AND SO IT WENT

MARK GINSBURG

Linda Ellerbee test-drives the Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special bicoastally

Cars

'A11 my life I've owned Volkswagens, and now a Jeep. For reasons of the sixties, and for reasons of living in cities, I never got into the car culture. But the first time I drove this Cadillac— in L.A., which is a car culture—I found a perverse pleasure in being competitive. One of my fondest memories is of driving the car to U.S.C. to accept an award, all dressed up in black sequins and silk, on the freeway with the windows down, Glenn Miller full blast on the stereo... I found myself coveting this car."

Which must have come as a surprise. Last fall, Linda Ellerbee—writer, television commentator, and inspiration for the Candice Bergen TV character, Murphy Brown—wrote a column prompted by Ralph Nader's report "Cadillac— The Heartbreak of America.'' Ellerbee corroborated what many Americans suspected: Cadillacs aren't what they used to be. What they used to be for Ellerbee was actually what they were for her late mother: "Mom didn't know a gasket from a casket.. .but to her a Cadillac was the biggest, flashiest, best car in the whole world," Ellerbee wrote. When her complaints appeared in her syndicated column, she received flak from the Cadillac people. "They sent me a letter asking me to test-drive a new Cadillac because they were certain I hadn't driven one in a long while or I would never have said that nasty stuff," she recalls. "I said, No thank you, I don't do that sort of thing. And happily I was in another country, so they couldn't order me dead." But when we asked her what kind of car she would like to test-drive for us she chose a Caddy. We arranged for Ellerbee to have two 1989 Fleetwood Sixty Specials, Cadillac's top-of-the-line sedan—one on the West Coast and one on the East.

"Mother, if she were alive today, would be terribly disappointed that it's so small. But I'm of a different generation. I never liked those big hogs," said Ellerbee. "When I first saw the black one they pulled up from the garage in L.A., I looked—I'm nearsighted and couldn't quite see the hood ornament— and I thought it was a Mercedes. Then when I got in, I was baffled. In trying to push my seat forward I managed to recline the back, turn the seat heater on, raise it, lower it—there were nine separate controls in three different places."

The Sixty Special s front seats, with their multiple adjustments for all kinds of body shapes, are distinct from those in other Fleetwood models. The leather interior was designed in Italy. "I knew it! Any country that has that many presidents in so many years... But the manual's in English. Most operating manuals are written by people who don't write in English," noted Ellerbee, who is a low-tech kind of person. She got the hang of the Cadillac pretty fast, though. "I drove around L.A. all afternoon and some things were immediately apparent: the car is, first of all, very comfortable. Apart from the seat controls, it is very user-friendly, and the buttons are selfexplanatory."

When Ellerbee returned home to Manhattan, a silver Sixty Special was waiting at Lucky Duck Productions, her television production company in the West Village. The Sixty Special was introduced in 1938, when all Caddy monikers were numerical. The model was reintroduced in 1987; only interior trim differentiates it from other Fleetwood sedans. "In New York I noticed different things about the car: it's the only time in memory that I have driven over the bricks of the West Side Highway without feeling my kidneys and every part of me jarred. I tell you, it takes potholes. Then I drove it up to the country," she continued. "It's a perfect car for the straightaway. My only complaint is that it's mushy on comers, on turning. My other objections were mostly fashion: the wood inside has somehow been made so that it looks like pressed tin. And if it's real wood [it's genuine American walnut], Lord, you wouldn't know it." Other amenities include a motorized drink conveyor/ cup holder. At the touch of a button, a narrow tray slides out from under the front seats. It's ridiculous and fun. The rear armrest also contains a sliding cup holder buried inside its padding. Cigar smokers can appreciate the generous ashtrays, while the narcissistic dote on four illuminated fold-down vanity mirrors. The car is kind to the old and infirm: a door-mounted button marked "Exit" will lower the seats and move them rearward for easy egress. The easily panicked, who tend to slam on the brakes, are rewarded with a fine antilock braking system that helps prevent skidding.

