In the 1950s, Cadillac dominated the luxury car market in America. Here’s the Standard of the World for 1958.

In the mid-to-late 1950s, the mighty Cadillac division of General Motors essentially defined the luxury car market in the United States. Even in 1958, a rough year for the car industry overall due to a short but nasty recession, Cadillac still delivered more than 121,000 cars—compared to only 17,000 cars for Lincoln and a paltry 16,000 for Imperial. (Packard, then in its final year of existence, produced just 2,622 vehicles.) So if you detect some swagger in the tone and stance of this original 1958 commercial for the Cadillac brand, you wouldn’t be wrong. In those days, the terms Cadillac and luxury car were nearly synonymous.

Redesigned inside and out the previous model year, the Cadillac line received a modest exterior makeover for ’58. The trademark Caddy tailfins were carefully reshaped and quad headlamps, introduced on the limited-production Eldorado Brougham in ’57, were now standard across the board. Two flavors of the 365 CID V8 were offered: a base 310 hp model with a single four-barrel carburetor, and the 335 hp version with three two-barrels, standard on the Eldorado and optional for the rest of the line. In this spot, GM’s short-lived and trouble-prone air suspension system also gets a brief mention. Video below.