Cadillac

The premier division of General Motors may be considered the pinnacle of American luxury today, but its origins emerged from the ashes of a competitor.

In 1902, Henry Ford’s second attempt at founding an automotive company, the Henry Ford Company, dissolved amid disagreements between Ford and his investors. Henry M. Leland, principal of the machine shop Leland & Faulconer, was asked to appraise the company’s manufacturing facilities and equipment to prepare for liquidation. Leland convinced the financial backers orchestrating the liquidation to continue building automobiles at the facility, this time using Leland-designed engines. Thus, the Cadillac Automobile Company was founded: it was named after Antoine de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, the French explorer who established the city of Detroit, and its logo was styled after his coat of arms. This company and Leland’s machine shop merged in 1905 to become the Cadillac Motor Company. Leland sold Cadillac to General Motors in 1909 and stayed on as an executive, but he later left amid a dispute with GM founder William C. Durant over whether to build military equipment during World War I. In 1917, Leland founded the Lincoln Motor Company, which today remains Cadillac’s principal American competitor.

From the beginning, precision craftsmanship was a Cadillac selling point and the marque quickly earned a reputation for reliability and innovation. It became the first automaker to mass-produce a fully enclosed car, the first to sell a car with an electric starter instead of a manual crank starter, and the first to use interchangeable parts in manufacturing. In 1909, Cadillac was purchased by General Motors, and the brand has been the company’s luxury torchbearer ever since.

Early innovations included the first V16 engine, shatterproof glass, the first all-steel roof, and joining Oldsmobile as being among the first marques to offer a fully automatic transmission.

Cadillac enjoyed several decades of heyday from the 1940s through to the ‘70s, when iconic tail fins and emphatically long hoods gave way to downsizing brought on by the 1970s energy crisis. Tougher times ensued in the 1980s and ‘90s, when vehicles like the failed Cimarron compact car left outsiders wondering whether Cadillac had lost its way. With the launch of the Cadillac Escalade large SUV in 1999, the brand caught the attention of the American entertainment industry’s high rollers and slowly entered a renaissance.

Today, the brand’s line-up is highlighted by performance sedans, a full array of SUVS, and the flagship Lyriq EV that is ushering in a new era of electrification for General Motors. While current models are built in either the U.S. or China, Cadillac vehicles were assembled by General Motors of Canada as far back as the 1920s, and the now-discontinued Cadillac XTS was one of the final GM vehicles to roll down the line at Oshawa Assembly before it was closed and retooled to produce Chevrolet Silverado HD trucks.