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Dalí was commissioned to design a car for General Motors
Thursday, February 3, 2022

 

Unsurprisingly, Dalí did not get General Motors to take the design of his car into production, but he did get compensation for damages.

A Cadillac designed by Salvador Dalí? Why not? This is what General Motors, the automobile group to which Cadillac belongs, thought when they commissioned the artist to design a car. The result was as surreal as Dalí himself.

The fact is that Salvador Dalí was a lover of cars although he did not have a license and did not know how to drive. Gala, his companion, his muse, was his chauffeur and the one who drove the first car the artist bought, a 1941 Cadillac Convertible. It was a superb model, with a protruding front end, a convertible, four doors and a V8 engine. That convertible immediately became an object of desire for characters such as President Roosevelt or Clark Gable.

Dalí's ended up being transformed into a kind of sculpture. After all,  he was a surrealist. He placed a female sculpture on the hood, a mechanism that made it rain inside and called it the Raining Taxi. It was just one of the tributes that the artist paid to the motor world. But there was more. Dressed Cars, a work in which he dresses a Cadillac as if it were a couture house model, is one example.

 

 

Strangely, his automobile passion must have reached the headquarters of General Motors, a group to which Cadillac belongs, because, according to his secretary, Robert Descharnes, Dalí was commissioned to design a car. The artist created his work of art, called it a Cadillac de Gala, and sent it to the company. In his sketch, a Cadillac was seen with a purple metallic shell that hid the roof and body sides. It only left the windows visible… General Motors didn't reply.

The matter was parked until two years later the firm launched a model with the same name, Cadillac Gala. It was nothing like the car designed by Dalí, but even so, the painter decided to ask GM for compensation of 10,000 dollars, an amount that was immediately reimbursed.



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