• Inspired by hot rods and pin-up girls, CAO Flathead is a box pressed collection that hits on all cylinders. Hand-shaped to deliver a striking flat top, the cigar features a brawny Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper and a blend that’s heavy on Nicaraguan leaf.
• 7 x 70
• Box pressed Monster
• Nicaraguan

At some point, CAO decided that they had to get in on the revitalization of scenes from the olden days, and they made the kind of cigar that screams ‘fifties cars and women’. I’ve had a few of the cigars from the Flathead line, and I can tell you that literally every one that I ever smoked reminded me of my grandfather working on his old muscle car, the one he swore the would get running again some day (never happened, he was not the greatest mechanic), the one that would blow thick blue smoke every time you turned the engine over.

These cigars are all box-pressed, and depending on where you find them, they may come in a box that looks oddly like what you’d think an elongated box for a spark plug would look like. The band is a red and silver affair, with something that looks like an old logo for a classic car on the band and the word ‘flathead’.

The Flathead V770 Big Block begins with a dark Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro wrapper, which is then placed around Nicaraguan and Dominican long-fill tobaccos that have been bound with a Connecticut Habano seed binder. It’s a full-bodied cigar, and just like your favorite muscle car or pin-up girl, the memory of the smoke lingers even after the butt has been extinguished.