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[ last update: 07.14.2013 ]
The (new) Cadillac Database ©
Advertisements
Cadillac and La Salle
Index page
Return to The (New) Cadillac Database© Index Page
or select a group of ads from the table, below
(en bas de page se trouve un résumé en français)
1902-1908 1909-1914 1915-1917 1918-1919 1920-1921
1922-1923 1924-1925 1926-1927 1927-1929 1930-1931
1930-1931 1932-1934 1935-1940 1941-1945 La Salle ads
1946-1949 1950-1954 1955-1958 1959-1960 1961-1964
1965-1967 1968-1970 1971-1975 1976-1980 1981-1985
1986-1990 1991-1995 1996-2000 2001-up
When the Cadillac was first put on the market it created a sensation among
dealers.It was the first machine offered at a moderate price, with power enough to
carry a family. Dealers not not slow in "catching on". Not long before we got to
turning them oput in quantities, our order book as full, our product sold, and dealers
all over the country were trying to get the Cadillac. We failed to fully supply the
demand, although we made and delivered over two thousand machines. This
machine was put to all kind of test from Maine to California. It was raced against
machines of several times its rated power, and pitted against cars of twice and three
times its cost. In hill; climbing contests it proved to be among the very best and far
superior to anything in its class. It did almost every conceivable "stunt" from
climbing the U.S. Capitol 1 steps to pulling a five-ton load of railroad steel up a 4%
gradient at Canton, Ohio.The Cadillac motor is rated at less than most "10 HP
engines", yet we find it delivers more power at point of contact than any 10 H.P.
motor we have seen. It has done the work of a 10 H.P. stationary and with power to
spare. No other machine made that we know of has shown greater actual power than
it was rated at. The Cadillac has all the power necessary, if the operator is skilful
enough to get all out of the engine there is in it.
____________________________________________________
1 It was Cadillac engineer Alanson P. Brush who first demonstrated the climbing power of
the Cadillac by driving a 1902 runabout up the steps of the Detroit County Court House. A
man (with a few drinks under his belt) drove a 1903 runabout, with tonneau, up the U.S.

Capitol steps in Washington, early in 1906. It was good publicity for the firm's products but
they were careful not to mention the booze! [For more "feats" performed by early Cadillacs,
go to this "Facts" page and look under "Reliability Trials"].
The above text is from a magazine advertisement published on February 11, 1904 in The Automobile, a
trade journal from the earliest dayus of the horseless carriage.
From the earliest days of production, the manufacturers of the Cadillac and La Salle automobiles used the
media to advertise their products. In this section you will find a list of some 2000 ads featuring Cadillacs
since 1902 and La Salles since 1927.
Those listed on the "Wanted Ads" page are missing from The (New) Cadillac Database© and good
photocopies or digitally scanned images are sought for reference.
Included in the list are some ads for products other than Cadillac or La Salle automobiles, where the
advertisers have taken advantage of the Cadillac reputation to promote their own particular products.
The "Ads" section of The (New) Cadillac Database© was converted from my original Excel files by
Ken Scherer, who also created the thumbnail links. Later I reviewed the layout and added also the
background image, which is drawn from a contemporary advertisement for the 1998 Cadillac Eldorado
model. For the time being, only the years up to and including 1980 are included. The most recent years
(and a greater selection of images) will follow ...if I ever find the time.
Only the ads of which the ID number is underlined and highlighted in blue currently are visible [click on
those numbers to view the ad in question]. Regrettably, picture quality of illustrated ads sometimes is
mediocre. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner and most of my photography was done a few years ago
with one of the first generation, low-resolution digital cameras. I hope gradually to replace the very poor
images with better ones, but that won't occur until I have uploaded a few representative ads for the first
100 years of Cadillac production.
Images are available for almost all ads in the collection (2000+) but space constraints prevent ads being
pictured full-size and in high definition; nevertheless, the combination of the description (below) and the
medium-sized image [when available] should be adequate to help the ad collector determine if a particular
ad is already in his/her collection or not.
Should any Database user require an image of a specific ad that is not yet on line, I shall gladly send it as
an e-Mail attachment.
Evolution of Cadillac Advertising
It is interesting to note the evolution of Cadillac's advertising themes and its intended demographics.
What sold Cadillacs in the early years was the car's proven durability and reliabilty. From the twenties
through the late sixties, you needed to "be somebody" (preferably with lots of money) if you were to
aspire one day to owing the automobile Standard of the World. In the seventies, Cadillac's copy writers
aimed at a much broader spectrum of potential buyers; in addition to quality, founded on years of
Cadillac's occupying the pole position among US luxury car vendors, volume sales were now the
company's new aspiration.
And what of today's Cadillacs? Well, if you look at the ad for the 2007 Cadillac DTS [an unfortunate
acronym for someone like me whose late alcoholic father suffered from the DTs!], what seems to be most
important is having a "nicely erquipped" car (whatever that means), with new-fangled gizmos like a
"touch-screen, DVD-based, navigation [system] with voice recognition" and an "8-speaker, Bose sound
system with CD/MP3 player."
Cadillac owners used to dream of places like Eldorado [a fabled land of untold riches], Biarritz [a vacation
paradise on France's south-western Atlantic coastline, where Paris' nobility and aristocracy were wont to
enjoy its temperate winters], Seville [capital city of Andalucia, in Spain; in the 16th century, already, Seville
enjoyed the monopoly of all European trade with the New World], Park Avenue [the New York avenue that
any Monopoly player worth his salt aspired to own!].

