Ahead of the Curve: 6 things Cadillac did before anyone else

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In 1902, a one-cylinder, buggy-style car moved under its own power, and Cadillac was born. Named for the founder of Detroit, Cadillac notched several “firsts,” and we’ve got a list of them.

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It was founded by engineer Henry Leland, but there’s a twist. Henry Ford founded two short-lived companies, before creating the third that exists today. Leland was a director of the second one, and when Ford resigned, Leland took it over and turned it into Cadillac. That means the company is older than General Motors, which started in 1908 and bought Cadillac a year later.

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Ahead of the Curve: 6 things Cadillac did before anyone else Back to video

It was the first car to start its own engine

In the early days, electric cars were almost as popular as gasoline ones. Battery range was an issue, but you just pushed a button to start the car. Alternatively, you had to hand-crank a gas engine, which could be difficult and dangerous.

Henry Leland’s friend died of injuries sustained while cranking a car, and Leland was determined to find a solution. Engineer Charles Kettering, who co-owned a company called Delco that GM later bought, developed a self-starter and supplied it to the automaker. The feature debuted on the 1912 Cadillac. By 1920, almost all cars had a self-starter; and with that issue out of the way, gasoline cars muscled the limited-range electrics out of the picture for almost another century.

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It was the first with all-interchangeable parts

Early cars were individually hand-built, and parts had to be laboriously adjusted to fit. Leland had been a gunsmith at Colt, and he built his Cadillacs from the start with the precise machining he’d learned making rifles. This made it possible to quickly mass-produce the cars, as well as easily repair them.

Cadillac’s U.K. agent and importer was Stanley Bennett. The Royal Automobile Club in Britain sponsored the Dewar Trophy for engineering excellence, and Bennett saw an opportunity for publicity. In 1908, three cars straight off a ship from the U.S. were completely disassembled and the parts jumbled. The judges even swapped some of the engine and transmission components with stock from Bennett’s supply of replacement repair parts. The cars were reassembled and driven 500 miles (804 km) without incident. Cadillac got the Dewar, and would later get a second one for the self-starter.

It was the first mass-produced car with a V8 engine

Cadillac wasn’t the first car with a V8 – a few companies made prototypes – but it was the first regular-production one. It was the only engine choice when it debuted in 1915, and Cadillac sold 13,002 copies that year. The engine displaced 314 cubic inches (5.1 litres), making 70 horsepower and 180 lb-ft of torque.

Cadillac had started with a one-cylinder engine, went to four-cylinder, and then to eight. For a while it also made V12 and V16 engines, but never offered a six-cylinder until 1981, when you could order an optional Buick-built V6.

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It was the first with a modern multi-displacement engine

Well, you can’t win ‘em all. In 1981, in an effort to combine power and fuel economy, Cadillac introduced its infamous 8-6-4 engine. It was a V8 with an electromechanical system controlled by a microprocessor and sensors, which deactivated two or four cylinders depending on power requirement. A dash display showed how many cylinders were toiling. It was supposed to improve mileage by 30 per cent, although it never came close.

It was added to every V8 model except the Seville, and could be optioned on that one in place of its equally-disastrous diesel engine. Multi-displacement systems are common today and pretty much foolproof, but electronics weren’t as sophisticated 40 years ago. Fuel delivery and deactivation didn’t always match, and the engines would lurch and stumble. It didn’t return for 1982 (except on the commercial chassis supplied for limousines and hearses), and most owners had it disabled so their cars ran on eight cylinders all the time.

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It was the first entry in a famous rivalry

Cadillac and Lincoln, if you didn’t know, actually have a sibling rivalry — they have the same father. Henry Leland stayed on to run Cadillac after he sold it to GM. When the U.S. entered the First World War in 1917, Leland thought the company should build aircraft engines for the war effort. GM’s chief disagreed, and Leland resigned.

He was 74, but that didn’t stop Leland from starting a new company to make the engines. When the war ended, his factory switched to building his newest car, which he named for Abraham Lincoln. But he was a better engineer than businessman, and when the company’s finances faltered, Lincoln was sold in 1922 to Henry Ford — yes, the same guy whose own failed company was turned into Cadillac.

It was the first car with tail fins

One of the iconic styling cues of the 1950s was the tail fin, adopted by almost all American automakers, and Cadillac started it all with its all-new 1948 models. The story goes that Harley Earl, head of GM styling, was inspired by the twin vertical stabilizers on the Lockheed P-38 fighter plane. They started out as tasteful little upswept nubbins, but bigger always seemed better, and eventually culminated in the wretched excess of the sky-high 1959 Cadillac’s fender tips. For better or worse, for all the finned cars made, that’s the one everybody remembers.