CC In Scale: Luxury Cars – American Style Luxury

While preparing this selection, I’ve had to face the question: just what is a luxury car?

In some countries, any full-size American or Canadian car is a de facto luxury car, as they’re so big, so expensive, so rare, so… I put such thoughts aside. Sure, some years Holden-assembled Chevys came with leather interiors to ‘justify’ the high price forced upon them, but – no Chevy-with-leather here. Cadillac, Lincoln, Imperial; that sort of thing.

Strictly speaking, I’ll admit I’ve fudged the definition of luxury cars a bit here. There are a couple of Chryslers and Buicks, but definitely no Mercuries. Too close to Fords during this period. But I included a Thunderbird sedan – a luxury car? Depends how you look at it. My call – it’s in!

I left out Personal Luxury Coupes as I’ll do them another time.

I deliberately omitted the Japanese and European marques from consideration this time around, to keep things manageable. The Europeans are more sports sedans anyway, which I’ll cover some other time. This time is mostly American-type luxury – with, of course, Rolls Royce;

I’ve limited this story to the fifties and sixties, with one exception. Luxury cars of the Classic era are a separate topic, and will have their day, when I finish finding them all (I know there’s a Blower Bentley around here somewhere…). I’ll put in an eighties Cadillac as well, because it’s a bit of an outlier, and something of an unusual subject, as models go.

Let’s start in 1955. I might not have a ‘55 Imperial, but here’s a Chrysler C300. I’d imagine this would have appealed to quite a different clientele than an Imperial coupe, being more of a sports coupe in comparison, and around $600 cheaper than the bigger luxury job. The kit is a fairly recent one from Moebius. Goes together really well:

For 1956 I have this lovely Lincoln. A huge step forward for the make, looking quite distinct from other FoMoCo products, and different from anything else on the road – in a good way. No, there was never a regular kit of this Lincoln, this is a resin kit produced by the sadly-missed Modelhaus company:

Back to the Chrysler 300. New body and chassis for 1957, and what a looker! But rather than swiping the grille from the Imperial as previously, this time the 300 gained its own distinct grille and hood, which would begin a 300 theme. This one’s from AMT:

Now we come to Cadillac. I’ve shown this Eldorado Biarritz before. A Lee kit from Korea, it was possibly the most difficult model I have built, due to poor quality, requiring so many repairs to brittle plastic, breaking parts and hours of reworking.

There’s quite a disconnect stylistically between the front and the rear. The rear is nice, but it’s like there are two different themes going on, changing midway through the doors. I think the ’57 front suited this rear end better. I was tempted to cut the fins off, but that would be ridiculous. Or sacrilege. Or something. But I’ve seen it done:

And of course, I have a 1959. An older American Monogram kit, it went together perfectly:

Also for 1959, here’s an Imperial at last. This is an AMT reissue of a 1959 original, so it’s pretty basic in some areas like chassis detail and depth of interior engraving, but it captures the sheer over-the-top exuberance of the Exner design. I think the grille design is too coarse, and some of the chrome is overdone, but it’s perhaps more conservative than the Cadillac for that year?

Here’s where I give a nod to the Buick, with this Frankenstein of a model. Not the design, but how I built it. A friend had a damaged 1961 Buick Invicta friction toy (remember them?) – it had been played with, of course. Hard! He’d got a resin replacement body, then had problems so sent it to me. I fitted the resin body around the original plastic interior, installed a spare Buick V8 with a stretched Chevy chassis underneath it – not correct, I now realize, but I worked with what I had. Finished – unlike some things around here:

I just had to get a 1961 Lincoln. I’ve always loved this car since a neighbour had a toy one by Tekno of Denmark. I’d never heard of the Lincoln brand until I saw David’s toy. So forty years later I hunted down the kit. I’m not quite sure what was behind me giving this a metallic pink paint job – maybe to show this car looks tasteful whatever colour you paint it? Some may disagree, but I prefer the original with the pointy grille to the squarer, boxier later models. I tension between the almost sporty front and the sober sides:

More pink! For 1962 AMT did the ‘four-hole’ Electra 225. I’m not really a fan of this design; the front end just doesn’t look right around the headlights, like there are several different themes fighting, so I changed things a little. Just a bit of lowering, a wheel swap and custom paint:

As the real car world changed, so did the models. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, whatever American car someone bought, there was pretty much bound to be a model of it, and even some pickups too. But once Detroit proliferated into compacts, and intermediates, and splintered into further market segments, something had to give. Model companies couldn’t afford to tool up for everything. Gradually kits of the less popular cars were discontinued. The luxury brands were some of the first to go. Muscle cars were what we all wanted to build! Johan persevered with Cadillacs; I think they may have had the promotional model contract, but Imperial and Lincoln’s kits disappeared around the mid-sixties.

Once more we’re back to Chrysler with this 300H. This is an old Johan annual kit:

I have nothing prestigious for the next few years, so we’ll skip forward to my ’66 Buick Wildcat. I know I showed it recently, but it’s always popular:

One last Chrysler, this 1968 300. Another car that I love the shape of. Distinctive in a good way. And more attractive to my eyes than the Imperial:

Now at the start I mentioned an outlier of a Cadillac. Here it is, an early-eighties Coupe de Ville with a later eighties’ grille/headlight swap, which I gather is/was a popular mod. Revell has issued this as a donk (Word objects to that…) and a lowrider. Mine is kind of in between, sitting a bit high, with wheels from my spares box:

That’s it from me for this time. No idea what I’ll show you next. I’m still finding things….