Rare 1927 Cadillacs carried FDR and his entourage. Now, one is getting new life in NC.
Sam Ezell pulls open a creaky garage door and shines light on an artifact hidden for 35 years: a 1927 Cadillac fit for a president’s ride, as red as Santa’s sleigh and twice as long, rolling on fenders as round as a Rockette’s hips.
This relic spent half a lifetime under wraps in a barn until the artist in Ezell took interest, hoping to resurrect an automotive relic so rare that Cadillac only made seven.
“And nobody knows where the seventh is,” he said.
In its day, these special-order “picnic cars” ferried tourists around Glacier National Park, offering a wide wheel base, heavy-duty brakes, V-8 engine and generous cargo space for whatever refreshment a Jazz Age outing might require.
‘It needs to be seen’
Then in 1934, the fleet of red Cadillacs carried President Franklin Roosevelt and his White House entourage up the brand-new “Going-to-the-Sun-Road,” prompting this radio broadcast:
“Perhaps I can best express to you my thrill and delight by saying that I wish every American, old and young, could have been with me today,” said FDR, fresh from his jaunt.
For Ezell, any car bearing such witness to history, having such notable fingerprints on its door handles, should enjoy a long life of admiration.
“It needs to be seen,” he said.
At 70, Ezell is best-known as a Hillsborough folk artist with paintings of pickle jars, polka-dot chickens and long-stemmed flowers — work he shifted to abstracts when he lost partial sight to a blood clot in his eye.
But for decades, Ezell worked for Hillsborough developer James Freeland as the caretaker at Daniel Boone Village, where he not only tended to the ice rink and giant slide for the park but helped manage his boss’ sprawling collection of antique cars.
Hanging out with Oprah
Ezell remembers taking 31 of those cars to Monroe, NC, where director Steven Spielberg needed them for props in “The Color Purple.”
On that set, he said, “Me and Oprah were standing there on the street. They had telephone poles made up to look like trees.”
But even in Freeland’s expansive auto fleet, the 1927 Cadillac from Glacier National Park stood out — mostly because it arrived in pieces in a box. Freeland had to ship the engine off to California for repair.
“Anybody else who had that car would have scrapped it,” Ezell said of Freeland, who died in 1989. “I’d like to finish what he started.”
The old Caddy remained in storage long after Freeland’s passing, though most of his collection quickly sold. Parked in Ezell’s Roxboro garage, its dashboard looks like something off a steampunk airship with its needles, brass knobs and analog clock.
The odometer shows 97,045, but that may well mean feet rather than miles. Out front, at the end of its impossibly long hood, the round headlights jut out like a pair of bug’s eyes.
“He told me he got these from Henry Kissinger,” Ezell said.
Why would Kissinger have antique Cadillac headlights?
“I don’t know.”
Not a spot of rust
The old Caddy is still missing its upholstered seats, but Ezell hopes to have them installed by this summer. After nearly a century, there’s not a spot of rust.
“I’d like to see it go somewhere where people could appreciate it,” he said, ”instead of it staying in a barn.”
In a week or so, Ezell plans to have a mechanic crank the engine, bringing the Cadillac to life for the first time in decades.
It will no doubt hum with the confidence of a president pulling the nation out of Depression, his cigarette jutting at a jaunty angle.
Uniquely NC is a News & Observer subscriber collection of moments, landmarks and personalities that define the uniqueness (and pride) of why we live in the Triangle and North Carolina.
