Yet Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac had nothing to do with cars directly: he simply established the city of Detroit in 1701. When Henry Ford resigned from the Henry Ford Company in 1902 (setting up the Ford Motor Company a year later) his replacement, Henry Leland, renamed it the Cadillac Automobile Co in Antoine’s honour.
In 1909 it was acquired by General Motors which, 95 years on, still cherishes Cadillac as its most prestigious brand. Cadillac’s early success was not built on luxury, though, but on Leland’s enthusiasm for the interchangeability of components, making for better reliability and easier repairs. In 1932 it became the only manufacturer ever to offer a range including V8, V12 and V16-engined cars simultaneously. Other firsts pioneered by Cadillac include air-conditioning in 1941, power steering in 1954, and even a built-in perfume bottle (by Arpège) in 1957.
The 1959 Cadillac series, with their huge tailfins and bright pink paintwork, became an American icon as potent as Marilyn Monroe. But Cadillac has always been part of America’s mass-production culture — the closest it came to a “boutique” model was the 1987 Allante sports car, with bodywork expensively flown in from Pininfarina in Italy. Truly mass-market Cadillacs have included the 1982 Cimarron — a fancy Vauxhall Cavalier.
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, most Cadillacs were enormous, boasting in 1970 what was at the time the world’s biggest-capacity production car engine, an 8.2 litre V8. Fuel crises then meant some drastic shrinkage — the 1985 Deville was a staggering 26in shorter than the 1984 version of the car. But Cadillacs have remained too big for most European buyers, and attempts to sell them in the UK have failed, although rumours have circulated that GM is plotting a return to Britain with the BMW 5-series-sized CTS.