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.
Cadillac Sixty Special
Through 1948, Cadillac advertised the Sixty Special as a five-passenger car. This was the year that the bumper 'bullets' were introduced; they would remain a Cadillac styling feature through 1958. The slow-selling sunshine top (sun roof) option was discontinued at the end of the 1941 model year, and would not reappear in a Cadillac until the 1970 Eldorado. While the roomy interior was luxuriously outfitted, Cadillac depended on trim to differentiate the exterior of Sixty Special from its Cadillac siblings. Decorative chrome louvers - which would become a Sixty Special trademark ornament for years to come - were mounted in three locations on the 1942 model: behind the wheel well openings on the front and rear fenders, as well as mounted on the roof behind the rear door opening. In addition to the louvered trim, the Sixty Special had a wider "C-pillar" than other models, and retained its individual chrome bead around the side window glass – one of the only design features to carry over from the original Bill Mitchell design. Just two models were now available in the Sixty Special series – the standard sedan priced at $2,435 and a $2,589 Imperial sedan which featured an electrically adjustable glass division between the front and rear seats. Productions totals include 1,684 standard sedans and an additional 190 Imperial sedans. Because of World War II, Cadillac ended automobile production in February 1942 and began assembling military equipment.