Winning hearts and minds 1960s-style

An amusing post at Ghosts of Alexander mentions a US development project in Afghanistan in the 1960s:

And then there was the USAID guy in Kandahar who drove a giant pink Cadillac, which the locals set on fire one day. If you wanted to destroy something symbolic during a riot, you just could not do better than that. Good stuff.

Come on! How could a pink cadillac not win hearts and minds?