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 Cimarron
One of the shortest development programs ever undertaken by General Motors, development of the Cimarron began in early 1980, even though other vehicles of the GM J-platform had been in development since 1976. While General Motors wanted Cadillac to better compete with other luxury brands, the use of the J-platform to do so was met with heavy resistance. Pete Estes, GM's president at the time, warned Ed Kennard, Cadillac's general manager: "Ed, you don't have time to turn the J-car into a Cadillac."