Page 16 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – September 2019

Looking Back on the Cadillac
By Sam Weber
Art Meets Science in this Luxurious Brand
All images courtesy of Gilmore Car Museum
Cadillac is an iconic American automotive brand; synonymous with quality American luxury automobiles since its inception in 1903. From precision engineering to tailfins to Escalades, every generation has some classic innovation by Cadillac that they can point to.
Founder Henry Leland brought the precision engineering of the East Coast gun industry with him when he moved to the Motor City in 1890 and was contracted by the Olds Motor Vehicle Co. to make engines for the Oldsmobile. While Olds rejected the Leland new single-cylinder engine because of time constraints, the Henry Ford Co. brought Leland in and, following the
ousting of Henry Ford and a rebranding as the Cadillac Automotive Co., combined Ford’s vehicle design with Leland’s engine to create the first Cadillac, the Model A.
Perhaps the defining moment of the Model A, and what established Cadillac as a reliable brand name, was the awarding of the Dewar Trophy in 1908. This trophy is awarded to a car company by the Royal Automobile Club for making the most significant advances of the year in the automotive industry. Cadillac won the
award by having three single-cylinder cars completely disassembled, its parts mixed, and finally reassembled and driven around a test track. They drove the laps
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