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Jan's 1948 Cadillac Sedanet
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Jan's 1948 Cadillac Club Coupe, or Model 6207, sometimes also referred to as a Sedanet, left the Cadillac assembly line in Detroit on May 4th, 1948, headed for the Chicago Showroom Floor. The original "Grand Total" on the invoice was $2398.11. Who knows what stories this car might tell, what places it's been? In any event, it was owned in the 1960s by a Mr. Blankenship and ended up in the Arizona desert, where it sat in the blazing sun for a little over thirty years before Jan bought it in 1997 from an eccentric collector named Al Brander and had it hauled up to Portland. Click here to find out more about Mr. Brander. Naturally Jan's a member of the Cadillac - La Salle Club and the car has historic 1948 Oregon plates. The original 346-cu. in. engine and Hydramatic transmission have been rebuilt, the interior has been beautifully re-done and the car runs like a dream.
The rebuild and restoration team:
The 1948 Cadillac is considered by many people to be the pinnacle of Cadillac styling, and is a "Certified Milestone Car." Jan certainly thinks it's the most beautiful car ever to come out of Detroit. It was the first all-new design for the marque since the wartime years, and incorporated "rudder-type" tailfins for the first time, in what was to become a hallmark feature of Cadillacs for the next twelve years, reaching its zenith with the 1959 models and then disappearing entirely in two years. General Motors design chief Harley Earl gets a lot of credit, but the design was really Franklin Q. Hershey's baby, designed on Hershey's farm during a labour dispute. Both Harley Earl and Franklin Q. Hershey had seen the revolutionary P-38 Lightning which legendary Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard had designed just before the war, and which inspired so many design features in the Cadillac -- not least of which was the "drum-type" housing of the instrument panel, which looked a lot like the display on a fighter; it was a bit expensive to produce, and thus appeared only on the 1948 models. The principal stylistic innovation was the single flowing visual line from front to back -- also inspired by the P-38. It also had those boob-like bumper protrusions which came to be known as "Dagmars," named after an early television celebrity ( photo ). For a really excellent article on the history of the 1948 Cadillac, click here . If you're a real Cadillac nut, you must check out The (new) Cadillac Database© .
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last updated February 12th, 2006 by Jan Chciuk-Celt 
