THE WAL-MART COIN-COVERED CADILLAC

Greg Burrus of Chattanooga writes:

"It's not something you see every day, obviously," Ben Breen of Bentonville said after his ride in a new permanent art installation at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville. "It's really cool. I've never ridden around in a car that old!"

Breen, 13, his mother and younger bother were among the first visitors on June 19 to take a complimentary ride around the downtown square in the completely refurbished 1962 Fleetwood Cadillac limousine -- which also happens to be covered in about 30,000 pennies, nickels and dimes.

Artist Monica Mahoney of Louisville, Ky., was commissioned to create an art car for 21c in Bentonville after designing two for the original hotel in Louisville a few years ago.

"We really enjoyed having the experience of the art cars available to the guests," Alice Stites, chief curator of 21c Museum Hotels, says of the cars at their Louisville location. "It was natural to commission Monica again."

In development since the hotel opened in 2013, the new art car was finally finished in May and put on display in front of the museum in early June.

"I anticipated about six months for the coins, and I was on time with that, but the car took a really long time," Mahoney says. "The car was in really bad shape when the owner of 21c found it on eBay, so there was a lot of waiting while they searched for parts and even built parts for the car. They had to replace almost everything."

When the finished product rolled into Bentonville last month, the plush black and rust-colored interior leather and fluffy black carpeting all looked brand new. The exterior also got a makeover, with nearly 600 pounds worth of coins covering the car in lines and designs. Mahoney says her inspiration for using coins came from Sam Walton's Five & Dime Store.

"When I was researching the history of Bentonville, I just found so much about Wal-Mart and how it started as the five-and-dime," Mahoney says. "And I really like art cars with texture, so I thought, 'Oh, I'll use nickels and dimes to cover the car.' And so with the art piece, I was really exploring the relativity of value and how little value we see in a penny, but how [Wal-Mart] 'shaves pennies' off the cost of everything, and that's what's really making the difference."

Mahoney says she likes the idea that everyone will see something different in the art. Some people will look at the coins, which add up to roughly $950, and say, "This looks like a lot of money," while others look at the same car and say, "This doesn't seem like that much at all."

To form straight lines on the car and keep them even, Mahoney had to cut, bend and sand coins. She also devoted a lot of time to separating the shiny pennies from the medium shiny from the tarnished ones, in order to create the patterns she envisioned. Most of the pennies Mahoney used were 1962 uncirculated pennies, but she says there are also other interesting finds on the car.

"I kind of hid some cool things on the car -- steel pennies, Indian-head nickels, really old coins -- anything interesting I came across during the process," Mahoney says. "I hope people enjoy exploring it and it makes them smile, because maybe each time they look at it, they see something different."

To read the complete article, see:
It All Adds Up ‘Making Change' a tribute to Walton's fiscal savvy (https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/jul/10/it-all-adds-up-20150710/)

 

 

 

To read the complete articles, see:
Making Change 1962 Cadillac Limo clad in coins from 1962 (https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWheels/comments/v6dy7t/
making_change_1962_cadillac_limo_clad_in_coins/)
The Story Behind The Coin Covered 1962 Fleetwood Cadillac (https://www.masoncapitalgroup.com/the-story-behind-the-coin-covered-1962-fleetwood-cadillac)
Making Change (https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com/museum/exhibit/making-change/)

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