Cadillac Marks 120 Years of Car Design and Engineering with Special Logo
Luxury car brand Cadillac is this year celebrating its 120th anniversary – 12 decades after being founded by Henry M. Leland in 1902.
The American company claims to hold a number of firsts, from producing the first mass-produced V8 engine, to making the first V16-powered production passenger car; from developing the first electric self-starter to launching the first mass-produced fully automatic transmission.
Continuing in that vein, Cadillac has this year launched its first-ever all-electric vehicle – the LYRIQ SUV (pictured below).
“It’s an absolute privilege to guide this iconic brand through this period of exciting transition after 120 years,” says Rory Harvey, the brand’s global vice president. “Cadillac’s journey into the new, electrified era of driving allows us to push the boundaries of technology, engineering and design in an unprecedented manner.”
Additionally, Michael Simcoe, vice president of GM Global Design, and Bryan Nesbitt, executive director of Global Cadillac Design, were instructed by company bosses to select 12 Cadillacs that would best represent the brand’s car design history.
“Picking a dozen important Cadillacs is a nearly impossible task when you look at the body of work across 120 years of Cadillac designs,” comments Nesbitt. “From the breath-taking V16 Aerodynamic Coupe of the 1930s to the CELESTIQ show car that it helped inspire, every era of Cadillac has an unmistakable visual language that is fearlessly forward-looking.”
The manufacturer even claims to have started the discipline of modern car design itself, when it introduced the 1927 LaSalle, which was the first car to have been designed by a stylist, namely, the famous industrial designer, Harley Earl.
Since that time, the company has gone on to create notable designs, with the pinnacle arguably being the 1959 Eldorado, which came to personify the ‘Jet Age’ era of the 1950s.
And just in the past fortnight, Cadillac has revealed the CELESTIQ (pictured in blue below), an all-new, ‘hand-built’ $300k ultra-luxury flagship EV that is being touted as “the future of Cadillac design and innovation”.
Source: Cadillac
