Cadillac, Cadillac

Cadillac vehicles are sold in over 50 countries and territories, but mainly in North America.

Cadillac pioneered many accessories in automobiles, including full electrical systems, the clashless manual transmission, and the steel roof. The brand developed three engines, one of which (the V8) set the standard for the American automotive industry.

With the intent of liquidating the firm's assets, Ford's financial backers, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen called in engineer Henry M. Leland of Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing Company 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. Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing and the Cadillac Automobile Company merged in 1905.

Cadillac was the first volume manufacturer of a fully enclosed cab in 1910 and, in 1912, was first to incorporate an electrical system enabling starting, ignition and lighting.

From the late 1960s, Cadillac offered a fiber-optic warning system to alert the driver to failed light bulbs. Driver airbags were offered on some Cadillac models from 1972 to 1973.

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 , the date is October 20; 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. Cadillac participated in an interchangability test in the United Kingdom 1908, when it was awarded the Dewar Trophy for the most important advancement of the year in the automobile industry.

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 their factory.

Bentley, John The Old Car Book , Fawcett Books (1952) p 12 Pre-World War II Cadillacs were well-built, powerful, mass-produced luxury cars, aimed at an upper class market. In the 1930s, Cadillac added cars with V12 and V16 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.

Dreystadt gave the GM board of directors a ten-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. Cadillac managed to survive the Great Depression by being part of GM. By 1940, Cadillac sales had risen tenfold compared to 1934.

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 tips which only heightened the relationship between the styling element and a stylized, exaggerated bumper design. For 1958 the element was toned down and was completely absent from the 1959 models.

Buyers generally dismissed the Cimarron as a "warmed-over Cavalier" with leather seats. Styling became more in tune with other Cadillacs in its later years, but sales did not significantly improve after its initial rejection and it was discontinued in 1988.

Introduced in 1981, this engine selectively activated and deactivated cylinders according to power demand. But it proved unreliable and was dropped the next year in favor of a family of smaller aluminum V8 engines rushed into production. The HT-4100 engine was used widely in Cadillacs from 1982 through 1987. The majority of HT4100's failed before and many of the 1,000,000 HT4100's installed in 1982-1987 Cadillacs were replaced by the factory under warranty although some motors went with extremely careful maintenance and no overheating episodes which this aluminum block engine does not tolerate. The HT4100's problems were far more serious and prevalent than those in the one-year only V8-6-4 and cost Cadillac the loyalty of many customers. Cadillac introduced the 4.5 liter aluminum v8 in 1988 which proved to be a very reliable motor, these motors often see well over . This power plant was bumped up to 4.9 liters in 1991 and ran until 1993. The famous Northstar V8 would power the Eldorado from the 1993 model year through the next decade.

Some new design approaches were tried: the Seville, for instance, was downsized to BMW 5 series proportions and had rounded wheel arches with only a hint of chrome. During this period, the greatest challenge to the import sports cars was the Cadillac Allant, a convertible designed by Pininfarina of Italy, and built on what was touted as the world's longest production linewith the car's bodies fabricated in Italy and flown by Boeing 747 to the United States to meet their transmission and engine.

The HT-4100 engine was insufficient against more powerful competition. This introductory platform turned off many potential customers, who considered the vehicle to be underpowered for its $55,000 price tag, causing them to conclude that Cadillac was not genuinely committed to building a performance car. In 1989 the powertrain was improved with the 4.5 L engine producing . Finally, in 1993 the powertrain was again upgraded to respectable performance with the 4.6 L Northstar V8 producing . This turned out to be the final year of production, as Allant sales never reached the volume which Cadillac hoped for.

By the late '80s, the Brougham was the only Cadillac model that retained the style and size of the "big" DeVilles and Fleetwoods of the '70s. The Brougham was redesigned in 1993 and renamed the Fleetwood, with an optional Brougham package,towing capacity is up to with the L05 V8. In 1994 Cadillac replaced the L05 engine with the new more powerful LT1 engine. The Fleetwood was discontinued after the 1996 model year. Following the demise of the Fleetwood, the Lincoln Town Car was left as the sole traditional full-sized luxury car remaining in the U.S. market.

The GMC Yukon Denali-based Escalade, Cadillac's first sport utility vehicle, was introduced in 1998 for the 1999 model year, and featured standard all-wheel drive. It was quickly created to capitalize on the instant market success of the Lincoln Navigator launched as a 1998 model and seemingly destined to propel the Lincoln brand's sales total for the 1998 calendar year well ahead of Cadillac's.

A prominent proportion of this increase was a rise in Escalade sales from 960 in November to 3,642 in December. The result was an overall lead for the Cadillac brand by a slim 222 vehicles. Subsequent audits of sales records during the first quarter of 1999, prompted by the unusual numbers posted in December plus the fact that Escalade sales had dropped to a mere 225 vehicles in January 1999, resulted in the discovery of an "error" of 4,773 units. With this corrected, it meant that Lincoln had in fact passed Cadillac in total sales for the 1998 calendar year (187,121 Lincolns sold vs. 182,570 for Cadillac).

New York Giants football player Eli Manning was awarded the keys to the Cadillac Escalade hybrid at the end of the Super Bowl XLII.

Source: Wikipedia > Cadillac