Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star talks to Stanley Marsh 3, the Amarillo tycoon who created the art landmark that is Cadillac Ranch just off Route 66 on the west side of town.
But in the summer of 2009, this iconic row of classic Cadillacs jutting skyward from a farm field in the Texas Panhandle has taken on a darker meaning than its builders ever intended.
With the implosion of GM and Chrysler, the Cadillac Ranch now looks more like the graveyard of American greatness – 10 tragic steel-and-glass tombstones marking the sorry demise of automaking as we know it.
“It’s painful to think of it that way today. It’s not what the Cadillac Ranch is supposed to say,” says Stanley Marsh, 70, the famously eccentric Amarillo millionaire who bankrolled the landmark 35 years ago, conceiving, buying and planting the Caddies nose-first with the help of San Francisco art collective Ant Farm.
“We put it there as a public gesture to freedom, mobility and the open road. The Cadillac was the way to say it. And I like to think we got it exactly right – the cars tilt at the same angle as the Great Pyramids in Egypt.” […]
Still, hunkered down in Amarillo, the owner of the Cadillac Ranch remains an optimist; he believes the American dream will thrive despite GM crashing into bankruptcy, the banks foundering and the housing market starving for buyers.
“I think America is going to do just fine,” Marsh asserts. “We’ve still got our freedom and as long as people all over the world want to be part of it, we’re bound to recover.”