|
|
CadillacFounding
Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the Henry Ford Company when Henry Ford departed along with several of his key partners and the company was dissolved. 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 the automobile business using Leland's proven 1-cylinder engine. Henry Ford's departure required a new name, and on August 22, 1902, the company reformed as the Cadillac Automobile Company.
The Cadillac automobile was named after the 17th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan, in 1701.
Contributions to the Automotive Industry
Cadillac helped to define advanced engineering, luxury and style early in Automotive History and would come to be known as one of the world’s finest made vehicles. Precision manufacturing of truly interchangeable parts was an award-winning industry first in 1908. Cadillac was the first manufacturer to release cars with a fully enclosed cab as factory equipment in 1910. Standard electric engine starting and lighting was another award winner for 1912. Cadillac introduced the first production V8 engine for the 1914 model year. Cadillac was the first manufacturer to utilize the skills of a designer to produce a car's body instead of an engineer (1927). This gave the public a car that looked as good as it performed. Cadillac's engineers were first to design a manual transmission with synchronizers for increased drivability (1929) and were instrumental in the early development of the automatic transmission, beginning in 1932. Cadillac offered a production V-16 engine from 1930 through 1940 and introduced the production independent wishbone front suspension in 1934. The marque introduced tailfins for 1948. From the late 1960s onward, Cadillac offered a fiber-optic indication system which alerted the driver of a failed light bulb.
Early vehicles
Cadillac, 1903 (Smithsonian)
Their first car was completed in October 1902, the 10 hp (7 kW) Cadillac. It was practically identical to the 1903 Ford Model A. Many sources say the first car rolled out of the factory on October 17; in the book Henry Leland — Master of Precision, on p.69, that date is shown to be October 20; yet another reliable source shows car #3 to have been built on October 16. In any case, the new Cadillac was shown at the New York Auto Show the following January, where it impressed the crowds enough to gather over two thousand firm orders. The Cadillac's biggest selling point was precision manufacturing and, therefore, reliability; it was simply a better made vehicle than its competition.
In February to March 1908, three Model K Cadillacs (1907 production) were released from the stock of Frederick Bennett (UK agent for Cadillac) at the Heddon Street showroom in London to compete in the annual Royal Automobile Club's Standardization Test. They were driven 25 miles to the Brooklands race track at Weybridge where they completed another 25 miles (40 km) before being put under lock and key until Monday March 2, 1908 when they were released and disassembled completely. Their 721 component parts were scrambled in one heap; 89 parts requiring extreme accuracy were withdrawn from the heap, locked away at the Brooklands club house and replaced with new parts from the showroom stock. Using only wrenches and screwdrivers the 3 cars were re-assembled and on Friday March 13 they completed a mandatory 500 mile (800 km) run. On completion of the test, one of the cars was placed under lock and key where it remained until the start of the 2,000 miles (3,200 km) Reliability Trials, several months later. It came out the winner of the R.A.C. Trophy. Parts interchangeability could not have been proven in any other more appropriate way. As a result of these tests, the Cadillac Automobile Company was awarded the Dewar Trophy for 1908 (actual award date was February 1909). The Dewar Trophy was an annual award for the most important advancement of the year in the automobile industry.
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. The Cadillac line was also GM's default marque for "commercial chassis" institutional vehicles, such as limousines, ambulances, hearses, and funeral home flower cars. The latter three of which were custom built by aftermarket manufacturers: Cadillac does not produce any such vehicles in factory.
In 1911, Cadillac was the first gasoline internal combustion engine auto to incorporate electric start, as opposed to earlier crank start. Originally marketed as a convenience device for female drivers, the electric starter developed by Charles Kettering was first used on the production models of 1912. Other innovations included the first automotive V8 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. The Cadillac and LaSalle synchronized transmissions quickly became known for their robustness, smoothness and ideal gear ratios for use by the go fast crowd. Many a hopped up Ford or Mercury V8 engine was mated to a recycled Cadillac or LaSalle transmission. In about 1928, automobile stylist Harley Earl, whom Cadillac had recruited in 1926 and who was to head the new Art and Color section starting in January 1928, designed for 1927 a new, smaller "companion" car to the Cadillac which he called the La Salle, after another French explorer, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. That marque remained in production until 1940.
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.
1932- The year it could have ended
In 1932, after Cadillac suffered from record low sales and charges of discrimination against black customers, Alfred Sloan created a committee to consider the discontinuation of the Cadillac line. At a fateful board meeting, Cadillac president Nicholas Dreystadt heard that legendary boxer Joe Louis could not go into a dealership to buy a car, because he was black, and resorted to having a white friend make the purchase for him. Dreystadt gave the GM Board of Directors a 10 minute speech in which he advocated advertising to black consumers so as to increase sales. The Board agreed to give Dreystadt 18 months to produce results. By 1934, Cadillac had regained profitability. It is significant to note that after this decision, Cadillac was the only American automobile manufacturer to remain profitable during the Great Depression. By 1940, Cadillac sales had risen 1,000 percent compared to 1934, thus saving Cadillac from extinction.
The year 1934 brought about a revolution in assembly line technology. Henry F. Phillips introduced the Phillips screw and driver onto the market. He entered into talks with General Motors and convinced the Cadillac group that his new screws would speed assembly times and therefore increase profits. Cadillac was the first automaker to use the Phillips technology, which was widely adopted in 1940.
Postwar
Promotional art of the 1947 Cadillac Series 75 Sedan
Postwar Cadillacs, incorporating the ideas of General Motors styling chief Harley J. Earl, innovated many of the styling features that came to be synonymous with the classic (late 1940s-late 1950s) 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 most recognizable tailfins of any production automobile.
