Sedanca de ville: another politically incorrect body style?

Question after you read this--has any automaker tried to bring this back besides Cadillac with a show car in '57?




LOST BODY STYLES:the sedanca de ville


One body style that has completely disappeared from American auto makers catalogues is the sedanca de ville.
Sedanca was a style of carriage in the horse drawn buggy stage. "De ville" menas 'of the city".
In the carriages I believe the wagon driver was situated higher up than the passngers in the separate compartment behind,maybe to see over the horses.
So when open cars became popular in the motorized era, most cars were sedans but some cars were flamboyant open cars , nd even more tizey sedanca de villes built on coachbuilt Packarss, Duesenbergs and the like where the passengers wanted privacy, but also knowing such a style would add to the mystery and allure of being in a closed cabin by
having the driver/chauffeur be in a separate compartment open to the skies. (the fancier ones had rolout solid roof for the driver while slesser ones and rubbr, plastic or leather coverings)
Originally in the days of horses I could see why the passengers didn't want to be within smelling distance of the buggy driver who might be sporting some residual horse poop as a result of his labors.
But in the age of internal combustion, ironically even when the horse smell was eliminated, there was still a leftover of antipathy residual in passerby toward having the driver walled off from being "in the house" (sharing the closed passenger cabin) perhaps because the driver still had to add oil, crank the engine to start up,change tires, and thus was still not spic 'n span.
But even when the driver rarely had to do any outdoor work,that second windshield still did its job walling him off from the passengers, for what I feel was an inordinate amount of years (Rolls was still making sedanca de villes into the Sixties with the Phantom V and VI, but it could be argued those sales to Royals were necessary because one could hardly have the Blue Bloods riding with the serfs. Egad, man)
And then it ended, Chauffeurs were disappearing, at least the kind sporting a separate driving unifiom and no other duties besides driving and vehicle maintenance.
Oh there are still chaffeured cars, but the sedanca de ville configuration is just not among the choices anymore.
Which makes me think; is there some other reason we don't see it anymore?
The answer is I think it's inherently a car design with political overtones. If you have one and you ride in the back and your chauffeur rides in front the impression is that he (or she) is being separated from the higher classes in the back.Hey I felt that way back iwhen I sailed in "tourist class" to LeHavre on the Liberte in '56--being walled off from the rest of the shipm where all the fun was. i ws enough to turn me into a bloody communist!
In recent decades you haven' t heard the word "class" uttered much in the Western world though of course we still know there are still working classes and the like It's jes that us poh folks don't want our status (or lack of it) rubbed in.
Hence that's why I think the sedanca de ville as a body style choice has disappeared. Because those who could afford it don't want to remind others less fortunate in life that they have their place, and that place is outside the cosseted passnger compartment).

MY OWN SEDANCA RIDE
Back in the go-go Seventies I met Ed Durston, an employee of a used Rolls car lot in the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Used Rolls? Yes, perhaps on that street, chock a block with mop haired crooners just signed to recording contracts, it made sense.
He used to take me for rides in different cars they had bought for resale and one such ride was a sedanca de ville Rolls Phantom V with cane work on the side. Canework was a feature carried over from carriages-the door applique made of strands of bamboo laced into patterns on the door, usually only the rear doors My ride that day may have had llittle crystal cut coachlamps on the B pillars-- those usully messaging a Royal is aboard so scatter ye coomoners! (It reportfly belonged at one time to HRH Queen Juliana of Holland)
I spent the whole ride in the back trying to jimmy open the locked liquor bar. I should have been riding up front with Ed, enjoying the view of a 7-foot long Rolls hood parting traffic and the astonishment of those common folk in other car as a Rolls sedancs de ville motored on by.
Methinks some automaker trying to get some attention in the luxury field, even Genesis, ought to bring this body style back. After all what body style reeks"haute coutre'"and "piece de resistance" and all those other French phrases better than a sedanca de ville, is that not so?
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