‘The luxury runs deep’: Which were the most luxurious cars of the 1970s?

Abstract

I come to this topic for two reasons. I am possibly the world’s first automobile colour and trim historian. I am also the author of a book-length paper concerning design in the 1970s (interior design, product design, automobile design, architecture, etc.). It is these two research areas that have led me to write this article about the most luxurious cars of the 1970s, the decade that rediscovered luxury. 1970s car design was very much about investigating the car interior after so much previous emphasis on exterior design, and in this decade, car interiors became much more luxurious and generally comfortable across industry, not for just the top marques. The four cars under investigation here are Rolls-Royce Camargue, which was the most expensive car in the world when launched in 1975; Aston Martin Lagonda (four doors); Daimler Double-Six Vanden Plas; and Stutz Blackhawk. It is stating the obvious to say that automobile literature in the form of books and journals is a vast subject matter, and yet there was until recently not a single standalone study of a fundamental aspect of car design – colour and trim, one with universal application. This study being this author’s ‘Colour and trim design for automobiles, 1960–95, and that of recognising an uncharted genre in design history’ published in Aspects of Motoring History (2021, issue 17), the Journal of the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain. Literature invariably tends to be about styling or engineering concerns. Here is an opportunity to move beyond these old concerns into an uncharted territory.