LaSalle Born: 1927 Died: 1940 Needing a car to slot between the Buick and the Cadillac, General Motors boss Alfred P Sloan commissioned a California Cadillac dealer's designer to come up with a companion car to his luxury flagship.
That was, for Harley Earl, the beginning of a three-decades career with GM as a top stylist.
The LaSalle was named, like Cadillac, after a French explorer, and on Earl's own admission was inspired by the Hispano-Suiza. When the first version was introduced in 1927, it had a tall narrow grille, a feature which was to remain through the LaSalle's life. A range of body styles were offered, as well as the option of custom bodies from the main coachbuilders, but the engine and chassis were the same for all. The wheelbase was significantly shorter than the Cadillac's.
The engine was a brand new design, a narrow V8 of five litres capacity with an output of 75hp. Like the car, it was built by Cadillac and proved to be much superior than Cadillac's own engines of the time. Setting records was the way to capture the buying public's imagination, and a stripped down roadster variant managed an average speed of 153 km/h over almost a thousand miles, just 2 km/h slower than the winner of the 1927 Indianopolis 500.
The LaSalle was also among the first cars to provide two-tone colouring, which Harvey Earl cleverly used to make the best visual effect of the long sweeping bodywork features. For 1928, the only significant change was an uprating of the official horsepower to 80hp, with some detail alterations to the bonnet styling. But in 1929, following the fact that special long-wheelbase versions had proved very popular, the full range of body-styles except the roadster gained the longer platform. The engine was expanded to 5.4 litres and gained an additional 6hp.
Sales increased substantially, while the luxury sibling's halved. In 1930 the engine was again enlarged, this time to 5.6 litres. But sales slipped, mainly due to the ongoing bite of the recession of the time. By 1931, with size and specification being virtually the same as the Cadillac, LaSalles were curiously selling worse than the senior model, even though they were cheaper. In 1932, with a 115hp output from its engine, sales plummeted in a reflection of the national economic situation.
But in 1933 the situation between LaSalle and Cadillac switched again, though the luxury division was overall losing money. The following year, Harley Earl completely revised the LaSalle, giving it new styling, while in engineering matters the V8 was replaced by a much-modified straight-8 borrowed from sister division Oldsmobile.
The car had less power, down to 90hp, but was almost a thousand pounds lighter. It was still considered a quality car and was selected as the pace car for that year's Indy 500. However, though sales of LaSalle doubled, they were still low compared to expectations for the brand. In 1935 the engine gained 5hp, and a couple of new body styles were added. But against competition from rival Packard, the Cadillac's companion car failed to pick up sales.
In 1937 the car was given a new 125hp V8 engine which had helped the senior car to sell really well the previous year, and a completely new body proved to be very attractive to buyers, and with sales of 32,000 units, it was to be LaSalle's best ever year.
In the US, LaSalle is the car that started the whole movement towards style, and for that alone it deserves its place in history.