The Cadillac Fleetwoood, built from 1993 through 1996 was the last car tower the Fleetwood name.
Rolls-Royce’s announcement earlier this year the company is reviving its custom coachbuilding service resurrects a business that flourished before World War II.
In fact, Rolls-Royce didn’t sell cars with bodies until after the war. Custom coachbuilding was a practice derived from 19th century coachbuilding. Prior to World War II, when the top 1% purchased a car, it was not uncommon to buy merely the chassis and running gear.
The car was then shipped to a coachbuilder to complete a custom body with an exclusive interior and paint job. This was Fleetwood Metal Body’s business, and they had many competitors, including Bohman & Schwartz, Biddle, Brewster, Brunn, Derham Dietrich, Judkins, LeBaron, Murphy, Rollston, and Waterhouse, among others.
And this week in 1996, the last vestige of it disappeared when Cadillac discontinued the Cadillac Fleetwood, a car whose name was once synonymous with the very best.
The Fleetwood Metal Body Company in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania.
But before there was a Cadillac Fleetwood, or Fleetwood Body Co., there was Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, a small town of 4,000 residents about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
A small town with an internationally renown company
The Fleetwood Metal Body Co. was founded by Harry Urich, in 1909, quickly earning an excellent reputation for shaping custom aluminum bodies on wood framing. At a time when many cars were still open to the elements, Fleetwood concentrated on building closed-bodied cars. Despite the competition, Fleetwood managed to supply coachwork for the world’s finest automakers including Benz, Duesenberg, Fiat, Isotta Fraschini, Lancia, Lincoln, Locomobile, Lozier, Maybach, Mercedes, Minerva, Packard, Renault, Rolls-Royce, Stearns-Knight, and Stutz, in addition to Cadillac.
By the 1930s, Fleetwood was designing and building custom bodies exclusively for Cadillac, such as this 1934 roadster
By 1920, the company boasted an order book that would last it through the end of 1921. As a result, the company refused more than $2 million — $21.8 million today — in orders in the previous four months.
That was more than enough to occupy Fleetwood’s 230,465-square-foot plant and its workers. The company employed more than 400, becoming a major employer in the small town of less than 5,000 people. Here, workers brought to life the designs commissioned by consumers at the Fleetwood Salon, the company showroom at 10 E. 57th St. in New York City, with most designs going to Packard.
Fleetwood counted among its clientele such Hollywood stars as Theda Bara, Mary Pickford and Rudolph Valentino. World leaders included Herbert Hoover, the Emperor of Japan, Andrew Carnegie and an assortment of Rockefellers and Vanderbilts sought out Fleetwood’s craftsmanship.
The end of independence for Fleetwood
The Fleetwood name and style became so well known, the Fisher Body Co. bought Fleetwood Body Co. in 1925. The following year, GM bought Fisher Body. You can guess what happened next.
A 1937 Cadillac Fleetwood. The name would symbolize GM’s top-of-the-line Cadillacs through 1996.
Sources differ on how much work Fleetwood continued to do for other auto companies. What is known is that by 1929, Fleetwood made bodies exclusively for Cadillac. That same year, GM bought the remaining stock of Fisher, becoming the owner of both Fisher and Fleetwood. By 1930, the Pennsylvania-based factory was closed and operations were moved to Detroit.
The Fleetwood name was then applied to Cadillac’s top-of-the-line Series 60 and 70 models through 1976, which included brougham body styles, with which Fleetwood is commonly associated with today.
The name derives from Henry Brougham, who designed an enclosed carriage meant to be drawn by a single horse. In automotive parlance, Cadillac used the term in the 1930s to describe a formal body with open front quarters and enclosed rear quarters.
President Harry S. Truman and a 1947 Cadillac Series 75 Fleetwood Limousine.
The Brougham name was used through 1937 before being revived in 1955 on the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham show car. The name was used again on the 1957-60 Eldorado Brougham four-door hardtops before being dropped for 1961. Four years later, the Brougham name was used as an option package in 1965, after which it was a sub-series of the Fleetwood Sixty Special through 1970. In 1971, Cadillac offered the Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham among its top model offerings. In 1977, when the Sixty Special Series was axed, the Fleetwood Brougham became Cadillac’s top-of-the-line owner-driven cars through 1986.
For 1987, the Fleetwood became Cadillac’s top-of-the-line model among its front-wheel-drive cars, while the Brougham name replaced the DeVille moniker on the old rear-drive Cadillac sedan. When the Brougham was redesigned for 1993, it was renamed the Cadillac Fleetwood. At 225 inches long, it is the longest production car in America and would survive though this week in 1996 when the company’s cars became exclusively front-wheel drive.
By now, the Fleetwood name had little to do with the distinction of true classic-era Fleetwood-bodied cars. That led Cadillac to bury the name, along with its heritage. In an age where automakers strive to market their heritage, GM continues to ignore theirs.
Keyword: The Rearview Mirror: A Revered Name Retires at Cadillac