Art: Motor Masterpieces

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The Laughing Cavalier is a sports roadster. King Henry VIII and The Blue Boy are all-weather phaetons. The Ceiling of the Sis tine Chapel is an inside drive sedan.

No gibberish are the above statements.

They are easily explained by the fact that Cadillac-La Salle engineers together with Fisher and Fleetwood coachworkers have built 17 automobiles with color schemes derived from paintings by 17 famed artists, from Botticelli to John Singer Sargent. The purpose was to use precisely the colors of the paintings; to give each color its proper value; to distribute the colors so that the result would be practical, utilitarian.

The Cadillac-La Salle-Fisher-Fleetwood clientele have always been gourmets of the gasoline world. But these latest models require the very pink of passengerhood. Only the jolliest, most debonair of present-day gallants could fittingly adorn the La Salle-Fisher Laughing Cavalier. Students of the Hals painting have provided it with hood and cowl of Wissahickon green; lower body, fenders and gear of deep maroon; wire wheels, rear deck and body above moulding of Talina brown; roof and rear quarters of tan Burbank silk mohair; mouldings of gold leaf.

Regally imperious must be the wife who would venture forth with the Cadillac-Fleetwood King Henry VIII, sumptuously decorated in wine, red and silver after the Holbein portrait.

For the personage with truly ecclesiastical majesty is the Cadillac-Fleetwood Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelical in dull reds, blues, greens, gold.

Innumerable duets will find a luminescent cosiness in the La Salle-Fisher special convertible town car, glistening with greens, pale yellows and silver after The Conversation by Watteau.

And for the lady of devastating chic and ophidian fascination, who looks forward to penthouses rather than backward at palazzos, is the Cadillac-Fleetwood Art Moderne, a sleek transformable cabriolet in aluminum, black, copper, snakewood.

The cars were on exhibition at the New York Salon.