Cadillac
Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the Henry Ford Company. After a dispute between Henry Ford and his investors, Ford left the company along with several of his key partners in March 1902. Ford's financial backers William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen called in engineer Henry M. Leland of Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing Company to appraise the plant and equipment in preparation for liquidating the company's assets. Instead, Leland persuaded the pair to continue manufacturing automobiles using Leland's proven single-cylinder engine. A new company called the Cadillac Automobile Company was established on 22 August 1902, re-purposing the Henry Ford Company factory at Cass Street and Amsterdam Avenue. It was named after French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who had founded Detroit in 1701.
Casa de cadillac
Ownership of dealership passed from Lee to Martin Pollard in 1950 who changed the name to Casa de Cadillac. Pollard was influential in local business and an active member of the San Fernando Valley community. He served at various times as the President of Valley Presbyterian Hospital, President of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce, and was the first chairman of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. In 1959, Pollard was the first ever recipient of the "Fernando Award" given by the Fernando Award Foundation in recognition of outstanding community volunteerism in the San Fernando Valley. Upon Pollard's death in 1970, the Sherman Oaks branch of the Los Angeles Public Library was named in his honor.