Cross Country Road Trip 2020

An opportunity presented itself to undertake something I’ve always wanted to do...a cross country road trip! Last year we moved from Charlotte, North Carolina (our home for 6 years) to Pensacola, Florida. As I  have written on this blog before I love full size American cars and my parents happened to have a surplus vehicle that was right up my alley. I decided to fly home to California and drive the car back to our new home in Florida. The vehicle is a 2002 Cadillac DeVille DTS, a lot of folks were worried and probably thought I was crazy to try driving across the country in a nearly 20 year old car. I also had a very small window to get back home so it would have to be a pretty grueling pace in order to meet my deadline.

There were a couple of variables that had to line up, the one way ticket to Los Angeles had to be relatively affordable and I had to accommodate a previously scheduled vacation before I could fly out to Los Angeles. As it turns out I found a great ticket for the Saturday morning of the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday weekend. My vacation would end on Wednesday, I would work Thursday & Friday and then fly to California Saturday morning. I had to be back to work on Tuesday. This gave me the outline of my trip; Saturday to travel to California and Sunday & Monday to drive back. My gps was reporting 29 hours of driving exclusive of any pit stops. In theory I paced myself at 2- 16 hr drives...that was my plan anyway.

California

I had expected to have to travel to New Orleans or Atlanta in order to find an affordable ticket and to have to fly into Los Angeles International Airport. I was really amazed to find a ticket from Pensacola (a very small regional airport) to Ontario, California (via Atlanta)...Ontario airport is much smaller than LAX and only about 20 minutes from my parents house. It has been my experience that there is a premium to fly out of these airports. Things needed to line up just so to make this trip work and this seemed like a good omen. The flight out of Pensacola was a red eye , and with the Atlanta layover and time difference I arrived in California at about 10:20 AM, this gave me a full day in California before starting back. Saturday was spent visiting with family and then resting up for the long trip. On Sunday morning I loaded up the car with cargo I wanted to take back to Florida, spent a little more time with family and then got on the road heading east on Interstate 10 at about 2:30 PM Pacific.

My route would take me about 2000 miles to Pensacola, Florida deviating off of Interstate 10 only for the bypass around New Orleans, Louisiana and then rejoining Interstate 10 just before the Mississippi state line. Otherwise it was going to be I-10 all the way. I have driven from San Bernardino to outside Tucson past Benson, Arizona previously so it was going to be a while before I encountered any new to me scenery. After living on the East Coast for nearly 11 years ago the landscape of California and the Southwest now seems very exotic to me. The mountains rising from the Los Angeles basin are particularly dramatic and I enjoyed seeing the wind farm outside Palm Springs. I stopped at the Cabazon Dinosaurs to take pictures before it got dark, it seemed like the kind of classic roadside attraction you must indulge in while on a road trip. The freeway overpasses have been labeled with “Desert Hot Springs” / “Palm Springs” script from the classic Palm Springs welcome sign, I thought that was a nice bit of place making. I left the Coachella Valley behind and headed towards the Arizona state line. The sun would set somewhere before Blythe...the last town in California before the Colorado River.

Arizona

My trip through Arizona was completely at night. My earliest road trip memories are on the family night drives to visit my Grandmother when she lived in Morenci, Arizona. She would move to greater Los Angeles in the 80’s and after that the frequent trips stopped for the most part. We would occasionally visit every few years to see other relatives. But I’ve been through the state enough to recognize how much Phoenix has sprawled across the desert. The distance between Phoenix & Tucson doesn’t feel as great as it once did, perhaps one day the two metro areas will grow together. After Tucson it was remote again. I stopped briefly around the cutoff towards the part of the state my parents grew up in when I saw the signage for Safford...the largest town near Morenci...their hometown. I felt the prayers and good vibes on this trip and really leaned on my guardian angels to get me where I was going safely. I would pass milestones that reminded me of family, and loved ones gone. My godmother had retired to greater Phoenix and was recently laid to rest there and my Grandmother’s final resting place was in Morenci. As I passed by these locations I took comfort in believing they were watching over me on the trip.

New Mexico

I also travelled New Mexico entirely at night, passing through Lordsburg and taking the longest non meal break of the entire trip at a rest stop on a ridge outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. I got back on the road just before dawn and watched the sunrise over the New Mexico/Texas border.

