Among Celebrity Cars, a Custom Cadillac Stands Out

Larry Edsall for The New York Times Vern Moeller built this custom Cadillac woody station wagon out of several different classic cars, including a 1947 Cadillac hearse.

LAS VEGAS – At the second annual Barrett-Jackson collector car auction here in the Mandalay Bay resort and casino, you could bid on Jay Leno’s motorcycle, on a racecar that played a role in the Elvis Presley movie “Viva La Vegas,” on cars owned by the actors Bruce Willis and Don Johnson, on replicas of the Batmobile and Barney Fife’s Mayberry sheriff’s car or on a Lee Iacocca 45th anniversary edition Ford Mustang.

Or, like me, you could have been drawn not by celebrity but by the stunning proportion and coach-built detail of a 1947 Cadillac that quite literally was brought back from the dead.

Vern Moeller grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where as a teenager he rebuilt junkyard vehicles. “I knew how to cut things apart and weld them back together,” said Mr. Moeller, who retired three years ago after more than three decades selling industrial water treatment equipment in the Texas Panhandle and bordering states.

A few years ago, Mr. Moeller and a buddy turned a Ford Model A into a boat-tail speedster. The friend had a decrepit, 1947 Cadillac hearse he was either going to hot-rod or sell (someone had offered him $600). But Mr. Moeller had another idea, so the friend gave him the car, which Mr. Moeller turned into a stunning woody station wagon.

Larry Edsall for The New York Times The second annual Barrett-Jackson collector car auction in Las Vegas included many celebrity-owned cars and motorcycles.

The closest Mr. Moeller came to doing any sort of formal design sketch was taking a photograph of the car in profile, slicing out sections from the center and putting the two ends together until he found proportions that pleased his eye. Then he went to work, cutting and welding. He replaced the hearse’s tall top with the roof from a ‘57 Chevrolet station wagon, grafted on rear fenders and tailfins from a late-’40s/early ’50s Cadillac, split the one-piece rear hatch to create a wagon-style clam-shell door and installed it all over the chassis and powertrain from a ‘67 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham sedan.

Inside, the car is customized with leather, oak and birch. The wood on the exterior is ash and mahogany.

The woody wagon drives, said Mr. Moeller, like a ‘67 Cadillac. It looks like something Detroit designers only might have dreamed of building. It sold at Barrett-Jackson for $52,800.