Cadillac's other styling attribute was its front bumper designs which became known as Dagmar bumpers or simply Dagmars. What had started out after the war as an artillery shell shaped bumper guard became an increasingly important part of Cadillac's complicated front grille and bumper assembly. As the 1950s wore on, the element was placed higher in the front end design, negating their purpose as bumper guards. They also became more pronounced and were likened to the bosom of 1950s television personality Dagmar. In 1957 the bumpers gained black rubber finials which only heightened the relationship between the styling element and a stylized exaggerated breast and nipple. For 1958 the element was toned down and was completely absent on the 1959 models.
ON THE BANKS Of the Gironde River in southwest France stand the ruins of a fourteenth-century fortress, which once dominated the people of the valley and controlled the river traffic. In its time the castle was a symbol of the prestige and power wielded by the medieval aristocracy. It was called Cadillac. The men of the family were military leaders through the centuries, but historical fame came chiefly to Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who led a French army into the Great Lakes region and founded the city of Detroit in 1701.
Although the name has since been used in many ways, it was a car that restored to it the prestige and status that the ancient lords enjoyed. Cadillac has become a byword in the English language, connoting the epitome of excellence, the best of anything.
The car that A. P. Brush and Henry M. Leland built in 1902 was a modest beginning for an automobile that became America's status symbol. It was a one-cylinder, low-priced machine with chain drive, not too different from many other makes of the period. But Leland, an experienced engineer, soon decided to produce an expensive, finelytooled car - a prestige machine. In 1905 his new model appeared, one of the first four-cylinder cars on the American market.
In 1908, Leland staged the most astounding demonstration that the automotive world had ever seen. He took three Cadillacs to England, and after putting them through their paces, stripped each car down to the last nut and bolt. The thousands of parts were then mixed up thoroughly and Leland's workmen proceeded to assemble three Cadillacs. When they were finished the amazed British officials saw the. cars complete a 500-mile speed test without a hitch. It was obvious that each car contained parts from the other two, but the precision standardization during manufacture made sure that any collection of components would work together. At that time no other car in the world could pass a test of this sort, but it was a routine operation for Leland who had worked in the Colt revolver factory where this type of standardization was inaugurated.
In 1909, Leland sold his company to General Motors, but the new corporation wisely retained him as head of the Cadillac Division. Leland guided the development of his creation with a sure hand. Cadillac became the pacemaker for the industry and pioneered many devices that we have today. By the time Leland left in 1917 to design the Lincoln, the Cadillac was firmly established as one of the foremost American prestige cars.
The innovations introduced by Cadillac are among the most important developments in the automombile. In 1911, Leland purchased a revolutionary device from the Dayton Engineering Laboratory Com pany - the initials spell the now familiar DELCO. It was Charles F. Kettering's self-starter. Among other things the self-starter meant that women could finally handle a car by themselves, for the arm-wrenching job of cranking a car was too much for their delicate bones. It also spelled the eventual death of the steam cars whose major selling point lay in the lack of a crank handle. In addition to the self-starter, Leland pioneered the use of the generator-battery system which made .headlights, ignition, and eventually heaters much more practical. By 1912 the first timing chain appeared on the Cadillac, in 1914 the first production V-8 engine, and in 1928 the first dependable synchromesh transmission.
The Cadillacs of the early 1930's were classics of automotive design. Big, lean, powerful, they slowly began to dominate the market. With their introduction of the V-16 engine, they outsold all the other luxury cars of the period. Year after year, as other makes were put out of business by the economic fluctuations, the Cadillac continued its rise. In reality, the Cadillac lost money in the thirties, but the advantage of being in a big organization lay in the fact that other divisions could support a financially embarrassed section. This was why the Cadillac survived a period that meant the eventual finish of almost every other American luxury car.
Just prior to World War II Cadillac discontinued the massive V-12 and V-16 engines in favor of the more efficient V-8 and they entered the postwar period as the leader of their price range. Unfor tunately Cadillac, because of its prestige, became a style leader as well. In 1948 the Cadillac division started the tail-fin trend which blossomed luxuriantly throughout the industry. Soon there was intense competition among manufacturers, not in performance or durability, but in the size and shape of the rear-end outrigging. Tail fins are required for aerodynamic stability on airplanes but no one has yet proved their value on a touring car, except as adornments. The tail-fin fad spread like a plague, erupting in huge proportions on even the smaller cars, and, like a world epidemic, finally crossed the Atlantic to appear on some European machines. It is a tribute to the prestige of Cadillac as a pace-setter in style, that the fin disease spread so widely, and one may only hope that the shark-shaped appendages will finally wither. When they do, it is quite probable that the next trend will be pioneered by Cadillac.
However, under the hood, the efficient and durable V-8 engine spells pure function. Cadillac engines last a long time with proper maintenance and produce an amazing amount of power. Before the development of the Corvette engine, these V-8's were used in many racing machines such as the British-made Allard.
Today the Cadillac is perhaps the most luxurious of American cars, and in the Eldorado-Biarritz model, can be the most expensive. Almost everything is power assisted or electrically operated. Air condi tioning makes hot weather touring an extremely pleasant experience,, and radio-telephones keep the occupants in touch with the outside world, for the interior of a Cadillac is a world in itself. Only the addition of television is required to make this car a traveling living room where owners can relax in utter comfort as the world speeds by the glare-proof windows.
Purists may decry the sybaritic luxury of the Cadillac, but one must remember that the American public whole-heartedly favors this type of automobile. The Cadillac Division of General Motors does not want for customers, and the car itself serves as an example to other manufacturers who follow in its sumptuous path. One can be sure that the ancient lords of Cadillac would have approved of the car that is made in their name.
|
|