Contributing Artists
In the following table are listed many of the artists responsible for the stylish advertisements published by
the Cadillac Motor Car Division in newspapers and magazines, nationwide, from the earliest part of the
century until the mid-sixties. At that point in time, photography took over from the paint brush and pen. I
believe it was, in fact, an industry requirement because the manufacturers had gone completely
overboard; the cars that the buying public were viewing on the showroom floors had little in common with
the artists' renditions in both factory marketing literature and advertisements. There had to be a limity
imposed on artistic license!
Many of the signatures on these old ads are totally or partially illegible. The names I have shown in italics
are my best guess in such instances.
Artists
Year(s)
BARCLAY, Unison 1926
BÉNIGNI, L. [French and U.S. ads] 1929
BORZOI Henry (???), "Window ads" in Country Life and
The Sportsman
BOSE, Neal [similar to Pierre Brissaud themes, or
possibly copy?]
1929-30
1930
BRISSAUD, Pierre [see CLC, 4/91, p.7] 1929-30
CHARLESON [?] (La Salle) 1936
CLELAND, T.M. 1928
DOHANOS, Stevan La Salle 1939
FANNELAS (La Salle) 1931
FAWCETT, Robert (La Salle 1931, Cadillac, 1932) 1931-1932
FRED [?] La Salle 1939
GANNAN [?] La Salle 1929
GARDNER, Donald 1923
GODWIN, Frank (?), Karl (?) 1918
GRAFSTROM ? [La Salle] 1936
HARPER, George 1925
HAYDEN, Hayden 1926
HORTER, E.A. 1929
JB (???) 1925
KARL, J. [?] La Salle 1929
LEMON [?] La Salle 1929
LEONARD [?] La Salle 1930
LIDOV, A. ?
MARTY, A.E. (French ads) 1929
McCLELLAND, Barclay 1 1928-29
McMEIN, Neysa 1924
MIZEN, Fred 1918-25
MONIQUE or MOURGUE 1929

QUAIL, Frank 1924
QUAIL, Frank, Jr. [son of above?] (different signatures) 1936
RE-MY [?] La Salle 1928
RICHARDS, Walter 1939
SAKHNOFFSKY, Alexis De [La Salle ad] 1934
SAMULA, I. 1933
SAW [?] [La Salle ads] 1933
SCHMIDT [?] 1919
SMITH, Irwin 1937
TAUCKE, G. 1926
TIMMINS, H.L. 1925
TYLER, W. [?] 1919
URBAN, Joseph 1929
VICKERY, John 1943-45
WHITCOMB, J. 1940
WILSON, Edw. A. [La Salle ads] 1937
1
He also drew ads for the Fisher Body Co.
0476
A sampling of the work of J. Karl
Contributing Jewelers
In the following table are listed many of the jewelers who contributed their talents and their
wares to the successful Cadillac ad campaigns of 1949 through 1957 as well as 1960 through
1962.
Jewelers
CARTIER
LAYKIN & Cie
MAUBUSSON
STARR & GORHAM
TRABERT & HOEFFER
VAN CLEEF & ARPELS
WARREN, Chas. H. & Co.
WINSTON, Harry

1091
Jewels by Harry Winston
Contributing Fashion Designers
In the following table are listed many of the fashion designers who also contributed their talent
and their fashion statements to some successful Cadillac ad campaigns of the fifties and
sixties
Fashion Designers
ARDEN, Elizabeth
BALMAIN, Pierre
BENDEL, Henri
BERGDORF GOODMAN 1
BERHANYER, Elio
CASSINI, Oleg
CARNEGIE, Hattie
CARTER, John
CHAPMAN, Ceil 1
DERBY, Jane
DIOR, Christian
DUSKIN, Nan
GALANOS
GARNETT, Eleanora
GATHE
GRAY, Amelia
HULITAR, Philip
IRENE
LANVIN-CASTILLO
LOUISE, Jean
MAGNIN, I.
NEIMAN MARCUS 1
SAKS 5th [or FIFTH] AVENUE 1
SAARMI [Count]
SCAASI
SIMONETTA
SMALL, Edith
TRAVILLA 1

