Junk Yard of Dreams
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While down in Cornwall many moons ago I was told of an American car in an overgrown yard behind a Tesco’s that was being built in Camborne, the crane operator had seen it from his crane and wanted to know what it was, so out of curiosity I decided to go on an adventure.
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To enter the yard meant climbing though holes in walls, scything through monstrous brambles and numerous other obstructions, the yard was overgrown to such an extent that the only way to navigate the place was by climbing on top a wall.
From the wall the view the view was unbelievable, the yard was full of numerous rare cars in various stages of decomposition, and in right in the middle taking pride of place was an old Cadillac but that’s all I could tell as the badges had corroded.
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The next day I returned this time with the late Dennis Foy from Hot Car Magazine and an armful of early American car guides, we soon discovered that it was a rare 1949 Cadillac Series Sixty-Two Coupe DeVille.
Sherlock Holmes Dennis decided to try and find out more about the car by taking the chassis and engine numbers; I just took a load of pictures of the car and the yard.
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A few weeks after I got back to Stockport I had a look through my holiday pics and I came to the Camborne shots of the yard, a couple of shots in particular stood out, these were interior shots, so I decided to have a play with an idea so a few sketches later and I had the foundations for the image.
What I wanted to capture was the atmosphere on the day the shots were taken, the heat and humidity inside the car.
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I was halfway through the painting when I received a call from a very excited Dennis Foy, he had discovered from the chassis and engine numbers that the car had been shipped to the UK, he had also noticed that the car had an unusual intake manifold that had been designed as a one-off to take a Pratt & Whitney crankshaft driven centrifugal supercharger and had been commissioned by Clarke Gable.
He also discovered that the car had only been in the country 3 months before it was written off in an accident. Parts were ordered for it, but he was back in the US by then so the car never moved again.