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Cadillac

Cadillac is a brand of luxury vehicles owned by General Motors. Cadillac vehicles are officially sold in over 50 countries and territories. The majority of them are produced and sold in the United States and Canada. more...

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In the United States, the name became a synonym for "high quality", used in such phrases as "the Cadillac of watches," referring to a Rolex. In English usage outside North America, other brands are used in such phrases - usually Rolls-Royce.

Cadillac's current slogan is Life. Liberty. And The Pursuit., in reference to the inalienable rights mentioned in the United States Declaration of Independence.

History

Founding

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, who founded Detroit 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. In 1912, Cadillac was the first manufacturer to incorporate an electric starter on their cars equipped with gasoline internal combustion engines, replacing the crank start; the device was developed by Charles Kettering and was marketed as a convenience device for female drivers. This along with electric lighting was another award winner for that year.

Cadillac was the first manufacturer to utilize the skills of a designer to produce a car's body instead of an engineer in 1927, giving the public a car that looked as good as it performed. It introduced shatter-resistant safety glass in 1926. In 1928, Cadillac's engineers were the first to design a fully-synchronized manual transmission using constant-mesh gears to prevent clashing upon executing a shift. Not only providing increased drivability, these transmissions were known for their robustness, smoothness and ideal gear ratios, proving ideal for the go-fast crowd. The marque was instrumental in the early development of the automatic transmission beginning in 1932; then in 1941, it became the first luxury car nameplate to offer an automatic transmission, GM's Hydra-Matic (initially introduced the previous year by sister division Oldsmobile).