As a boy growing up in Akron, Ohio, I can recall seeing limousines on only a handful of occasions — each one of them a memorable experience. The extended Firestone family owned a couple and there were a few others in town, but the sighting of any one of them on a public street caused heads to turn, and people to stop in their tracks and stare shamelessly. A limousine signified wealth, power, exclusiveness — all the things we poor peasants didn't have. A limousine still does, although the nature of the beast has changed considerably during the past fifty years.

Then, limousines (and the similar seven-passenger sedan body type, which is a limousine without the partition) were nearly all factory built. Today, the norm is the "stretch" limousine converted from a six-passenger sedan by an outside firm. There were reasons for this development, the high cost of building factory models for a very small market segment being chief among them. This series of three articles traces the evolution of the body type from the unique factory bodies of the prewar era to the sedan conversions we have today. The first landmark development in this story occurred in the latter part of 1949 with the introduction of the 1950 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 75.

In approaching the postwar Fleetwood story it is tempting to dismiss it as unimportant, and many enthusiasts do. To be sure, the postwar cars that bore the Fleetwood name were dramatically different those with which it had been associated during the classic era, as the custom and semi-custom bodies, which are understandably the prime focus of many, were with only brief exceptions consigned to history.

Still, a couple of things had not changed. Throughout the postwar era, the Fleetwood name was consistently reserved for the very finest cars Cadillac built, and Cadillac would be widely regarded for decades after the war (and not just in America) as one of the finest luxury cars in the world — if not, indeed, the finest. And, perhaps the most influential Fleetwood ever built was that first all-new postwar limousine.

Until World War II, most important automakers included seven-passenger sedans and limousines in their corporate programs. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors all had models of this type, as did many of the independent manufacturers. Even a few inexpensive makes such as Plymouth entered the market for a time. Among the major brands at the rarified top end of this segment, Cadillac, Packard and Lincoln reigned supreme (and in that order), while a small number of Chrysler Crown Imperials rounded out the field.

After the war, the Lincoln Customs were not revived, and, one by one, the other manufacturers also dropped out of the long-wheelbase body business, too. Packard did design and build a new limousine body that remained in production through the 1950 model run (its roof stamping also being used on the interesting Packard station wagon in 1948-50!), but a long-wheelbase model was not offered with the first all-new postwar Packard body that was introduced for 1951. The sole survivors at that point were Cadillac, Chrysler, and DeSoto, which continued to offer limousines and seven-passenger sedans. Then, Chrysler Corporation withdrew from the field after 1954, although it did continue to offer a limited number of Ghia-built customs up through the mid-1960s. That left Cadillac virtually alone at the top.

Why the attrition? Basically, the market was never very large to begin with and the switch to the all-steel body in the 1930s rendered it prohibitively expensive to produce a few hundred (or even a few thousand) limousines per year. The Great Depression and the all-steel body, taken together, had put enormous pressure on all car companies to reduce costs. For General Motors, the 1933 A-body program for Chevy, Pontiac, and Olds, was the first serious interchangeability program, and, by 1940, all volume product lines were built on a range of letter-designated body shells: A, B, C and D. Moreover, these bodies were shared extensively, with as many as four divisions using a single body. Chrysler had jumped on the same bandwagon — indeed, had started it rolling — as early as 1929 when its DeSoto and Plymouth brands first shared bodies.

The program of body rationalization at General Motors came to full flower in the early postwar era. The goal was to have every General Motors division, except Chevrolet (which only had one body to start with), reduced to one basic body shell between 1949 and 1950. They actually came close to achieving that. Pontiac dropped from two to one. Buick and Cadillac went from three to one (or, four to one in Cadillac's case, depending on how body shells are interpreted). From 1949, Pontiac and Chevrolet shared the A-body. Olds used both the A-body and the larger B-body in 1950, and was the only exception to the one-body rule. Buick and Cadillac technically had B- and C-bodies in 1950, but the new C-body was a stretched derivative of the B-body. The C-Special used by the Cadillac Sixty Special was, in turn, an even lengthier version of the B/C-body. Even the Series Seventy-Five D-body was engineered off the B/C-body.

The 1950 Fleetwoods (the Sixty Special the Seventy-Five) were in their own way as significant as the landmark overhead-valve, high-compression V8 engine of the previous year, for they marked an entirely new level of sophistication in terms of product rationalization. The brilliance of the General Motors interchangeability scheme is perhaps best illustrated by the Seventy-Five.

The bean counters at Ford had decided to drop the long-wheelbase Lincolns after the war, and no serious thought was given to reviving them as part of the 1949 or 1952 new body programs, because the sales involved could not justify the costs for what would have to be a unique (or nearly so) body. The same decision was made with regard to the 1951-series Packards and would be made at Chrysler several years hence.

But, how much had the Seventy-Five series actually cost Cadillac? How much in it was really unique? Not much. The rear fenders were borrowed from the Coupe de Ville, and virtually every other sheet metal component in the body was taken "off the shelf" from other Cadillacs. The rear doors and the roof were the only significant unique stampings in the entire car — and the roof was originally cobbled together from the C-Special roof until it got too bothersome to do it that way and Cadillac opted for separate tooling. It was one of the slickest tricks ever and completely blind-sided the competition, most of whom failed even to realize that General Motors had discovered an affordable way to build a factory limousine. They thought the mighty General was just throwing money away for the prestige of it, yet the 1950 Seventy-Five Series not only made money for the corporation, it set a standard for limousine design for years to come. Moreover, this concept made Cadillac dominant in the field for thirty-five years — almost to the point of monopoly, in fact —and that was an impressive achievement by any measure.

So, why didn't the other manufacturers follow suit? A big part of the answer, as mentioned above, is that they simply didn't realize what had been done. They still thought the "D-body" was essentially unique because that was the way limousine bodies had always been built. There was one competitor who understood, though. Jim Nance, the newly named head of Packard, figured it out and, as a result, a new Packard limousine was announced for the 1953 model year that was designed with the same sort of interchangeability Cadillac had pioneered in 1950. Nance did, however, add a novel twist to the concept that was to have long-term implications for, ironically, Lincoln. That, however, is grist for the second part of the story and will be examined in the next installment of this series. R&D