Brougham

Brougham (prounced broo-uhm, broom-uhm or broh-uhm)

(1) In horse-drawn passenger transport, a four-wheeled, boxlike, closed carriage for two or four persons with the having the driver's seat outside.

(2) In automotive use, an early designation for a with an open driver's compartment.

(3) In automotive use, an early designation for a style of coachwork resembling a coupé but tending to be powered by an electric motor.

(4) In automotive use, a post-war designation used (mostly in the US) as a model name (more commonly as a sub-name) for luxury versions of mass-produced models.

1849: The coach was named after Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868; Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain 1830-1834) who in 1839 took delivery of one in the style.  Although he would sometimes prove a difficult colleague, Lord Brougham’s achievements during his political career were notable and it was while he was Lord Chancellor that the parliament passed both the first Reform Act (1832) (the first substantial building block which would culminate in the democratic nature the British constitution eventually attained in the twentieth century) and the Slavery Abolition Act (1833).  Although Lord Brougham was born in Edinburgh, the surname “Brougham” is of English origin and thought derived from a place name in Westmorland (now part of Cumbria, in north-west of England).  Genealogists believe the name was originally locational, the construct being burg (fort or castle) + hām (homestead or village) and thus understood as “the homestead or village by the fort”.  Brougham Manor (purchased by Lord Brougham in 1926) and the nearby Cumbrian village of Brougham have a long association with the Brougham family.  Brougham is a noun, the noun plural is broughams (initial upper case if used as a proper noun).

The forbidding visage of Lord Brougham (left) and a mid-nineteenth century coach-builder’s advertisement for a Hansom Cab based on the concept of the brougham, the compact dimensions idea for European cities, many with districts still built around tight systems of streets dating from Medieval or even Roman times.

Lord Brougham’s design was very much to suit his requirements and he drew up the specifications simply because no coach was then available with the combination of features he desired.  What he wanted was a compact carriage designed to seat two (although many versions would, for occasional use, often include two small, foldable “jump” seats, a concept which later would be included in many limousines) in an enclosed compartment (the driver sitting outside) with a particular emphasis of ease of ingress and egress.  Its light weight and easy manoeuvrability made the brougham ideal for urban use and the style was influential, not only widely imitated but also productive in that variations (smaller and larger) appeared and it soon became the preferred middle-class carriage of the era.  It differed from the earlier Hansom Cab which was even smaller and designed to accommodate two in a cabin which often wasn’t enclosed.  The Hansom Cab was the ancestor of the modern taxi and they were produced almost exclusively for the use by hire-operators whereas the larger, better appointed brougham was aimed at the private market.

Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) outside 10 Downing Street with his Rover 3.5 saloon (P5B, 1967-1973) left, the 3.5 coupé with the lowered roofline (the first of the four-door breed of coupé), centre and Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S (introduced in 2009 in response to the Mercedes-Benz CLS (2004-2023) which revived the concept of the "four-door coupé), right.  Porsche doesn't use the designation "four door coupé". 

Confusingly for modern audiences, in the nineteenth century, the terms “brougham” and “coupé” often were used interchangeably.  In English, coupé (often and increasingly as “coupe”) was from the French coupé (low, short, four-wheeled, close carriage without the front seat, carrying two inside, with an outside seat for the driver (also “front compartment of a stage coach”)), a shortened form of carrosse coupé (a cut-off or shortened version of the Berlin (from Berliner) coach, modified to remove the back seat), the past participle of couper (to cut off; to cut in half), the verbal derivative of coup (blow; stroke); a doublet of cup, hive and keeve, thus the link with goblets, cups & glasses.  It was first applied to two-door automobiles with enclosed coachwork by 1897 while the Coupe de ville (or Coup de ville) dates from 1931, describing originally a car with an open driver's position and an enclosed passenger compartment.

1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham.  Cadillac in the 1950s used "Brougham" as just a model name, the same approach as in 1916 when it had no relationship with the historic coach-building styles. 

