He
was a Cadillac man and everybody knew it.
His taste
in cars was especially well-known in his hometown, where folks believed
that if you were in the right place at the right time he might suddenly
appear out of nowhere and give you the car of your dreams, because that
was one of the splendid things about him: He got a kick out of giving
away automobiles.
Whenever
it happened, the lucky person not only wound up with a snazzy new set
of wheels, he (she) became part of a legend that even then was growing
larger than life - so large, in fact, that one day crowds from all over
the world would make pilgrimages to his home to see where he'd lived
and which cars he'd kept for himself, including the 1955 pink Cadillac
that's so famous it's on T-shirts and coffee cups.
While
most Elvis fans knew he was a Cadillac man, what many didn't know is
how close he came to being a Ford guy. Nor did they know what happened
to the car that might have changed The King's image, had things taken
a different turn.
The man
with the answers to such questions of Americana is 66-year-old Ernie
Barrasso, who notes that this is the 40th anniversary of the story of
Elvis and the Ford that did not quite make it to hall of fame at Graceland.
There are
a lot of Elvis stories in this town - everyone from his cook to his
haberdasher has a tale to tell - but I know of no other quite like this
one. Listen.
The story
begins Nov. 17, 1961, when Barrasso was working as a car salesman in
Memphis. "When I came home from the Army, I needed a job,"
he said, "and I called my uncle, Frank Liberto, who was sales manager
at Hull-Dobbs Ford. I asked if he could use me and he said, `I don't
know, can you sell cars?' "
At the time,
Barrasso himself didn't know. When he came out of the Army he had no
business training. But he was a friend of Elvis Presley's and that turned
out to be better than experience.
"Elvis
and I grew up in the same blue-collar neighborhood," Barrasso said,
"and although we went to different schools, we knew one another.
I thought he was a little on the freaky side because of his long hair
and the way he dressed. But he was always a nice person and we got along."
Barrasso
still remembers the day the Ford Thunderbird convertible was delivered
to Memphis. "They made only 200 of these particular cars, and we
got one of them because we were such a large dealership. It was a unique
car - red with a black interior and a movable steering column that broke
to the right. A friend of mine saw it and said, `I'll bet Elvis would
buy that car.' "
Barrasso
made three trips to Graceland to tell Elvis about the sporty-looking
Thunderbird. "One Sunday, I left a brochure, and the next day he
drove down in his Cadillac and asked to see the car, which was on the
showroom floor. The wire wheels caught his eye immediately. As I was
showing him the breakaway steering wheel, he asked how much?
"Sixty-one
hundred," I said. "I'll take it," he said.
Barrasso
froze. "It meant a $415 commission, the biggest I'd ever made."
Elvis wanted the car in 15 minutes, and a crowd gathered while they
got it ready.
Liberto
called the newspaper and a photographer came running and photographed
Elvis sitting in the driver's seat. Barrasso is standing next to the
car wearing a coat, tie and big grin. When Elvis drove off in the Thunderbird,
he said, "I'll send somebody to pick up the Cadillac."
The picture
ran in the old Memphis Press-Scimitar, and Barrasso got a copy and had
it blown up like a poster. Today, it hangs on the wall of his office
in his bachelor's home in East Memphis. Next to it is a copy of the
bill of sale, also enlarged, showing that Elvis paid $6,284 for the
1962 8-cylinder sport roadster T-bird.
Barrasso
has looked at the photograph almost every day for 40 years and has never
tired of it. "Selling that car was the thrill of my life, but it
turned out to be an unhappy experience for Elvis."
A couple
of days after the sale, Elvis flew to Hollywood to make a movie. Two
employees were assigned to drive the car out. Along the way they discovered
some of the wires on the fancy wire wheel covers had come loose and
were knocking against the car. They needed replacing, but the company
that made them had gone out of business. So, plain, ordinary wheels
were substituted.
When Elvis
saw that the spiffy wire wheels were missing and couldn't be replaced,
he called Detroit and demanded to talk to "Mr. Ford." When
Edsel Ford heard the story, he told Elvis to return the car to the nearest
dealer and he'd get his money back.
"I
was disappointed," admits Barrasso, "but after the problem
with the wheels, Elvis was never comfortable with the car. I just wish
I'd had the money to buy it back."
Eventually,
Barrasso quit selling cars and went into the nightclub business; his
first one was called the Thunderbird. Later, he was hired by the Las
Vegas Hilton Hotel to run excursions to the gambling mecca. More recently,
he worked as a casino greeter in Tunica, Miss., but was recently laid
off.
Barrasso
likes retirement, even if it wasn't his idea. He plays racquetball,
soaks in his hot tub, works in his at-home office and reminisces about
the time he sold the world's most famous Cadillac man a Ford Thunderbird.
