Cadillac

Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the Henry Ford Company after Henry Ford departed in March 1902 following a dispute with investors. Ford's financial backers, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen, brought in engineer Henry M. Leland to appraise the plant for liquidation, but Leland persuaded them to continue making automobiles using his proven single-cylinder engine. The Cadillac Automobile Company was established on 22 August 1902, converting the former Ford factory on Cass Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Detroit. The company was named after Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, the French explorer who founded Detroit in 1701; the Cadillac crest is based on his coat of arms.

The first Cadillac automobiles, the Runabout and Tonneau, were completed in October 1902. Powered by a 10 hp single-cylinder engine, they were displayed at the New York Auto Show in January 1903, where they generated over 2,000 firm orders. Cadillac's central selling proposition from the outset was precision manufacturing and reliability.

Cadillac established a pattern of engineering leadership in its earliest years. In 1908, the company participated in an interchangeability test conducted by the Royal Automobile Club of the United Kingdom, demonstrating that its cars could be fully disassembled, their parts mixed at random, and then reassembled without machining. The feat won Cadillac the RAC's Dewar Trophy for the most important automotive advancement of the year — the origin of the brand's long-running slogan "Standard of the World." Cadillac won the Dewar Trophy again in 1912 for incorporating electrical starting and lighting in a production automobile, eliminating the hand crank.

General Motors purchased Cadillac on 29 July 1909, establishing it as the prestige division of the emerging conglomerate. In 1915, Cadillac introduced a 90-degree flathead V8 producing 70 horsepower, enabling the cars to reach 65 miles per hour. The V8, combined with subsequent V12 and V16 engines introduced in the 1930s, cemented the brand's technical reputation. The V16 of 1930 displaced 452 cubic inches and produced 165 horsepower, making it one of the most powerful and quietest engines available in the United States at the time.

Post-war Cadillac vehicles set many of the styling cues synonymous with 1950s American automobiles. Under GM styling chief Harley J. Earl, Cadillac introduced tailfins in 1948 — a motif that reached its visual extreme in 1959 — along with wraparound windshields and extensive use of chrome. In 1949 the brand introduced a new overhead-valve V8 that became the engineering benchmark for the entire American automotive industry; the same year Motor Trend awarded Cadillac its first Car of the Year prize. Cadillac went on to win the Motor Trend Car of the Year award five times in total: in 1949, 1952, 1992, 2008, and 2014.

The energy crisis of the 1970s forced Cadillac, along with the rest of GM, to progressively downsize its model range. In 1977 the full-size de Ville and Fleetwood were substantially reduced in weight and dimensions, improving fuel economy while maintaining luxury content. Further downsizings followed through the early 1980s. The introduction of the Cimarron compact in 1982 — a rebadged Chevrolet Cavalier — proved deeply damaging to the brand's prestige positioning and is widely cited as the nadir of GM's product planning of that era.

Cadillac launched a comprehensive design and engineering renewal in 2000 under the "Art and Science" philosophy, characterised by sharp, angular forms. The CTS sedan and XLR roadster introduced the new direction, followed by the performance-oriented CTS-V. The second-generation CTS-V, introduced in 2009, was powered by a supercharged 6.2-litre LSA V8 and lapped the Nurburgring in 7 minutes 59.32 seconds, setting a production sedan record at the time. Cadillac sold 390,458 vehicles worldwide in 2019, a record for the brand.

Before World War II, Cadillac participated in various motorsports as was common for manufacturers of the era. Many Allard sports cars of the early 1950s used Cadillac engines. In the 1950s, Cadillac competed in the NASCAR Grand National Series alongside other American manufacturers, withdrawing by the 1960s.

Cadillac returned to serious motorsport at the dawn of the twenty-first century, powering the Cadillac Northstar LMP prototype in the American Le Mans Series from 2000 to 2002. The programme was withdrawn after proving unsuccessful on track. In the early 2000s, Cadillac found more success with the CTS-V in the SCCA World Challenge Grand Touring class.

In 2017, Cadillac re-entered prototype racing with the DPi-V.R in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, achieving considerable success in a sustained programme. From 2023 the brand escalated its commitment further, entering the Cadillac V-Series.R in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA SportsCar Championship. Official manufacturer entries ran with Chip Ganassi Racing in both series as full-season efforts, with customer cars supplied to Action Express Racing.

On 5 January 2023, General Motors announced the intention to enter Cadillac into the Formula One World Championship in conjunction with Andretti Global. The Formula One Group initially rejected the application, but the entry was subsequently approved. Cadillac is scheduled to join the grid from the 2026 season, using a Ferrari engine as a customer unit until a Cadillac-developed engine is ready, targeted for 2029.