It was built to dazzle the crowds across America, and afterwards, it was sent to the scrapyard. It survived the crusher, outlasted decades in a hidden junkyard corner, and just fetched a jaw-dropping $494,500 at auction. It is the story of this 1956 Cadillac Eldorado show car.
The 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Town Car comes with an incredible story. Built by General Motors exclusively as a show car and designated experimental project XP-48 Special Order No. 2491, it is the earliest surviving Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and the absolute only 1956 model still in existence.
The Cadillac show car was designed by 19-year-old Robert Cumberford alongside Herb Cadeau, under the direction of, of course, legendary Harley Earl, and built entirely as a hand-crafted concept car for the GM Motorama Tour.
This unique build stands as one of the most significant and probably most dramatic Dream Cars of America’s post-war automotive golden age. The automobile was never meant to be sold or driven. That is exactly why GM engineers never put an engine in it before the tour.
Unlike anything at the time
Unlike production Cadillacs of the era, the Eldorado Brougham Town Car concept car was built with a fiberglass body. It came with a sleek, low-slung futuristic silhouette, along with the elegance of an open-chauffeur town car layout.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
The Eldorado Brougham Town Car sits remarkably low at just 55.5 inches (1,410 millimeters) high, measuring 219.9 inches (5,585 millimeters) in length, 78.8 inches (2,002 millimeters) in width, and sitting on a wheelbase of 129.5 inches (3,289 millimeters). While its massive length and wheelbase do match modern giants like the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class or the Rolls-Royce Ghost Extended Wheelbase, the Cadillac sits nearly half a foot lower than both.
The lower section of the body is finished in black paint, while the enclosed passenger compartment features a half-roof wrapped in highly polished black landau leather. The model actually used a clever styling trick to mimic the exact look of a landaulet, but because it was a show car, the rear roof didn’t actually fold down.
Instead, General Motors wrapped the fixed fiberglass rear roof in black landau leather to give the striking visual illusion of a typical, closed-quarter landaulet. Terms like “Town Car” in America and “Sedanca de Ville” in Europe, along with “Landaulet,” were used to describe a car with an open-air front chauffeur section and an enclosed rear passenger pod.
The Cadillac features a distinct pillarless layout, custom side trim, a unique front grille design, and sharp, sweeping tailfins at the opposite end. The interior was split into two distinct sections, following the exterior layout. The chauffeur compartment is the open-air front section trimmed in black Moroccan leather with black fiberglass paneling and bright chrome accents.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
In the meantime, the fully enclosed passenger compartment is upholstered entirely in beige leather, sewn in the stylish “biscuit and button” pattern, complete with plush broadcloth seatback cushions and a beige carpeted floor.
Passenger compartment in beige and gold
The partition wall that divided the driver and passengers housed a horizontal sliding window. Also built into the divider were twin storage compartments loaded with a gold-plated vanity case, a gold tissue dispenser, a gold decanter with matching cups, a cigar humidor, and a thermos. To speak to the driver, passengers used a dedicated gold-plated radio-telephone, mounted directly to the partition wall.
The show car made its debut at the New York Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria ultra-luxury hotel in 1956. During the event and on every single appearance afterwards, the car wasn’t just left sitting alone on a turntable. Every time the car rotated under the spotlights, it was accompanied by a live model dressed in a custom, matching Christian Dior outfit.
After the event, it went on to tour across Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston on the “Highway of Tomorrow” circuit. It wasn’t a physical racetrack, but a massive, traveling multi-city exhibition circuit and an extravagant theatrical stage show, designed to showcase GM’s overly optimistic, space-age vision of future transportation.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
After the car spent four months drawing massive crowds across five major U.S. cities on the “Highway of Tomorrow” circuit, GM boxed up the one-of-a-kind fiberglass concept and sent it across the Atlantic, in time for the Paris Salon, the most prestigious automotive event in Europe, which took place in October 1956.
Sent to the junkyard
Following General Motors’ policy for concept cars, when the marketing campaign was over and the production version of the Eldorado Brougham was already on the market, the show car was ordered to be destroyed and sent to the Warhoops salvage yard in Warren, Michigan, in 1959.
With it came the 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne Concept, the 1955 LaSalle II Roadster, and the 1955 LaSalle II Sedan. And that is where the drama begins.The junkyard staff refused to crush them, but things did not go accroding to plan. The Chevrolet Biscayne and the LaSalle II Roadster were cut apart into pieces.
The fiberglass body of the Biscayne was sliced into at least eight sections and piled on top of the cut-up Roadster. Their powertrains and frames were completely discarded. The LaSalle II Sedan was spared the worst of the butcher’s blade and left largely intact, hidden away in a remote corner of the yard. Fortunately, the 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham had a similar fate. It survived hid under a trailer and then, under a canvas tarp, where it was protected for decades.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
In fact, it was the owner, Harry Warholak Senior, who decided his scrapyard wouldn’t really scrap cars, but serve as a source of parts for older cars. Years later, his son revealed in a conversation with the New York Times that his father was actually hoping “to fix up the Town Car for use in my sister’s wedding.” This plan kept the Dream Car intact over the years.
Finally rescued
It was eventually rescued by concept car collector Joe Bortz in 1989, along with its Dream Car siblings. It reportedly took several return trips to the junkyard just to excavate and gather all the scattered, dismembered fiberglass shards of the Biscayne and Roadster.
Later, the Cadillac went through the hands of prominent collectors like Roy Warshawsky, Dick Baruk, and John O’Quinn. It was Warshawsky who kicked off a frame-off restoration. The structural woodwork in the body and roof was replaced, and new bumperettes replaced the damaged originals.
His declining health forced him to sell the Cadillac mid-restoration in 1996. The one who took it home was Eldorado enthusiast Dick Baruk of Michigan, who completed the restoration himself. This was when the car received proper 18-inch “sabre” wheels and had the rear compartment hardware gold-plated, just like they were back in 1956.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
However, while all the vanity components were genuine, the thermos itself was just a solid dummy prop. Beautifully crafted, painted, and finished externally to look like a high-end, functional insulated beverage container for promotional photographs, in reality, it was completely solid on the inside.
The car received a period-correct, functional Cadillac V8 engine, with gold-plated valve covers and dual four-barrel carburetors, so it could drive in and out of shows on its own power, even though it was not fully engineered for the road. In 2013, it was on display at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance and went home with the Best in Class award.
That exact car with that exact story has just been sold for a mind-blowing $494,500, as its value went through the roof over the years. In January 2012, it was sold for $258,500. It changed hands again in 2023 for $400,000. From this point, the only way is up.
