Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac
Upon his arrival in America, La Mothe adopted his title after the town of Cadillac, Gironde in southwestern France. The city of Detroit became the world center of automobile production in the 20th century. William H. Murphy and Henry M. Leland founded the Cadillac auto company and paid homage to him by using his name for their company and his armorial bearings as its logo in 1902. Various places bear his name in America, in particular Cadillac Mountain in Maine and the town of Cadillac, Michigan.
James E. Winner Jr.
The inspiration for the Club came after his Cadillac was stolen, and he remembered back to his time serving in the Army when the steering wheels of jeeps would be protected using chains. Charles Johnson. a mechanic who said he had worked on developing the product with Winner before the incident in which the Cadillac was stolen claimed that he had not been properly credited for the development of the device and that the two men had made a verbal agreement in 1985 under which they would split any profits from the sale of the Club. Winner acknowledged that Johnson had been paid a fee to work on developing the device, but that the basic design, such as the pronged hooks that secure it to the steering wheel, were part of Winner's original design. A lawsuit that Johnson filed to pursue the claim was settled in 1993 for what was reported to be $10.5 million.