October 20, 1902 – The first Cadillac is assembled, maybe…

According to the book “Henry Leland – Mast of Precision,” the assembly of the first Cadillac was completed on this day in 1902. However, this date is disputable as other sources point to October 17, and one account states car number 3 was built on October 16. With that taken into consideration, we will celebrate Cadillac’s birthday today! Cadillac was formed out of the ashes of the failed Henry Ford Company. Henry Ford left his own company following a dispute with his investors. The financial backers called upon engineer Henry M. Leland to appraise the Ford manufacturing plant and equipment in order to sell off the remnants of the company. Leland had a different idea. He persuaded William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen, Ford’s former financial partners, to continue producing automobiles in the plant under the name Cadillac using Leland’s proven single cylinder engine. The company was established on August 22, 1902 and utilized the former Ford factory at Cass Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Detroit. Cadillac was named for French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who also founded Detroit in 1701. Cadillac displayed its first automobiles at the January 1903 New York Auto Show. The company received 2,000 orders after demonstrating precision manufacturing and reliability, showing Cadillac was a much more well crafted automobile than its competitors. PicsCadillac from 1903 – public domain1904 6 ½  hp Cadillac – By Krzysztof Marek Wlodarczyk – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35171312