In the coach-building business, the critical part of the etymology was “a shortened form” and the coupé thus came to be understood as a “smaller” version of the original; originally this meant “shorter” but the industry soon came to use the term to apply to vehicles which were lower, lighter or in any other way down-scaled.  It’s for this reason the use of coupé (usually coupe in US use) came during the 1930s to be (sort of) standardized as a two-door version of a platform which typically appeared also in other forms.  Coupes in the US were by the later 1930s usually enclosed vehicles of a particular style (typically more rakish than two-door “sedans”) but the English clung more closely to the origin of the word by coining “fixed head coupé” (the FHC, ie what in the US would be a “coupe” of some sort) and the “drop-head coupé (the DHC, what would in other places be called a convertible or cabriolet (though not to be confused with a roadster or phaeton).

Named as a homage to the style of US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963), Pinninfarina's memorable, one-off Cadillac "Brougham Jacqueline" presents an extraordinary contrast with the 1961 Cadillac on which it was based.  Shown at the 1961 Paris Motor Show, it's a glimpse of what Lancia might have built had they been able to offer 390 cubic inch (6.4 litre) V8s.

During the twentieth century, there was significant fragmentation of meaning in the terms which to coach-builders had once meant something quite specific.  By the 1960s, cars sold as coupés could have four doors and although the earliest versions of these made some concession to the etymology by being configured with a lowered roof-line, for others it was just a model name which might be indicative of sleeker lines but not always and the fate of “brougham” was more quixotic still, eventually for a time becoming the US industry’s term of choice when wanting to impart the impression of “up-market”, “luxurious” etc.  That wasn’t something out of the blue because as early as 1916 Cadillac introduced a model called “Brougham” which owed little to the obvious features of Lord Brougham’s carriage, the fully-enclosed, four-door Cadillac being now understood as a saloon, sedan or limousine depending on where one lives.  Those things which distinguished Lord Brougham’s design: (1) the enclosed passenger compartment and (2) the open section for the driver came instead to be associated with something called the "sedanca de ville" although few of these combined this with any quality of compactness.  Cadillac would from time to time flirt with the Brougham name but it’s now best remembered for what’s called “the great Brougham era”.  That term seems to have been invented by Curbside Classic, a curated website which is a gallimaufry of interesting content, built around the theme of once-familiar and often everyday vehicles which are now a rare sight until discovered by Curbside Classic’s contributors (who self-style as "curbivores"), parked next to some curb.  These are the often the machines neglected by automotive historians and collectors who prefer things which are fast, lovely and rare.  According to Curbside Classic, the “great brougham era” began in 1965 with the release of the LTD option for the mass-market Ford Galaxie and that approach was nothing new because even the Galaxie name had in 1959 been coined for a "luxury" version of the Fairlane 500, a trick the US industry had been using for some time.

However, for whatever reason, Ford’s LTD in 1965 created what would now be called a paradigm and it caught not only the public imagination but more importantly convinced them to spend their money buying one and sales were strong.  Profits were also strong because it cost Ford considerably less to tart up a Galaxie than the premium they charged for the LTD package (it was originally an option before becoming a separate model line) and the other mass-market players scrambled to respond, the most blatantly imitative being the Chevrolet Caprice and Plymouth VIP, both released within months of Ford's venture.  Of course, Ford, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler all had other brands, the purpose of which once had been to use the same platform in tarted up form so this internal corporate cannibalization is an interesting case-study in marketing and it’s worth remembering once somewhat up-market brand-names like Mercury and Oldsmobile no longer exist.  By the standards of Broughams which would follow, the “luxury” fittings of the LTD, Caprice and VIP were modest enough but the trend had been started and soon what came to be called the “gingerbread” was being laid on with a trowel: faux wood (plastic), faux chrome (anodized plastic), faux silk (polyester brocade), faux wire wheels (these were at least mostly metal) and that status symbol of the age, the vinyl roof.  The first cars actually to wear a “Brougham” badge seem to have appeared in late 1966 for the 1967 model year and over the decades there would some two dozen using the nomenclature, each understood as being something “more expensive” and therefore “better”.