TRIGERE, Pauline 1
1186
Gowns for mother and daughter by Jane Derby
Places of Interest
The Imperial Palace, Tokyo [1928-29]
La Scala Opera House, Milan [1928-29]
Norrbro Bridge, Stockholm [1928-29]
Paris Opera, Grand Prix Ball [1929]
White House, Washington, D.C. [1929]
Del Monte Lodge [1958]
Greenbrier Hotel, West Virginia [1959]
[ many more to be listed... ]
_______________________________
1
Thanks to the perspicacity of Database user, James R. King, I was able to correct the spelling of many of the fashion
designers mentioned here [I had copied these names from ads of the time but I guess either they were mis-spelled in these ads
or my eyesight is not what it used to be!]
For the record:
- Bergdorf Goodman [not Gomman] - Andrew Goodman was one of the founders of the store - it still exists on 5th Avenue in
New York
- Ceil Chapman (not Cecil) - she was a New York rather than Hollywood designer but was a favorite of Marilyn Monroe. One of
Ceil Chapman's dresses for Marilyn Monroe sold for $100,000 at auction - this was the fairly recent auction where many of
Marilyn's old gowns were sold. I believe there was another Ceil Chapman gown that sold for $30,000 or so.
- Neiman [not Neimann] Marcus - Neiman was the married name of Miss Marcus
- Saks 5th [not Vth] Avenue - is also spelled Saks Fifth Avenue
- Travilla [not Travila] - William Travilla, now deceased; he designed Marilyn Monroe's clothes in most of her early 50s movies
including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
- Pauline Trigère [not Trighere] is very well known in fashion circles - she was recently in Metropolis (a design magazine) in an
article about creative people who are in their 90s; she is still active but has retired from designing clothes; ad 1076 in the listing
("Pueblo by Taos Indians") is a 2-page ad featuring a model wearing a Pauline Trigère ensemble.
Sources of Cadillac and La Salle ads
Here is a list of the magazines and newspapers in which I found most of the ads in the
collection. An abbreviation of the titles is given in the first and third columns (only the
abbreviations will appear in the actual ad listings).

Abbrev. Name Abbrev. Name
A&D Art and Decoration IND Independent
AFD
American Funeral
Director
L
Life
AHB
Australian Home
Beautiful
LD
Literary Digest
AM American Motorist LK Look
ANJ Army and Navy Journal LPI
Le Patriote Illustré
[Belgium]
AR
Automobile Revue
[Switz.]
M
Motor
ASIA "Asia" magazine MAD Mad Magazine 1
AT Automobile Topics MCL McLure's
ATM Atlantic Monthly MUN Munsey's Magazine
AUT The Automobiley NB Nation's Business
BHG
Better Homes and
Gardens
NG
National Geographic
C&S Casket & Sunnyside NW Newsweek
CEN Century NY New Yorker
CO Current Opinion P Punch
COL Collier's PEO :People
COS Cosmopolitan PPB Pennsylvania Punch Bowl
CG
(The) Country
Gentleman
[PR]
[in book by Peter Ruch]
CL Country Life SA Scientific American
CR
(The) Crest [Cadillac inhouse
magazine]
SCR
Scribner's
DMN Detroit Motor News SEP Saturday Evening Post
ESQ Esquire SMI Smithsonian
FOB Forbes SNP
Sun News Pictorial
Melbourne, Australia
FOR Fortune SPRT (The) Sportsman
H Home SUN Sunset magazine
HB House Beautiful TM Time
HBZ Harper's Bazaar TT Table Talk
HIC
Hearst's International
Cosmopolitan
TTT
Tower Town Topics,
Chicago
HG House and Garden ULT Ultra
HOL Holiday USN U.S. News
HM Harper's Magazine VF Vanity Fair
HR Hot Rod VO Vogue