Texas

Texas would be nearly half of my entire trip. The sun rose Monday morning in El Paso, set in San Antonio and I crossed the state line into Louisiana at midnight Tuesday. My family also has roots in the El Paso/Juarez area and I had been there as a child. It too has grown tremendously since I was last there. I found the mid-century modern rest stops of Texas very interesting, they were fairly sophisticated designs with long planar walls and elegant outstretched beams supporting in 2 cases thin slab roofs and in one case A-Frame like gables. They had interesting block, and or stone work and remarkable mosaic tile murals. The three I stopped at were in good condition. I stopped for breakfast in Van Horn, Texas which bore a striking resemblance to Radiator Springs from the Disney*Pixar Movie “Cars”. In Van Horn I saw a great old pueblo style hotel and a remarkably intact 1970’s Thunderbird on the side of the road. I associate that Thunderbird with my late Father-In-Law who had one when my wife was a child, I took it as a sign he was watching over me on the trip as well. The drive across Texas was scenic and very long! At one point I drove past the town of Segovia on Sycamore Creek and immediately thought of my Grandmother & Godmother both of who were Segovias! And my Grandmother used to live on Sycamore Avenue, so I definitely felt them with me again. I rolled into San Antonio at dusk and kept on going until I hit Houston at night. After Houston it was on to Louisiana.

Louisiana

I hit the Louisiana border at about midnight central time. My elapsed time was about 31 1/2 hours at that point. The Louisiana welcome center was notable for the sign near the pet walking area that said “beware of Aligators” and because there were 2 wild boars hanging out in the parking lot. I managed to evade the wild boars and get back on the road and passed through Baton Rouge while crossing the Mississippi River. I split away from Interstate 10 for the rest of the trip through Louisiana to bypass New Orleans. This would be a more direct route, and the bypass would converge back with I-10 at the Mississippi state line. Traveling at night through the wooded highways does not provide much scenery but I had a very comfortable vehicle equipped with 7 CDs in the radio so that kept me entertained. I must admit around Houston that I was very tired, but at no point dangerously so. I was much like Forest Gump on his cross country runs...if I needed to rest I just would. But it would be dishonest to say I was not tired. Thanks to the luxurious seating of the Cadillac I can say that I was not physically fatigued at all, the car ate the pavement like nothing at all and it was like traveling across the country in a Laz E Boy chair!

Mississippi

New Orleans is about 3 hours from my house, so once I was across the Mississippi state line I was starting to have that so close but still so far feeling. I want to reiterate that I never felt unsafe, but math is math and I had been on the road for nearly 36 hours with only minimal pit stops. I was relying on prayer, angels and caffeine to get me through the home stretch. Again it being night there was not much scenery but I loved stopping at the welcome centers for breaks and to snap a picture of the state signs.

Alabama

Oh I could really taste it now, we are close enough to Alabama that we travel to Mobile on occasion and yet it still felt like so much more to go! It was still dark when I crossed in to Alabama.

Florida

Victory, with the sun starting to rise somewhere near Mobile I rolled into Florida at 7:00 AM Central time 38 and 1/2 hours after setting out on my journey. I started on a Sunday afternoon and it was now Tuesday morning. Some how my rest breaks and meals added about 10 hours to the pure driving time my GPS had estimated.

I tried to post regularly on Facebook as I made the trip and between that and texting my family I felt a lot of support that kept me going. I’m not sure I need to do a trip like that again anytime soon, perhaps if I did I would try I-40 next time. I-10 is a safe, well improved highway and there is much raw scenery, but not too many attractions on the open stretches. It would have been nice to visit the cities or see the Alamo but it was not to be on this trip. My vehicle performed admirably delivering superior comfort and reasonable fuel efficiency...I think I was getting close to 450 miles per gas tank, and for most of the Texas leg of the trip the speed limit was 80 MPH!

Of Presidents and Emperors: a look at Lincoln Continental & Chrysler Imperial

I am not only a fan of mid (20th) century architecture, but of the history, design, culture, and film of the period. So I have decided to branch out from my blog’s initial focus, a specific look at architecture and widen that net to encompass other fields of artistic expression. Specifically I would like to share some of my passion for automotive design on this post. I went to the Hershey, PA Auto Show & Swap Meet this year and took tons of pictures of cars that moved me, rolling sculpture really. This post sort of grew around my favorites; Lincolns, Chryslers & Imperials, and a few other Forward Look Mopars(other Chrysler Corporation cars of the late 50's & early 60's.) I am a pretty big car nut, have been since as far back as I can remember, in fact as a toddler I entertained adults with my ability to name the kind of car they drove, I was particularly good at identifying a car by the wheel covers, the part of a car a small child sees up close pretty often. Unlike most car nuts I care not one bit about engines, power trains, or mechanicals. My love has always been for the shape, the design, the styling of the automobile. My favorite cars are luxury cars, the sleek, long, and elegant cruisers of the mid 50’s through the 70’s.

I have a fondness for some cars even through to the present day. The Chrysler 300 since 2005 has been my favorite contemporary car as it clearly recalls the great land yachts of old. My interests often overlap and will lead to exposure to something from one area to another. For example, as a child my favorite cars were Continental Marks by the Lincoln Division of the Ford Motor Company. I found the spare tire motif of the deck lid especially distinctive, and it probably nurtured my love of sleek, long, and elegant luxury cars.

