Cadillac - Standard of the World
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Summary
In the post-war years, Cadillac not only managed to regain its former greatness, it also surpassed the production figures of the pre-war years. The famous brand, which had been founded in 1902, remained at the forefront of American luxury manufacturers and managed to keep even the richest in line with special versions. This retrospective mainly highlights the years 1945 to 1960 and shows some of the cars produced at that time in a rich picture gallery.
This article contains the following chapters
- Civilian production at last
- Slowly scaling production
- New lines
- New engines
- Into racing
- Always more comfortable and bigger
- With a new chassis against new competition
- New variants
- Optimized chassis
- Rocket design
Estimated reading time: 9min
Preview (beginning of the article)
In 1914, the Cadillac Motor Car Company presented its first V8 car. In 1930, the famous V16 appeared, followed a year later by the V12. Despite the great Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow, Lincoln and Packard, Cadillac never lost its reputation as the "Standard of the World", even after the Second World War. At the beginning of the 1980s, General Motors' racing brand was still setting the tone in the States in terms of design, comfort and technical perfection. October 17, 1945 was a significant date for the Cadillac Division of the General Motors Group. On that day, the assembly lines for civilian production started up again. Of course, one could not expect the new Cadillac to look completely different from that of the 1941/42 model year - America's luxury car in 1945 was exactly the same as the last civilian passenger car to leave the factory in February 1942. The model range was also similar to that of the pre-war period: there were the 60 Special, 61, 62 and 75 models. The Sixty Special and 75 were the expensive versions, the 62 the standard model, the 61 - a successor, so to speak, to the Cadillac offshoot LaSalle, which had been discontinued in 1940 - the basic model. The intermediate models 63 and 67 of the early 1940s were no longer to be found in the catalog.
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