Do you know Jacqueline? (the story of a very special Cadillac)
No, we're not talking about John F. Kennedy's elegant presidential wife, but the Cadillac that probably bore the same name in her honor. The Cadillac Jacqueline was a concept car designed by Pinin Farina. It was already the fourth show car, after Pinin Farina had already shown a Cadillac Skylight Coupé in Geneva in 1958.
This was followed by the Skylight Cabriolet from Paris and a year later the Starlight Coupé, again in Paris.
In 1961, the Italian coachbuilder then presented the extremely elegant Jacqueline Coupé for the first time at the Grand Palais in the city on the Seine. Like its predecessors, it was more Pinin Farina than Cadillac, which is probably why it did not impress the Cadillac managers as much as it was planned. The intention was to get back into business with Cadillac to produce more production cars after the collaboration with the Eldorado Brougham came to an end because it had not been lucrative for Cadillac. Nothing came of it.
However, the Cadillac Jacqueline Coupé survived, after its tour of the motor shows, initially in the Pininfarina Museum. In the mid-nineties, the car was sold to Alain Dominique Perrin, the president of Cartier. He decided to send the car to the USA and turn it into a drivable vehicle.
Until then, the pretty body had only stood on a rollable tubular frame, the drivetrain was missing, as were sprung axles.
Cadillac gave the coupé the chassis of a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz from 1960 and a 6.4-liter V8 engine from 1959. The interior also had everything added that was needed for driving, without replacing the individual seats and other interior elements that made the special vehicle unique. The show car had become a drivable automobile.
In 2011, the car came under the hammer at Bonhams as lot 355 at the Grand Palais in Paris, with only a few more miles than when it was delivered, exactly where the coupé had celebrated its premiere 50 years earlier.
At the time, EUR 212,750 (CHF 245,109) was enough to buy the elegant car, which had a greater influence on the design of other brands than that of Cadillac.
Various elements that characterized the Jacqueline design could be seen on other Pininfarina creations shortly after its presentation. For example, the radiator grille of the Peugeot 204 features similar details to those of the Cadillac.
Not all of the Cadillac show cars created by Pinin Farina between 1958 and 1961 have survived. Of the four (or was it five?), only two are said to have survived. They certainly represent an interesting period in Pinin Farina's oeuvre. It was not until much later that a more extensive collaboration took place with the Cadillac Allanté from 1987 onwards.
