction as a modern day econo-box, which is exactly what a 57 Chevy was when it was new. They made approx.1.5 million of them!

By contrast a 1957/58 Brougham cost Cadillac $25,000 per copy to build in 1957. The price of a very upscale home in California at the time! They lost over 10K on every car they sold! This figure does not include the substantial tooling costs, which was in the millions! To build 700 cars they designed and built tooling as if they were going to build 1,000,000 or more units, tooling at least 10X more elaborate the Chevy in fact. The cost of living then doubled every ten years for five decades. Without even factoring in the tooling cost that would make the modern day inflation adjusted dollar equivalent approx. $800,000. Ten times as much as a Chevy!

While the Brougham is a hundred times more car than a 57 Chevy everyone, including myself initially, incorrectly assumes that a Brougham can be restored for 75-100K. Sadly this is not reality! Once this realization sets in most Brougham owners are not willing to spend the required amount of time, effort, and money on a proper restoration. They just go the Rube Goldberg route, which does not do the car justice. This approach in fact serves only to tarnish the prestige of the vehicle and to depress sale prices.

It seems very few people are willing to pay the true cost to own, restore, and enjoy the single most significant and impeccably designed engineering marvel of post war America. The nagging question is why? This is an automobile of truly timeless design that represents space age Americana at the pinnacle of Motown’s madness. A car that can be compared to nothing built before it, or since. This is the post war Duesenberg! Like Rodney Dangerfield the Brougham "gets no respect, no respect at all".