I'm no happier than anyone else is about the state of the automobile business worldwide, for obvious reasons. I'm a car guy, I was a little disappointed when the Taurus SHO was cancelled. I put together the above just to showcase a little bit of that 50s and 60s "Cadillac Style." The jewelry featured in these ads was created by Harry Winston, Van Cleef and Arpels, Cartier, and other jewelers of note; the ultimate in advertising bling. And for good reason, so the thinking went, it was Cadillacs they were hawking here, The Standard of the World. Call it nostalgic, I always thought it was a really gutsy way of doing things. And you'll notice not one of the ads makes mention of a 325-horsepower V-8, leather interior, intelligent 8-speed automatic transmission, or anything else remotely technical in nature. They were selling Cadillacs, for crying out loud, who cared about that crap? The image of greatness, the association with the absolute best and most artistic in the world. That was what mattered. Which is not to say what got us there was always the best, or that the people who owned these cars were people you'd ever really want to know, but if you're just making the association with greatness, there's been very little to top this whole line of thinking, which persisted, as you may notice, for at least ten years. That's an image with some legs. Planting the idea of greatness often counts for much. Hopefully, it can make us believe as Americans that all is not lost, but we do have to change. A new age is upon us, and although there are aspects of it that will probably be more like the Bubonic Plague, the potential for being the land of opportunity, the place where true greatness lives, may save us all. Here's hoping.