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 Escala
The exterior, painted in a nine-layer pearlescent blackish-brown "Gaia" finish, blends Cadillac's trademark Art and Science era design cues with more contemporary ones, being the first Cadillac to feature horizontal headlamps since the Seville was discontinued in 2004. This was done to give the car a more understated, harmonious look, in which simplicity is a prevalent theme on the Escala's design. They are complemented by two vertical strips of OLED daytime running lamps positioned just below the headlamps. A monotone Cadillac emblem adorns the three-dimensional mesh grille, patterned with several miniature crests. The car is designed as a four-door hardtop with a sloping rear roofline, giving a more athletic appearance, with a liftback tailgate at the rear end. When the trunk is opened, the cargo floor rises up to enable easier access to luggage. Also present on the car's C-pillar is the Hofmeister kink, a rarely seen trait for a Cadillac, possibly paying homage to the fastback Cadillac coupés of the late 1940s. Cadillac's signature vertical taillights are reworked, now added with a horizontal strip. It sits on 22-inch dual layer spoke wheels, fitted with 20-inch tires co-developed with Michelin that has the Cadillac chevron exclusively engraved onto the tire tread. The newly designed front fascia is expected to make its way to Cadillac production models starting in late 2018.