The 1953 Cadillac Le Mans holds a special place in American Automotive history, but its sharp looks and hopped up motor, aren’t the only reasons this concept landed in the history books. On the night of November 8th, 1953, the Cadillac Le Mans vanished into thin air. Like the plot from a Jason Statham movie, someone (or a group of people) snatched the car from the Greenhouse-Moore Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the most well executed heist of all time. For the last 61 years no one has seen a trace of the car.
The story of the Le Mans begins with Harley Earl, a showmen and G.M.’s VP in charge of design. Growing up surrounded by the glamor of Hollywood and custom cars, it was destiny that Earl would create a beautiful car, his dad owned a business in California doing custom paint jobs for celebrities. GM fell in love with the elder Earl’s custom paint jobs and hired him to come to Detroit in 1927 to create new paint schemes to compete with Ford’s Black.
A few years later, the young Earl got a job working for GM in the promotions department and started the General Motors Motorama in 1949. The Motorama was a traveling world expo type show, where GM would unveil new and concept cars. It was an all day affair complete with expensive food, jazz music, a photo snapping press and hot long-legged models.
It was a display of not only new cars but of fun and showmanship (think Tony Starks Expo in the beginning of Iron Man 2). GM built many cars solely for these shows, and these cars were known as “Dream Cars.” A few of these dream cars eventually became production cars – most notably the Corvette
The car was a stylish, single bench convertible powered by a 250 hp 331 cu-in V-8. While it was never put into production it’s curvy styling influenced the rest of the Cadillac fleet throughout the decade. Its lines could be seen on the 1954 Eldorado & De Villes, while it’s quad headlamps were put into production in 1957.
In all, four Le Mans dream cars were built and made their debut during the 1953 GM Motorama tour in Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The Le Mans, along with several other dream cars, spent the year touring around the country. In November, the 2nd Le Mans along with two other dream cars (the Buick Wildcat I and the Pontiac Starfire) headed to the Oklahoma City airport for the Oil Progress Exhibition. On November 8th, the cars were sent to an exhibit at Greenhouse-Moore Cadillac Chevrolet. It was during that night that the Cadillac was taken never to be seen again.
Whoever stole this machine knew where the Caddy was going to be and most likely scouted the place ahead of time. What’s even more strange is that two months earlier Bobby Greenlease, the son of dealership owner Robert Greenlease, was kidnapped and found murdered. The kidnappers demanded $600,000 in ransom money – over half of which has never been found. As for the other 3 Le Mans’, one was customized by George Barris in 1955 but it was destroyed in a fire, one was sold to shoe tycoon Harry Karl who gave it to his super model wife Marie “The Body” MacDonald, and the other was sold to a private collector.
The Cadillac Le Mans after receiving the George Barris Treatment.
