I spied on board in 1912 Cadillac 30 Demi-Tonneau, traveling by car in the first concert in Australia. In 2010, shiny brass fittings and high durability brought a lot of antique character into it.
More importantly, this car represents a historic turning point in the history of Cadillac and the car itself. This Demi-Tonneau is a shortened, sporty version of a regular touring car with lower body lines. Housed in the same Cadillac chassis as any other body type, the Demi-Tonneau is lighter, but not much, so any performance improvement would be minimal.
The engine is a four-cylinder 30 hp side valve. with an actual output of 50 hp This is a copper shirt for more efficient cooling, like previous Cadillac engines. But the modest size does not explain the superiority of the Cadillac among four-cylinder cars.
The success of Cadillac was partly due to the fact that it was so well made. Its precision parts (many with an accuracy of 1000 inches in.) And the assembly will not be for the company the prestigious Dewar Trophy in the UK. The technical superiority of Cadillac was the result of Chief Engineer Henry F. Leland and his painstaking engineering. With his son Wilfred, Leland later continued the development and construction of the Lincoln V-8 luxury car.
The first years of riding in the twentieth century could be described as one of the experiments and adventures. Manufacturers have tried and applied innovations in urgent efforts to make their products more convenient, reliable and with greater productivity. Owners and drivers took part in the auto business. like sport at the beginning, but soon also like business and pleasure.
The only way to start the car is to start the engine manually. Efforts to do this and danger, if they were done wrong, have come a long way to prevent women from driving. It also increased the popularity of electric cars, at least within the city and suburbs.
Various efforts have been made to make the car safer and easier. One of them was to release the compression on half the cylinders on a six-cylinder car. This made the effort of turning against the compression of a large number of cylinders easier.
Other methods have been tried, some quite successful. The compressed air system held in the reserve tank could be used to crank the engine, forcing air into the cylinders until the spark from the magnet lights up. As a rule, luxury car manufacturers, such as Winton (USA), SCAT (Italy) and Wolseley (UK), were the only ones who applied this efficient, but complex system. An air compressor, screwed to the engine, was needed to maintain a backup compressed air tank.
This compressor had the added advantage that it was available to inflate tires after repairing their punctures. The untested roads of the day had sharp stones and were studded with horse bibs, so tire punctures were an unpleasant feature of early cars.
Some compressed air systems used acetylene gas, usually from the same pressure tanks that were supplied with gas lights. Hopefully, acetylene would not be used to inflate tires!
The electrical systems for starting a car engine were experimented, but there was no clear winner in terms of practicality or reliability. At this time, car electronics were still quite fussy and unreliable.
At this time, Charles F. Kettering from the laboratories of DELCO (Dayton Electrical Company) was occupied by Billy Durant, then head of General Motors, the new joint Durant, launched in 1908 using Buick and Cadillac.
Kettering's friend Byron Carter, who made CarterCar, once stopped to help a car enthusiast start his car. He must have bent too far in fulfilling his task. The engine turned, sharply turning the crank handle back with enough force to break Carter's jaw. Recovering from injury, Carter contracted gangrene, and died from this infection within a few days before the antibiotic era.
His sudden death caused a flight over Kettering and made him decide. He finally solves the problem of electric vehicle start.
The Cadillac of 1912 was the fruit of his efforts. It was the first production car with an integrated electric starter that we still use today. The two-component unit had in mind a dynamo and a starter. He was advertised "somewhat ominously," according to David Burgess-Wise, as "Self-Starting, Self-Igniting and Self-Lighting Cadillac."
The combination of a dynamo and a starter also served to unify the electrical system, so that it is also capable of providing current for lighting. Until that time, autonomous batteries with dry batteries were sometimes used for small lights (but, of course, not for headlights). Now not only the engine could be activated with one touch of a button, the switch could also control all the desired lights without spilling them with matches to illuminate each lamp!
The Kettering system was so successful and revolutionary that, for the model year of 1913, every American car manufacturer offered either compressed air or, more often, electric self-starting on all but the cheapest cars. The adoption of an electric starter was slower in Europe and the UK, and it would have been the years following World War I, that the path would have been led above all by European luxury cars, their cars in the middle price range, and then the least expensive ones. By that time, in the United States, only the Ford T model could be bought without a self-start, although it was optional from 1919.
Thus, Cadillac Thirty is the forerunner of the future with its electric starter. But it was also the latest Cadillac, before the new V-8 Type 541 was introduced in 1914. Thirty was a quality car, but still was a car in the middle price category.
With the introduction of the V-8, the Cadillac first hit the bottom box for luxury cars. His assembler with the Northway multi-cylinder engine was another revelation, being the first successful V-8 that could be made in any quantity. He joined the new Packard Twin-Six V-12 for 1915, opening up a new era of multi-cylinder luxury.
Since then, Cadillac has remained a luxury car - almost a century. Continued survival and success were built in part on self-launch and other innovations.
