The Site of the First CC, In 2009, 2014 and 2019

Since we’re wallowing in a bit of nostalgia today, I thought I’d return to the site of the first CC and get another five-year update, after the one in 2014. The old Coupe de Ville disappeared a couple of of years ago. What was sitting there is a bit ironic, on several levels.

Obviously, it’s ironic that one of the biggest cars ever would get replaced by one of the smallest cars on the market. Somehow, a big SUV seems more fitting.

The Fiat 500 isn’t exactly a recent arrival, as it was already there when I shot the 2014 updates. Back then, these made a fine foursome. The Corolla arrived about a year or so after I first shot the Caddy in 2009, and then outlasted it by about a year, but it too has made an exit from this spot, in front of one of my favorite old unmolested industrial buildings by the railroad tracks.

I wrote up the Corolla in another rambling CC on 2010, at the old site. And it’s one of the few I haven’t brought over here. Maybe because it’s a bit too rambling. And it hits on the obvious point of how the Corolla reflects the downfall of GM and the rise of Toyota and the Asian brands.

And I used the old line “as goes California, so goes the rest of the country”. And in so very many ways, that has been true and will likely continue to be so, depending. But at the time I also wrote: “California is in crisis, ungovernable and practically bankrupt”. Well, that’s certainly not the case anymore, although it does seem to have predicted some aspects of that reality for the country at large. Is a California-style solution at hand?

I finally wrote up that Olson Kurb Van here a few years back. It’s the last survivor of this fab threesome. I hate to think of its eventual departure. But nothing stays the same, and maybe the Fiat will be around long enough to become a venerable CC in its own right. We shall see.

 

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