My history hobby over lapped with my car interest when I discovered the Lincoln Continental limousine associated with the administration of President Kennedy. Perhaps the historical interest reinforced a childhood predilection, at any rate I “fell” for the slab sided Lincoln Continentals of the 1960’s. Jacqueline Kennedy had a stunning 1960 Imperial Le Baron limousine for her use as first lady that would turn up in my Kennedy studies. The elegant black limo boasted gigantic fins, and an intriguing leather half roof. These cars were extremely rare having been hand built in Italy from Chrysler Corporation built body components in Detroit.

Pop-culture would reinforce and provide further exposure to things, after all not only President Kennedy rode around in Lincoln Convertibles, so did Oliver Wendell Douglas on Green Acres- another childhood favorite. And Milburn Drysdale on the Beverly Hillbillies was driven in an Imperial, Bruce Lee’s Kato and the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty was a custom Imperial and the only good thing about the recent remake. You can’t be exposed to the Kennedys, slab sided Lincolns and mid-century pop-culture without eventually coming across the incomparable Imperial.

It’s pretty much accepted that Cadillac was THE luxury car standard, but style and innovation leaders could be found at Ford and Chrysler. General Motors had a “branding” advantage in that no division of the company was burdened with the reputation of another division in the public consciousness. Most didn’t think of a Cadillac as a fancy Chevy.

Unfortunately the opposite was never the case with Ford and Chrysler, a consequence of the parent company sharing a name with a component division. Mercury was rarely thought of in the same league as Buick or even Chrysler, but more often as a “fancy Ford”, and indeed no longer exists. Ford has the Lincoln Division to ostensibly go up market but what with “platinum & titanium” editions and even the original 4 seater Thunderbird Ford has always been willing to cannibalize the up market potential of its “premium” brands. In the 1950’s however there seemed to be an agreement that GM’s success with its brand ladder was the strategy to copy. And for a brief time in the late 50’s you could nearly find a brand for brand matchup in all “big 3” lineups. For the “low priced three” you had Chevy, Ford, Plymouth, for the lower mid price market you had Pontiac, Edsel, Dodge, the mid price market found Oldsmobile, Mercury, & Desoto

the upper middle/lower upper price field would find Buick, a slightly demoted Lincoln, and Chrysler, and at the top of the market allegedly going toe to toe with Cadillac would be the new “Continental" and “Imperial” divisions. These lineups wouldn’t survive the early 60’s, which by then would see the end of the De Soto (61), Edsel (60), & Continental (57, but would live as a nameplate through 1960) divisions. Continental division was spun off of Lincoln, the original Lincoln Continental having started as a custom cabriolet for Edsel Ford's vacation. It was rumored to be so popular among Edsel's wealthy Palm Beach contemporaries that it was put into limited practically handbuilt production. (1940-1942, 1946-1948) It was this first Continental that was the inspiration for the Continental Mark II a mid 50’s masterpiece of elegance and restraint at a time famous for outlandish aerospace inspired rolling jukeboxes.(Equally loved by yours truly) It was hoped that this new Continental might be the first step in establishing a premium luxury brand for the Ford Motor Company.

The standard Lincoln was no slouch, and was historically among the finest cars in America, but by the early 50’s in size and content had been pushed downward into near Buick territory. But the Continental was not given enough time to develop into a credible luxury division and was reabsorbed into Lincoln after only 2 seasons (1956 & 1957) and approximately 3000 cars. They were nearly 10,000 dollar cars at a time when a Cadillac was about half as much. Chrysler had similar aspirations when they spun off their top of the line Imperial model into its own make for 1955. The Imperial had been the finest model available in the Chrysler lineup for many years.

A Chrysler was a fine automobile, its namesake founder had successfully run the Buick division for General Motors before setting out to develop his own well built, luxurious, yet affordable car. He would reorganize the struggling Maxwell into the new Chrysler Corporation.

Chrysler division was meant to be an affordable aspirational car, probably equivalent to a Buick, and would develop the Plymouth as an entry level mass market car and the DeSoto for the mid priced field before acquiring Dodge.

They faced a somewhat similar problem as Ford in trying to craft a make out of a model. But whereas the Continental division was short-lived and ultimately reabsorbed into Lincoln division resulting in the legendary Lincoln Continental of the 1960’s, the Imperial would struggle to establish itself for 20 years before being dissolved, and largely forgotten, Although there have been 2 attempts to re-launch the Imperial as a premium Chrysler and both attempts have failed.

