Question: What Current Machine Most Needs a Brougham Edition?
After admiring the Broughamism of today’s Junkyard Find, and still awed by the Broughamic zenith represented by the ’72 Mercury Marquis Brougham Junkyard Find, I can’t help but think that the automotive industry needs to bring back the Brougham! Only thing is, it’s tough to decide which 2012 American-market car or truck would benefit most from Broughamization.
As far as I can tell, the 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood was the last Detroit-built car with Brougham badging, ending a run of at least three decades of the Big Three (plus AMC) making crypto-luxury option packages named after a sporty horse-drawn carriage.
Japanese automakers continued to Brougham it up outside of the United States; you could get a Daewoo Prince Brougham until the late 1990s, and the Nissan Cedric had a Brougham option (at least on cars sold in the Middle East) well into the current century.
No doubt there’s some Chinese or Indian car company building Broughams nowadays, but that doesn’t help us here in North America. The obvious choice for a US- or Canada-market Brougham Edition would be a leather-and-cup-holder-overload giant SUV… but I’m going to say that it’s Toyota’s time to step up and build us a Camry Brougham. Maybe even a Camry Brougham Landau d’Elegance, if they really want to be serious. Put a vinyl top on the Camry, maybe some faux-wire wheels, add a diamond-tucked red velour interior… and Brougham badges everywhere. This would put an immediate stop to the “all Camrys are boring” complaints. That’s my choice for the best 2012 Brougham. What’s yours?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Which cars need the Brougham treatment? All of them, Murilee, ALL of them!
How about a Corolla Brougham? If they make 'em with spoilers...