"In L.A., I was on and off the freeways all day, and the response of the car—the pickup and maneuverability— was terrific," Ellerbee reported. The Sixty Special's handling is comparable to that of many of the better imported cars. You feel the car, even if you don't feel the road quite as well as in a Mercedes or an Audi. The big whitewall Michelin tires help reinforce the impression of contact with the pavement. At 65 or 70 m.p.h. the car understeers, and incremental adjustments of the steering wheel have to be made, but it's an improvement over earlier Cadillacs, which had steering so vague you always thought you were going to scrape the garbage can or the mailbox backing out of the driveway.

'The car was just fine in the Massachusetts countryside," Ellerbee continued. "Although it looked a little out of place. Everywhere I went, the postmistress, the man who runs the vegetable market, they all came out and said, 'Eh, uh-huh, what's happenin'? You movin' out?' Because they're used to seeing me in my Jeep. But the Cadillac was good in the cold weather. I let it sit outside one night when it was down to five degrees, and it started up just like that." People who drive regularly in cold climates might want the optional electrically heated windshield, even though it impairs remote-control garage-door openers and radar detectors. The standard defroster really wasn't up to thawing the ice that caked on the wipers and huge windshield as I drove on the turnpike one freezing night— until the interior was hot enough to put me to sleep.

MANUFACTURER'S

SPECIFICATIONS

1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special

Vehicle type: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, six-passenger four-door sedan.

List price: $34,320.

Engine type: 4.5-liter OHV V-8. Transmission: four-speed automatic.

Acceleration 0—60 m.p.h.: 9.9 seconds.

• Top speed: 115 m.p.h.

E.P.A. fuel economy: 17 m.p.g., city; 25 m.p.g., highway.

"I have always figured cars to be one of three things," Ellerbee remarked. "At different times of my life they have been a large purse, or a small apartment, but this one is the best Walkman I ever drove in. I loved that." American car companies take sound systems more seriously than the Europeans or Asians.

The Delco/Bose unit in the Caddy is supreme, and the leather-and-fabric interior is acoustically bright. The radio controls are easy to operate, but the unit is too far away from the driver for safe access.

"If they want to sell a Cadillac for what a Cadillac was," Ellerbee reflected, "they walk a tightrope here, because what they've done is make it competitive with the best of the German cars. When you're driving the Sixty Special, it says 'expensive luxury car,' not Cadillac. But enough of the Mercedes, put the fins back," she implored, "and streamline it a little, with more chrome, a little more something that says 'America.' It's come a long way from where it sank, though," she admitted. "And also, frankly, Mercedes is not the car it used to be. What does this car sell for, anyway?" The $34,320 that Cadillac charges for its sedan could buy a lowline Mercedes, a mid-level BMW, or a high-line Audi 200. Perhaps more to the point, it will also buy, this fall, a sparkling Lexus or Infiniti sedan from Japan. These new luxury cars will compete in a market already heavily saturated.

Would Ellerbee buy one? "No. Only because I don't have that kind of money to spend on a car," she said. I reminded her that when I first asked her what make of car she preferred for a test drive, she had said a Range Rover, which costs around $36,000. "That would have been as a company vehicle for carrying equipment for shoots, and for rough-road capability," she clarified. "If someone gave me the Sixty Special, would I drive it? Yes. Would I disguise myself driving it? Sometimes. But what I had to admit to myself is that for all my egalitarian, ex-radical, exhippie feelings, I began to understand Mother better. Maybe it's only that I'm forty-four now. I luxuriated in the luxury. I guess I have to eat my words, I really do. I probably should write a column and say how much I liked the Sixty Special, but I'll say it here: I loved it. There were some things I didn't like, but for the most part I loved it. And so did Mom, who was ridin' on my shoulder right there with me. She kept saying, 'I told you so.'"