Wouldn't you like a Pink Cadillac?

Today was the annual ‘Wheel Nuts’ car show being held at St. Rose’s School in Stroud, where Helena works. As she was having a stall there, we had to deliver all the equipment early in order to avoid clashing with the arrival of the hundreds of vintage and other ‘special’ cars, motorbikes and lorries. I also needed to get back home to prepare for a regular workshop. After we’d unloaded the car and set up the gazebo I quickly rushed around to see some of the early birds parked in the various fields around the school.

There were a couple of rather special motors of the ’Bristol’ marque as well as some much more ordinary 60s popular cars. Just as I was about to leave I spotted this rather elegant ‘Pink Cadillac Fleetwood’ being eased across the field to its designated parking space. I love its classic period flying wings and its generally over the top styling, as well as the all consuming pinkness of it.

When I returned late in the afternoon after my course, most of the vehicles had departed, and in fact I had seen some of them out on the road  where they belong as I returned from my course in Woodchester. The Pink Cadillac was left all alone in the field so I went to get some static shots, but the light was rather poor in the shade of the many trees on the field’s boundary.

Then its owner returned and we got chatting. Apparently he was about to drive it home to Swansea in South Wales. He bought the car about twenty years ago from its owner who kept it in a barn in Devon. Then it was still painted its original black, with a beige interior, as it had been since it was built in 1960. Now all the metalwork is pink, inside and out, and even under the ‘hood’ the metal work in the V8 engine compartment is pink. The owner said he was born in Bussage, a village in one of the local valleys, and he pointed across the field to where his brother was trying to work out the carburation problem with his huge American pick-up. He still lives locally so he might be able to stagger home.

'Pink Cadillac' – Bruce Springsteen 1984