Landmarks of the great brougham era

1965 Ford LTD:

The 1965 LTD is remembered now for the extra trim and the effect on the industry but in fairness to Ford, the car benefited greatly from the redesigned chassis which included coil-spring suspension on all four wheels.  There was also much attention (Ford spoke in terms of man-years) devoted to the then novel art & science of NVH (noise, vibration & harshness) and fearlessly advertised the thing as being quieter than a new Rolls-Royce.  Many probably thought that mere puffery but more than one publication duly hired acoustic engineers who installed their equipment and ran their tests, confirming the claim.  As a piece of marketing, the extra trim proved quite an enticement and LTD buyers, although they got as standard a 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8 and automatic transmission, got little else and many ticked the boxes on the option list, adding features such as power brakes, power steering, brakes, electric windows and even air-conditioning, then a rarity.  Once all those boxes had been ticked, it wasn’t uncommon for LTDs to be sold for more than the cost of many a nominally up-market Mercury and even the cheapest Lincoln was remarkably close in price.

1971 Holden HG Premier (left) & 1968 Holden HK Brougham (right).

The Holden Brougham (1968-1971) was not so much a landmark of the era as a cul-de-sac but it did indicate how quickly the “brougham” label had come to be associated with prestige and like Chevrolet’s Caprice, the Brougham was a response to a Ford.  In Australia, Ford had been locally assembling the full-sized Galaxies for the government and executive markets but tariffs and the maintenance of the Australian currency peg at US$1.12 meant profitability was marginal, so the engineers (with a budget said to be: "three-quarters of four-fifths of fuck all") took the modest, locally made Falcon, stretched the wheelbase by five inches (125 mm), changed the front and rear styling (which although hardly radical resulted in a remarkably different look), added a few extra features and named it Fairlane.  The Fairlane name was chosen because of the success the company had had in selling first the full-sized US Fairlanes (nicknamed by locals as the “tank Fairlane”) between 1959-1962 and later the compact version (1962-1965).  It proved for decades a successful and lucrative approach.  Holden, General Motors's (GM) local outpost, took a rather bizarre approach in trying to match the Fairlane, the Brougham created by extending the tail of the less exalted Premier by 8 inches (200 mm), the strange elongation a hurried and far from successful response.

1957 Continental Mark II (left) and 1972 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency (right).  The Continental Mark II (1956-1957) was at the time the most expensive car produced in the US and substantially "hand made" but the relative austerity of the interior compared with the various "broughams" of later decades illustrates how profoundly the manufacturers shaped consumer tastes during the era. 

By 1972, there were so many “Broughams” on the market Oldsmobile must have thought the tag was becoming a bit common so to mark the company’s 75th anniversary, they called their new creation the “Regency”.  Vague as most Americans might have been about the origin of “brougham”, most probably knew “regency” often had something to do with royalty so as an associative pointer it was good.  The Ninety-Eight Regency in 1972 was however as audacious as the LTD had half-a-decade earlier been tentative because it seemed the target was Oldsmobile’s senior stable-mate (two rungs up the ladder in the GM hierarchy), the top-of-the-range Cadillac and there was nothing in Cadillac’s showrooms which could match the conspicuous opulence of the black or covert gold “pillow effect”, tufted velour upholstery.  Each Regency was registered at Tiffany's which supplied the specially designed clock and provided the owner with a distinctive sterling silver key ring; if lost, the keys could be dropped in a mailbox and Tiffany's would return them to the owner.  Take that Cadillac.  A limited run of 2,650 75th anniversary Ninety-Eight Regency cars was built, all of them four-door hardtops and the (non-anniversary) model continued in 1973.  By 1982, Oldsmobile concluded the message needed again to be drummed into buyers and introduced the Regency Brougham.

Peak brougham: 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop.

The high-water mark of the great brougham era was set by the Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman (1974-1976), the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D'Elegance (those produced in 1988-1989) and the most expensive cars from Chrysler Corporation (the Imperials and Chrysler New Yorkers) during the last days of the full-sized cars (1974-1978).  After this, designers really could go no further in this direction and had to think of something else.