One might think that Cadillac was named after a famous Native American chief, as was Pontiac. But the Cadillac was actually named after the French explorer who founded Detroit in 1701 with the impressive name of Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.
The Cadillac Car Company was established in 1902 by Henry Leland, who learned the importance of precision parts under the apprenticeship of the gunmaker Samuel Colt. Leland purchased the assets of the defunct Henry Ford Co., one of Ford’s few failures. The first Cadillac was introduced at the New York Auto Show in 1903 and was priced at $850 or about $22,000 in today’s dollars.
Leland’s slogan, “The Standard of the World,” emphasized their engineering excellence. He bought special tools from Sweden to make sure he made the best parts of consistent quality. To prove this, he built three identical cars, disassembled them in front of judges, mixed up the parts, reassembled them and they all ran perfectly. A 500-mile trip afterward proved the point.
Cadillac was the first enclosed mass-produced car with glass windows. It’s interesting how inventions are created. In 1908, According to an article published by Aaron Miller, one of Leland’s buddies, Byron Carter, founder of the Cartercar, was helping a friend whose Cadillac stalled. When Carter cranked the car, the car backfired and spun the crank forcefully, hitting him on the head and killing him. Leland then declared “I won’t have Cadillacs hurting people that way,” and from 1912 on Cadillacs had an electric starter invented by Charles Kettering.
Here is a little more trivia for you. What does Franklin D. Roosevelt have in common with Al Capone? Answer: They both used the same 1928 Cadillac. It seems Capone had a 1928 bulletproof Cadillac built because some of his associates weren’t very friendly. When he was sent to Alcatraz, the government impounded that car. Roosevelt used that bulletproof car for protection on his brief trip from the White House to deliver his “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress in 1941. FDR commented that, “I hope Mr. Capone doesn’t mind.”
Danville resident Dan Hart has been the owner of this issue’s two-tone, green-over-yellow, 1955 Cadillac Coupe De Ville since 2011.
“I bought it at a dealership in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I found it online, and I really wanted to see the car, so I went to Sioux Falls. When I saw the car in person,” he said, “I had to have it.”
He paid $25,000 for it, and it was in pretty good condition.
“I’ve done a few improvements like a new headliner, new carpet, new tires, and the driver seat needed to be replaced.”
Hart believes the car has about 114,000 miles, pretty low mileage for a 63-year-old car.
“My start with classic cars is that I have a 1955 Chevy. It isn’t that I’m collecting ’55s, but for some reason I’m drawn to that model year.” That is understandable, as in 1955 all of the big three auto manufacturers, Ford, Chrysler and GM, had great styling. The top of the GM line was, of course, Cadillac.
In the 1950s, the car companies seemed to believe the bigger the better. And this Cadillac is huge, 216.3 inches long compared with a 2018 Cadillac CT6 model of 204 inches. The 129-inch wheelbase is about 7 inches longer than the new CT6. In addition to its size, interesting features include the hidden gas cap under the left rear taillight. According to at least one website, this is an accidental feature. It seems that when the first tailfin Cadillac was designed in 1948, the designer forgot about providing a place to fill the car with gas. But company management was so pleased with the styling that they decided to hide the gas cap under the taillight.
This 4,364-pound, six-passenger car is powered by a 331 cubic inch overhead valve V8 engine rated at 250 horsepower. A four-speed Hydramatic transmission was standard. The list price when new was $3,882, or about $36,000 in today’s dollars. While Hart’s Cadillac would have been considered well equipped in 1955, it has no air conditioning, then a $620 ($5,723 today) option, or power windows, a $108 ($1,000 today) option in 1955.
The styling was very distinctive with the taillight fins and massive grill with the “Dagmar” bumper guards, so called after the full-figured movie and television actress. The car had a wraparound windshield for the first time in 1955, which most other manufacturers copied in the following year. The Cadillac division sold 140,777 cars in 1955, which was a new sales record for the division.
Hart plans to keep the car forever, along with his 1955 Chevy convertible. But something may be missing for him. He’s thinking maybe he might need something between GM’s low-end Chevrolet and their high-end Cadillac — maybe a Buick (from 1955, of course).
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, search for “David Krumboltz” at www.mercurynews.com.