The Duchess ..........

..... According to Roy Schneider’s Cadillacs of the Forties, the Duke of Windsor paid an astonishing $14,000 for the completed one-off creation, which was an extravagant sum in 1941. He would use this Cadillac for 11 years. During that time, “The Duchess” was often photographed with the couple, appearing regularly in newspaper clippings and newsreels.

In 1952, the Duke traded the Cadillac in for a new Cadillac Series 75 and Buick station wagon. It was resold by General Motors to Charles Beswick, a noted dealer of luxury cars in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Springfield Daily News reported on the transaction in its July 17, 1952, edition, stating that the car showed 19,246 miles, and it gushed that its finish looked “twice the quality of newer cars.”

Beswick resold the Cadillac to early collectors Vernon and Bevline Bradley, of Springfield, who added some 50,000 miles before selling it through a New York Times advertisement in 1964. William J. Edmonds III, a Cadillac collector from Fort Worth, Texas, was the new owner, and he maintained the car in storage until its acquisition by the present owner, Morgan Murphy, in 2009. At that point, the process of extensively documenting and then restoring the long-lost “Duchess” began.