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 equivalent approx. 80,000 USD. 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 auctions for heavily custimized cars and 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 built 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 had to be in the multiple 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 than 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 equivalent approx. 800,000 USD. Ten times as much as a 57 Chevy!
While the Brougham is a hundred times more car than a 57 Chevy many people, including myself initially, incorrectly assumed that a Brougham could be restored for 75-100K. Sadly this is simply 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 often go the Rube Goldberg route or worse yet turn it into a hotrod, sacrilege in its highest form! In my view the increasing number of Brougham hot rods that now exist are akin to buying a Model J Duesenburg and putting a high output Chevy engine in it! No sane person would do that, but yet many Broughams are being modified as if they were Chevys. It seems to me that no matter how much you modify a 6000 pound luxury car it will never magically become a Ferrari! You could more easily buy a Ferrari instead and have a much better fast car! The low budget and/or custom approach simply does not do the Brougham justice. It serves only to to depress prices and to tarnish the prestige of the most magnificent post war American car every built.
Unfortunately 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, with the exception of the Motorama dream cars. In fact the Brougham has much more in common with the Motorama dream cars than it does with any production car ever made in the United States. This is the post war Duesenberg! Like Rodney Dangerfield the Brougham "gets no respect, no respect at all".
11-24-14
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 equivalent approx. 80,000 USD. 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 auctions for heavily custimized cars and 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 built 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 had to be in the multiple 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 than 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 equivalent approx. 800,000 USD. Ten times as much as a 57 Chevy!
While the Brougham is a hundred times more car than a 57 Chevy many people, including myself initially, incorrectly assumed that a Brougham could be restored for 75-100K. Sadly this is simply 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 often go the Rube Goldberg route or worse yet turn it into a hotrod, sacrilege in its highest form! In my view the increasing number of Brougham hot rods that now exist are akin to buying a Model J Duesenburg and putting a high output Chevy engine in it! No sane person would do that, but yet many Broughams are being modified as if they were Chevys. It seems to me that no matter how much you modify a 6000 pound luxury car it will never magically become a Ferrari! You could more easily buy a Ferrari instead and have a much better fast car! The low budget and/or custom approach simply does not do the Brougham justice. It serves only to to depress prices and to tarnish the prestige of the most magnificent post war American car every built.
Unfortunately 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, with the exception of the Motorama dream cars. In fact the Brougham has much more in common with the Motorama dream cars than it does with any production car ever made in the United States. This is the post war Duesenberg! Like Rodney Dangerfield the Brougham "gets no respect, no respect at all".
11-24-14