Even the storied Lincoln Continental nameplate disappeared early this century, and Lincoln struggles in the current luxury market while Chrysler has a somewhat successful niche as a luxury oriented aspirational mid priced car line. Most people never recognized the independence of the Imperial line, and it was commonly referred to as “Chrysler-Imperial”.

Much in the same way that people call Continental Marks of the 70’s through the early 80’s “Lincoln Continental Marks” even though they never said “Lincoln” on them, after all they were sold alongside “Lincoln Continentals” in Lincoln-Mercury Dealers, but such is the way things are in the world of automotive nomenclature. And I think it is much preferable to the alphabet soup of the present day “MKZ, MKS, etc.”. The Imperial was a distinctive, powerful, well engineered car, if not always well-built. Sales were never terribly high, although they did surpass Lincoln briefly in the late 50’s before Lincoln Continental seized the number 2 spot in the luxury market.

Imperials have several distinctive traits among their 20 years of independent marketing, the earliest cars are known for freestanding taillights, or taillights integrated with oversized flamboyant tailfins. In fact the quintessential Cadillac the outlandish 1959 Cadillac with its enormous fins and twin rocket pod taillights can be clearly read as a reaction against the 1957 Imperial. That the mighty Cadillac felt the need with its enormous production numbers to answer the challenge of the Imperial with its meager sales says a lot about the real style leader.

But it was of little consolation to the slow selling Imperial, which would end up following Lincolns slab side lead in 1964. The 1964 Imperial is largely a riff on the stunning 1961 Lincoln Continental, and it was designed by the same man, Elwood Engel.

Passed over for the head of styling at Ford on the heels of the exquisite Continental, Elwood ended up at Chrysler. Chrysler having set the tone for the late 50’s with its long low rakish designs and daring fins under the design of Virgil Exner , had stayed at the party too long, and Elwood was brought in to replace Exner and apply his signature shear, slab sided corner filled out design language to the entire Chrysler Corporation line. This “corner filled out” look would be the hallmark of all subsequent Imperials. Virgil Exner deserved better, he came along when Chrysler was dead last in the looks department and reinvigorated the stodgy cars with style and flair. Introduced gradually starting in 1955 Exner’s design language was called the “Forward Look”. It generally gave the cars a lower wedge like profile, with canted fronts and ends to denote motion.

Fins visually lifted the rears of the cars, each make in the Chrysler Corporation was given a signature fin, and the motif was developed over several years.

The Imperial trademark was daring fins with distinctive freestanding taillights, in some cases integrated with the fin or suspended or mounted on the fin. Sales followed across the line especially in 1957, unfortunately the production side of things was neglected and quality control was so bad that so many customers won over by the daringly beautiful cars were turned off by the horribly put together machines Exner would end up taking too much blame for things out of his control. Imperial never managed too many sales, perhaps there wasn’t enough distinction between the standard Chrysler line to justify the price premium. And although they were feature laden cars that performed superbly they lacked the prestige of other luxury cars, limiting their “snob appeal”. They have amazing attention to design detail, each medallion on the car is a mid-century work of art as is the script work on the name plates. The freestanding headlights are meant to recall classic automobiles of the 1930’s, and are suberb examples of retrofuturism.

GM always had more sales, and I have soft spots for Oldsmobile and Buick but I have always thought that there were many more unique cars to be found at Ford and Chrysler. The famous Eldorado of 1967 owes more to the Continental Mark II than anything at GM. And the 59 GM lineup is an attempt to marry Exner’s finned Forward Look with the jet bomber bulbous motifs that were GM trademarks in the 50’s. The shear coke bottle look that was established by GM in the 60’s owes a lot to the slab sides and rear hop-up of the 61 Lincoln Continental. I was such a “Lincoln man” for many years I had a hard time fully embracing the Imperial, in fact my first car was a 1964 Lincoln Continental, and I also owned a 1969 Continental Mark III, and 87 and 96 Town Cars. But something about the quirky styling has called to the googie lover in me. The 57-62 Imperials really do have an out there retrofuturistic quality that I think is more Saarinen and Lautner-ish than say the Bauhaus feel of a 61 Lincoln Continental, and the 64-68 Imperials are Danish modern on wheels. So in many ways the Imperial won me over, much in the way the Populuxe/Googie style inspires me. I have never owned an Imperial, I came close but then the owner decided not to sell. It was a 67 Imperial Le Baron, and if the interior could have been sold on ebay they would have said “Eames L@@K!”, the seats looked like Eames chairs and the dashboard was like a Danish modern hi-fi cabinet. I have since owned a Chrysler LHS and a PT Cruiser, and I like them, but then they are more aspirational mid priced cars than true luxury cars and that was largely what did the Imperial in, they none the less have a bit of that American style that made Chryslers and Imperials so special.