It’s interesting that for a long time the prestigious British automotive brand ‘ROLLS-ROYCE’ has appeared in everyday usage as a tongue-in-cheek praise-tag for any old product – as in: “You can’t beat DIGGA rotary hoes – they’re truly the ROLLS-ROYCE of rotary hoes.” Is that just an Aus laughing-at-a-tall-poppy thing or perhaps a taking-a-dig-at-the-Poms thing, I wonder?
It seems odd though, the prestigious American brand Cadillac doesn’t suffer similar treatment – as in: “I can’t fault my BRUTUS sledge hammer – believe me, it’s the CADILLAC of sledge hammers.” Perhaps the aspirational nature of the American culture that fosters widespread respect for its prestige brands, has rubbed off on us just a bit.
Anyway, while Cadillac has never been huge on my American-cars radar – for me, it’s been pre-1970 ‘BIG THREE’ bread and butter cars plus some Studebaker and American Motors models – Cadillac’s early history was very much in my face recently, while I learned about the significant effect electrification had on dragging the Industrial Revolution, from steam engines to the internal-combustion automobile era.
Perhaps, surprisingly, the utilitarian term ‘parts interchangeability’ is key to the story, a story that’s all about advances in precision engineering. The coming of machine tools, particularly those with individual electric motors, allowed component production to combine rapidity and dimensional repeatability for the first time, making parts interchangeable and easy to assemble, thus setting the stage for mass production.
Also to my surprise it was upmarket Cadillac that pioneered parts interchangeability in the car industry, and not Ford Motor Company – though in Cadillac’s case precision parts manufacturing was more about maximising quality standards of its prestige car, than its role with Henry Ford’s subsequent Model T, to enable mass-production of an affordable and reliable everyman car.
Historically the parts interchangeability concept had been quietly developing in the firearms industry for some time. In the USA in the latter half of the nineteenth century Samuel Colt was an early adopter who took the pioneering earlier work of Eli Whitney to the next level.
Fast forward to the 1890s and we meet Henry Leland who as a young man served his apprenticeship under Samuel Colt. Now he’s a precision-engineering specialist and partner in a company producing precision gears and engines.
In 1902 Leland and partners took over what had been the Henry Ford Company after Henry Ford walked out to start afresh under the enduring Ford Motor Company banner. Renamed the Cadillac Automobile Company, Leland’s business launched its first car at the New York Auto Show in January 1903. With its promotion promising reliability thanks to ‘precision manufacturing’, it was an immediate success with over 2000 customer-deposits taken at the show.
Soon also successful in the UK, Cadillac and its claimed parts interchangeability were sorely tested by Britain’s Royal Auto Club (RAC) in 1908. Three random 1907 K model Caddys from dealer stock were totally dismantled by RAC mechanics before the parts were mixed, with stock spare-parts thrown in for good measure. The crew then assembled three composite cars from the parts heap, with no selective matching or finessing of parts permitted.
All three cars then lapped the Brooklands circuit for 500 miles without incident, before one went on to win the 2000-mile International Touring Car Trial. Awarded the RAC’s prestigious Dewar Trophy for its efforts, Cadillac adopted ‘The Standard of the World’ as its marketing slogan from that point.
Shortly after the Dewar Trophy award ceremony in 1909, the still-fledgling Cadillac business was bought by General Motors to be slotted in as its topline brand above the existing Buicks and Oldsmobiles.
Under GM ownership Cadillac continued driving change in the rapidly evolving industry. It won another RAC Dewar Trophy in 1912 for early adoption of electric-starting/electric-lighting and by the mid-1920s was pioneering the introduction of ‘safety-glass’.
A game-changer was the hiring of stylist Harley Earl in 1927 to take away from engineers the responsibility for a car’s form and appearance – an industry first. A light-bulb moment came mid-Great Depression when Cadillac largely reversed its 80 per cent loss of sales by ending a policy that discouraged Cadillac sales to African Americans.
In the years remaining before WWII largely froze civilian car development, Cadillac was a frontrunner in introducing the all-steel roof, and its manufacturing-efficiency gains from adopting Phillips-head fasteners came years ahead of the pack. This was all news to me – frankly, I’m impressed…