A Cadillac With an Italian Twist
Normally, automakers tap coachbuilders to experiment with fresh styling, but that wasn’t the case with this Cadillac featured in the latest episode of Jay Leno's Garage. Owner Lee Carr brought in his exceptionally rare 1953 Cadillac Series 62, one of only two examples ever built by Italian coachbuilder Ghia.
In the early postwar years, Ghia was eager to rebuild momentum after its factory had been destroyed in a wartime air raid. Looking to broaden its presence beyond familiar European marques such as Alfa Romeo, Lancia, and Fiat, the Turin-based coachbuilder set out to showcase its design approach to American buyers. To do that, the team shipped two Cadillac Series 62s from the U.S. to Italy and reworked them in hopes that General Motors would greenlight a full production run, but to no avail.
Hitting the Jackpot With a Rare Cadillac
Today, the surviving pair belongs to Lee Carr and the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Carr shared that it was actually his wife who urged him to buy the Cadillac Series 62 Ghia after seeing it displayed at the Imperial Palace collection in Las Vegas.
When the casino collection shut down, the custom Cadillac was shipped to Scottsdale for auction, where Carr purchased it. Despite its glamorous past, the car needed extensive work after spending years as a showpiece rather than being on the road. Carr said the body and paint restoration alone took two years, followed by another five years of mechanical sorting to make it roadworthy again.
The two-seater coupe retains its original configuration, powered by Cadillac’s 331-cubic-inch V8, which Carr says makes 158 horsepower, but museum records from the Petersen list the output at 210 hp. It’s paired with a four-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission. He described the performance and handling as dull, which is expected for a car of its era, especially when compared with today’s entry-level Cadillac CT4, which already makes 237 horsepower.
Beauty, Not the Beast
But he emphasized that the car’s charm lies entirely in its design. According to him, people stop and stare to admire the styling, and he even recalls a police officer flashing their lights at him solely to get a closer look.
The Cadillac was just one of several American projects Ghia worked on; Ghia also built the bodies for Chrysler’s experimental turbine cars. Although the original Turin coachbuilding shop no longer operates, the Ghia name lives on under Ford ownership.
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