HW Harper's Weekly WWA World's Work Advertiser
GH
ILL
ILLi
Good Housekeeping
L'Illustration (France)
L'Illustrazione Italiana
(Italy)
1 Mad magazine ran a spoof of the 1961 Cadillac ads on its rear cover, in September, 1965
Notes for Users
1. I have tried to divide up the ads into logical groups, for example the single-cylinder models,
the early four-cylinder models, the new four-cylinder Model "Thirty", the V8 Types 51 through
V-63, the V8 Series 314 through 355, the V12s, the V16s, etc. Basically, however, they are listed
in chronological order by year and actual month or date when known. Please click on a box, in
the table below, to view the list of ads available for your preferred Cadillac model year(s).
2. The individual listings lists include the following columns: (1) the number of the ad in my
collection 1 , (2) an indication whether it is a B&W image [blank box] or in full color [box marked
"C"], (3) the year, month or precise date of publication of the ad, when such is known, (4) the
title or headline on the ad or the introductory words of the promotional text, (5) an indication of
the Cadillac or La Salle model(s) displayed [if any], (6) the source of the ad when such is known
(abbreviation). In the last column are the numbers of any footnotes; these are explained at the
foot of each listing.
3. Advertisements in a language other than English are listed in italics. Many La Salle ads
include a title in a foreign language (usually French); the titles of these ads also are shown in
italics.
4. Only a representative selection of images of ads in the collection is currently on line; where
the number of the ad (in the LH column) is highlighted and underlined, clicking on that number
will bring up an image large enough to see the essential graphics. Space limitations prevent
my displaying larger, high-resolution images enabling users to read the actual text of each ad
(better a small image, even of poor quality, than no image at all, right?)
5. Don't be fooled by the poor quality of some of the images: the ORIGINAL ads in the
collection all are EXCELLENT. I photographed the earliest selections with one of the first
Olympus digital cameras I bought in PA, back in 1997; image quality, therefore, is not up to
today's standards.
6. The La Salle automobile, built by Cadillac from 1927 up to and including 1940, was also the
object of an equally impressive advertising campaign. Click here for a listing of the La Salle
ads in the collection.
7. Note that there is an interesting Article on Cadillac advertisements in the magazine
"MOBILIA", for February 1994, by Ken Ruddock of "Memory Lane Automobilia", Shartlesville,
PA.

Typical La Salle ad of 1933
___________________________________
1 The ad listings were prepared already in 1983-84; new additions since that time are given a letter, "a", "b", "c",
etc. to avoid breaking the original numerical sequence.
( résumé en français)
Dès 1902 les fabricants de la Cadillac firent appel aux medias pour vanter la qualité de leurs
produits. Dans ces pages vous pourrez consulter une liste d'environ 2000 pubs illustrant les
voitures Cadillac dès 1902 ainsi que les La Salle de 1927 à 1940. Pour savoir ce qui disaient des
Cadillac et La Salle les publicistes francophones de l'époque, cliquez ici.
On trouvera également dans ces listes, des pubs vantant des produits autres que les
automobiles Cadillac, produits pour lesquels les publicistes ont choisi à bon escient de faire
figurer une ou plusieurs Cadillac. La Cadillac fait vendre, tout le monde le sait!
Les pubs qui figurent dans la liste "Wanted" [recherchées] manquent à la collection et je
souhaiterais en trouver de bonnes copies, ou des images numerisées, de façon à compléter ce
chapitre.
A l'heure actuelle seules les pubs de 1902 à 1970 ont été prises en compte. D'autres viendront
s'ajouter lorsque je trouverai le temps.
Dans les tableaux ci-dessus on retrouvera la liste des nombreux artistes-publicistes à qui l'on
doit la plupart des pubs d'avant la 2e guerre mondiale, de même que les joailliers et maisons de
mode qui ont prêté leurs créations à certaines de ces campagnes publicitaires. Dans le dernier
tableau, ci-dessus, figure également la liste des revues dans lesquelles sont parues les pubs
citées (l'abbréviation seule est utilisée sur les listings).
En arrière-plan des pages consacrées aux pubs Cadillac figure un montage réalisé à partir d'une
pub pour la Cadillac Eldorado, modèle 1998. Elle est superposée sur l'aile arrière d'une Cadillac
Eldorado de l'année 1960.
Cadillac Advertisements

(main sub-sections)
The Pre-WW2 Period
(1902-1945)
1902-1908 1909-1914 1915-1917 1918-1919 1920-1921
1922-1923 1924-1925 1926-1927 1927-1929 1930-1931
1930-1931 1932-1934 1935-1940 1941-1945 La Salle ads
1946-1949 1950-1954 1955-1958 1959-1960 1961-1964
1965-1967 1968-1970 1971-1975 1976-1980 1981-1985
1986-1990 1991-1995 1996-2000 2001-up
La Salle Advertisements
1927 through 1940
1927-1928 1929-1931 1932-1937 1938-1940
Montage, with sample ads and a 1:18 scale toy
from my former collection
Return to The (New) Cadillac Database© Index Page
© 1996, Yann Saunders and the Cadillac-LaSalle Club, Inc.
[ Background image: 1998 ad for the Eldorado model ]
This Web page was prepared by Ken Scherer, USA and subsequently modified and updated by Yann Saunders