All you need to know about Cadillac
Born: 1902
Nationality: American
Although motor writers on this side of the world tend to deride Cadillac as soggy American road-barges, the fact that the marque had so many automotive "firsts" which still underpin today's cars of all makes has shown through history that it was always a class act.
Interchangeable standardised parts (1908), the first standard closed body (1910), electric self-starters (1911), the first production V8 (1915), synchromesh transmissions (1928), concealed spare tyre (1934), standard power steering (1954), cruise control (1959), front-engined luxury car (1966), electronic fuel injection (1975) ... and the list goes on.
But in 1902, when Henry Leland decided to build his own car factory from the financial ruin of Henry Ford's Detroit Automobile Company, he was simply looking for a vehicle in which to install a precision engine that he had developed. In 1903 his Cadillac company (named after a French military commander who founded the city of Detroit some 200 years earlier) showed three cars at the New York Auto Show and sold out its next year's production from the stand. The cars had one-cylinder engines and two-speed transmissions.
In 1908, Cadillac became the first American company to win the RAC's Dewar Trophy for his product's demonstration of interchangeability of parts at a time when most components were individually made and fitted together.
In 1909, General Motors paid $5.5 million for the company, inviting Leland and his son to continue operating it. They did so until near the end of the first World War, when they left to form the Lincoln Motor Car Company.
In 1912, Cadillac again won the Dewar Trophy, this time for installing Charles Kitterings's electric self-starter in their cars.
To this day, Cadillac is the only American car maker to have won the trophy twice.
When Cadillac's V8 was put into its first cars in 1915, the famous "V" element was incorporated into the badges put on the cars.
In 1926 Cadillac became the first company in the industry to develop a service policy for its products and to provide it nationwide. A year later it introduced the La Salle model that endured right through until 1940.
In 1930 the company introduced V16 and V12 engines, setting new benchmarks for power and performance. A new V8 of much lighter construction followed in 1936, which was during the second World War the power unit for M24 tanks - each tank had two of them, along with the Cadillac Hydra-Matic automatic transmission.
After the war, the firm set a new design trend in cars with the large finned rears, based by the designer on the Lockheed P-38 fighter (history repeats: forthcoming Cadillac designs are patterned on the angular shapes of today's Stealth bombers). The fins lasted until 1964. The Eldorado name, introduced in 1953, set new standards in luxury and power, and was to be the most-desired Cadillac right through to the new millennium. It went controversially front-drive in 1966. Three years later, the brand reached the four million cars milestone.
By 1985, front-wheel-drive had been also integrated into the company's Fleetwood and DeVille models.
In 1993, a new-generation V8 was introduced, the Northstar, which is still the essential Cadillac power plant of today. But a new one is already in development to drive the new CTS from 2004. We will also see a new 7.5-litre V12 that has been developed in concept form and outputs 750 hp. Indeed, a new V16 may well also happen, as envisaged in a concept car that has been doing the shows for the last two years.
It is all a long way from Henry Leland's "precision" one-cylinder engine. But the underlying principles of quality that he used in developing his embryo company still remain.
Best Car: 1957 Eldorado Brougham.
Worst Car: 1983 Cimarron by Cadillac (a miserable little four-cylinder excuse brought on by the petrol scare of the time).
Weirdest Car: 1959 Series 62 Sedan DeVille