FAIRMONT — Well, you may go to college, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll once sang.
You may, Elvis also opined — albeit redundantly — go to school.
You may have a pink Cadillac, as the son (and Sun) of Memphis was also known to muse.
But, came Mr. Presley’s boisterous — albeit slightly ungrammatical — proclamation: Don’t you be nobody’s fool.
In the 1950s, Elvis was It.
He bisected the boulevard of gospel and blues — thus begetting rock — with one hand on the wheel and a two-toned loafer mashing the gas pedal.
And his vehicle of choice was a Cadillac, including the pink one he sang about that was plunked off the lot and paid for in full in 1955, thanks to his new RCA paycheck.
Fifty million Elvis fans, it was said then, couldn’t be wrong.
As far as Morgantown-area entrepreneur and youth sports coach Matt Plum is concerned, a bunch of car designers in Detroit were right in line with that wiggy kid from Tupelo.
Especially, he said, in the last year of that cultural milepost of a decade.
Because that’s when the Motor City rolled out a car that was just for him. Specifically, the 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, Series 62.
You know: The ride with all that winking chrome and all those low-slung lines.
And the science-fiction steering wheel positioned over that fighter-jet dashboard with a giant V-8 tucked under the hood that could either purr or roar — depending upon your whim after the traffic light turned green.
All that, plus, Plum said, those bullet taillights and those stratosphere-slicing tail fins.
Especially the tail fins, he said.
Plum, meanwhile, is a proud gearhead.
He’s a car guy, but, as said, not just any car guy.
Like Mr. Presley, he’s a Caddy guy — with the aforementioned ’59 being his favorite.
“You’re not gonna find a cooler car for its time,” he said.
Which is why, when he had a chance to buy one — drastically altered, but still not sacrilegiously so, in commercial context, and pink in color, besides — he was nobody’s fool.
Just like a Louisiana Hayride bandstand, he jumped.
And, in the process, he also launched a road trip that will be pretty danged cool, once said ride goes through her re-in-car-nation, as it were.
Because of some contractual considerations, the full story of the above cannot be told, just yet.
But Plum is more than happy to divulge half of it, at least.
‘That’s gonna be my car’
For a good 20 years in Fairmont, a certain Coupe DeVille was an eye-magnet for any car guy who happened to find himself on Fairmont Avenue — a commercial strip in this Marion County city just down the road from Morgantown, as Interstate 79 unspools.
It served as the chief architectural and marketing element of the Fairmont-based 5 Star Auto Wash, a north-central West Virginia family owned chain with outlets across the region.
Well, the front half of the car did, anyway.
Plum doesn’t know how it came to be there and 5 Star didn’t return calls in time for this report, but this particular ’59 Cadillac Coupe DeVille — pink, with white sidewalls, requisite chrome and windows tinted-out just like a Hot Wheels car — was purchased.
Machine-shop surgery followed, with a plasma cut rendering the ride in two.
The Caddy’s famous front was then set flush to the front wall of the establishment, making it appear as though it was bursting from the bricks after a wash.
“Any time I was down there and I was driving by, I’d look over,” Plum said.
“If you were a car guy, you had to look over.”
After all, he asked: What’s cooler than an actual pink Caddy from the ’50s advertising a car wash?
Meanwhile, when that particular Fairmont location was closed a few months back, the building went up for sale, along with the split-in-two Coupe DeVille.
Plum spied the Caddy listing online and was intrigued.
“I said, ‘That’s gonna be my car.’”
He contacted the car wash people and made an offer, which he’d rather not disclose.
After a handshake, he went home with two halves of a coveted Cadillac.
No engine, no drive train, no anything, really, save for the front end and back end, making for an iconic, though separated, shell.
Plum has owned classic Cadillacs before, including a previous ’59 he sold to a buddy in car-obsessed Los Angeles — “I like that it’s out there in L.A.,” he said. “It’s appropriate.”
There was also a ’64 and a ’76 model in his garage at one point.
Presley’s last Cadillac was a ’76 maroon-and-white Seville with “Elvis-1” Tennessee vanity plates — the final runs of the Fisher widebodies, Plum said, for all the other Caddy guys out there.
This car-wash Caddy sat in his garage for half a year, he recounted, before he put it back online.
And who ya gonna call?
Well, Plum. That’s what a high-profile courter did, with that story to come soon.
“It’s going to be pretty awesome for my family,” Plum said. “I’m thinking about my kids.”
Making history
The family man is always thinking about his kids and has directed his dad duties to the founding of a youth football team and cheer squad in the Blacksville area.
Monongalia County’s western end is where he grew up. He was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, but his family moved to the Mountain State from the factory town when he was young.
“This is home,” he said. “I want to do everything I can to make it better.”
As a kid, he spent a lot of time in the garage with his grandfather, the senior car guy of the family.
“I was always out there with Grandpap,” he said, “working with him and learning from him.”
Nothing like fondly reflecting back, he said.
Especially, he said, when that reflection is delivered by the rear view of a classic Caddy.
“The ’59,” he said.
“As a country, we were young and had all this promise and prosperity,” he continued.
“We were getting ready to explore outer space. The Coupe DeVille was the signature car for that era. In my opinion.”
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