Cadillac

Cadillac is a brand of luxury automobile, part of the General Motors corporation since 1909, produced and mostly sold in the USA; outside of North America, they have been less successful.

In the United States, the name has become a synonym for "high quality", used in such phrases as "the Cadillac of clocks".

Founding

Cadillac was formed from the Henry Ford Company upon Henry Ford's departure. With the intent of liquidating the firm's assets, Ford's financial backers, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen called in engineer Henry M. Leland to appraise the plant and equipment prior to selling them. Instead, Leland persuaded them to continue in the automobile business. Henry Ford's departure required a new name, and on August 22, 1902, the company reformed as the Cadillac Automobile Company.

Cadillac was named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan.

Early Vehicles

The first Cadillac car was completed on October 7, 1902 and the following January was shown at the New York Automobile Show, where it impressed the crowds enough to gather over two thousand firm orders. The Cadillac's biggest selling point was its refinement; it was simply a better made vehicle than its competition.

Cadillacs were sent to England, where they impressed, winning awards for reliability and build quality.

General Motors

Cadillac was purchased by the General Motors conglomerate in 1909.

Cadillac became General Motors' prestige division, devoted to the production of large luxury vehicles.

In 1911 Cadillac was the first gasoline internal combustion engine auto to incorporate electric self-starting (as opposed to earlier crank start), utilizing the electric starter developed by Charles Kettering. Other innovations included the first V-8 engine in mass production, in 1915; shatter-resistant safety glass in 1926; and the first fully synchronized transmission (with gears "locked" in relation to one another to prevent clashing upon execution of a shift) in 1928.

Pre-World War II Cadillacs were well-built, powerful, mass-produced luxury cars, aimed at an upper class market, below that of such ultra-exclusive marques such as Pierce-Arrow and Duesenberg. In the 1930s, Cadillac added cars with 12- and 16-cylinder engines to their range, many of which were fitted with custom coach-built bodies; these engines were remarkable at the time for their ability to deliver a combination of high power, silky smoothness and quietness.

Postwar

Postwar Cadillacs, incorporating the ideas of General Motors styling chief Harley Earl, innovated many of the styling features that came to be synonymous with the classic (late 1940's-late 1950's) American automobile, including tailfins and wraparound windshields. Cadillac's first tailfins, inspired by the twin rudders of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, appeared in 1948; the 1959 Cadillac was the epitome of the tailfin craze, with the largest tailfins of any production automobile. With their chromed, bulleted bumpers (the bullets were nicknamed "Mansfields" or "Dagmars", after their resemblance to the breasts of certain Hollywood starlets), chromium eggcrate grilles, and general stylistic ostentation, the late 50's Cadillacs were arguably too extreme even for most Cadillac buyers. At this point, Bill Mitchell succeeded Harley Earl as styling chief, and his preference for more austere design combined with changing buyer tastes caused the excess to be rapidly toned down in the early 60's. Nevertheless, Cadillacs retained their tailfins through 1964, and suggestions of them remained in the peaked rear fenders of many models into the 1990's.

Somewhat surprisingly for a marque with such a strong design heritage, Cadillac has resisted the temptation to produce any "retro" models such as the revived Ford Thunderbird or the VW New Beetle, and has instead pressed ahead with a new design philosophy for the 21st century called "art and science" which it says "incorporates sharp, shear forms and crisp edges - a form vocabulary that expresses bold, high-technology design and invokes the technology used to design it."

Cadillac models

External Links

Cadillac.com corporate site
Cadillac history extensive fan site with many photos from earliest to current models