This 22-foot two-seater V16 is the wildest Cadillac ever built
In a room full of automotive icons, it can be more than a little hard for a car to stand out.
Crowding the Art & the Automobile exhibit at the 2019 Canadian International Auto Show mid-February were a museumquality 1929 Rolls-Royce, a priceless 1964 Ferrari 250 LM, and the very first concept car ever — the 1938 Buick Y-Job.
But even when shoulder to shoulder with those jaw-droppers, the poster car for this year’s installation — Icons — drew all eyes in the room like a magnet. Sitting centre stage was the wildest Cadillac ever built, Jim Patterson’s 1937 V16 Cabriolet, a larger-than-life two-seater with a larger-than-life history to go with it.
Philippe Barraud was the heir to a brick-and-tile empire who wanted to turn up to Europe’s fashionable concours d’elegance in the “ultimate car” (and, it’s said, to draw in his pick of the women he drove by on the Swiss Riviera on the shores of Lake Geneva).
To that end, in late 1936 he tapped his local luxury car dealership, Edelweiss Garage near Lausanne, Switzerland, and had them import a Cadillac Type 37 Series 90 chassis powered by a V16 engine, one of just a few dozen built for the 1937 model year, and one of the only ones the carmaker shipped abroad.
Barraud wanted a car built in the style of the very popular Figoni et Falaschi carrosserie, but commissioned a lesserknown coachbuilder down the street from him, Willy Hartmann, to assemble the body because he felt he needed to closely supervise its construction.
He needn’t have worried — Hartmann delivered. The French, flowing lines on the fenders he hand-shaped were complemented by the finest components — Marchal and Bosch lighting, a custom, finned grille and, of course, that 452-cubic inch Cadillac V16. The engine was fitted with dual everything, from the twin exhaust to the twin ignition.
If that somehow failed to impress, the sheer size of the car would certainly do it. The two-seater’s titanic 22-foot length was visually exaggerated by a radiator and firewall cut down three to four inches, which lowered the hood line. When Hartmann finished the Cadillac, it weighed in at around 6,000 pounds, and required special reinforcements and heavy duty springs to handle the tonnage.
“It was almost bigger than the Swiss streets at the time could handle,” says Don McLellan, president of Chatham, Ontariobased RM Restoration, which led the recent two-year effort to return the car to original condition.
McLellan had to correct the several changes made to the car after 1968, when a mechanic friend that Barraud had asked to store the classic — then in need of much work — instead sold it for a pittance without telling him.
The car had traded hands several times by the time he saw it, spent a long stint in the Blackhawk Museum in California, and at some point had its lights and bumper modified. In the 1990s, under the ownership of Tom Barrett of Barrett-Jackson, the car was repainted in red, with chrome embellishments stuck to its flanks. Barrett apparently even fixed a Figoni et Falaschi badge on it in an effort to bump up its value.
Kentucky-based car collector Patterson, the Cadillac’s current owner, oversaw the return to its when-new state, including its cream-white-with-pewterstripes paint.
Together with McLellan, he has already logged a couple hundred miles on the powerful V16 — it makes 160 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque — and taken home trophies that include first-in-class in American Classic Open, and Most Elegant Convertible at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance last year, where it made its debut.
But holding the title of “wildest Cadillac in existence” comes at a price. McLellan says the skirted fenders and long wheelbase make for a turning circle so huge, they had to three-point some of the turns on the Pebble Beach driving tour.
“It offers no practicality whatsoever,” says McLellan. He notes that with no trunk, the huge spare tire tucked behind the seats, and the skirts, changing a tire would take about three hours.
It doesn’t matter. This V16 Cabriolet wasn’t supposed to be practical. It was supposed to be extravagant, impressive and iconic. And time, and its place in the Art and the Automobile Icons exhibit, proves it has hit those marks.