Fleetwood

In the late twenties it was considered a status symbol to drive an automobile with a coach-built body. In those days, many wealthy US customers thought nothing of spending from $10,000 to $20,000 for a custom or semi-custom body. By acquiring a majority interest in the Fleetwood coach building facilities in 1925, and introducing lacquer painting in the Pennsylvania plant that same year, Fisher hoped to corner part of that lucrative market.

The following year (1926) General Motors ear-marked funds for their own "multi-cylinder" engine project. There was a niche to be filled for custom and semi-custom automobiles powered by a smoother engine, delivering increased horsepower with little or no vibration. Lawrence ["Larry"] Fisher, then Cadillac chief, recruited Owen Milton Nacker, an experienced engine designer who had previously discussed the feasibility of a V16 motor with Howard C. Marmon.

Research on General Motors' "Sixteen" project began in 1926 All this was done in great secrecy under cover of a phony project to construct a multi-cylinder motor for a line of imaginary busses, and an equally "phony" project [at that time] for a 12-cylinder motor (the latter project did materialize, nonetheless, in the Autumn of 1930 when Cadillac introduced its new multi-cylinder motor for the already popular line of 1930 models).

Fisher met Harley Earl also in 1926, during a nation-wide tour of Cadillac dealerships. So impressed was he by Earl's designs on the Cadillac chassis for the Don Lee dealership in San Francisco that he offered him a consulting job in Detroit that same year. Earl and Fisher traveled to Europe in the Fall of 1927 to study European auto styling in greater detail. Many wood and clay mock-ups were built up, in 1928, following their return from that successful European tour. That was also the year when Earl created GM's Art & Color Section which, later, became the Styling Section.

From the drawing boards of Earl's team were to materialize some of the most beautiful automobile bodies of the twenties and thirties, not the least of which was Cadillac's "baby sister", the La Salle, introduced and enthusiastically received in 1927. There is no doubting that Earl's visits to Europe and his admiration for the work of many European coach builders inspired and influenced his own later creations. Hispano Suiza and Isotta Fraschini were but two among the many European marques from which he "borrowed" (presumably with no intention of ever returning) many styling features of the Cadillac "V16".

It is surmised that several V16 cars and engines were built and tested between 1927 and 1929. It is believed also that several were ordered already in 1929 by Cadillac and GM executives who had been appraised of its coming.

In 1929 the Fleetwood facility in the town of Fleetwood, PA, built $10,000,000 worth of bodies for Cadillac and La Salle1. On September 3 that year the stock market peaked, setting off massive selling one month later, resulting in the infamous Wall Street crash of October 1929.

Despite a mild recovery in mid-November, there was to be a further plunge in mid-1930. It was during these austere, ominous times that Fisher announced to the world the coming of the costliest of all Cadillacs: the new sixteen-cylinder cars. The V16's debut had been set for the Fall of 1929. It was delayed up to the end of the year. Its arrival was broadcast on the radio in December 1929.

Simultaneously, Fisher, informed Cadillac dealership's nationwide, by a circular letter of 10 December, 1929, that the new car was now available.

A crowd some 20,000 strong, elbowed to catch a glimpse of the new "Supercar" at the New York auto show when it premiered at the Astor Hotel on January 4, 1930. The car received rave reviews. Two sixteen-cylinder cars had been made ready in time for the 1930 show season. The first was a sixteen-cylinder version of the eight-cylinder Cadillac Madame X landaulet, a custom job that Harley Earl had designed in 1929. It was an almost replica of Earl's original "Madame X", except for its new, longer hood with individual louver doors in lieu of the multiple vertical louvers used on the V8 models of 1929 and 1930. This first V16 Madame X model was built at the old Fleetwood plant in the town of Fleetwood, PA.

It was designated an Imperial-Landaulet, and given Fleetwood Job number #4108C3. Subsequently, all enclosed, sixteen-cylinder models with four doors (sedans, limousines and landaulets), whether fitted in Fleetwood, PA, with the almost vertical "V" windshield or in Detroit, MI, with the flat, 18º slanting windshield, became known as the Madame X cars. The regular "sixteens" were built on West Fort Street (later renamed Fleetwood).

When Fleetwood closed down its operations in Pennsylvania in the Spring of 1930, production of the Madame X cars was moved to the Chevrolet Annex, behind the GM building; they were painted across the street in the so-called Research Building.

A total of four similar cars were built before production of the Fleetwood "imperial landaulet" was moved to Detroit, in the Spring of 1930 [Fleetwood continued some of its operations at it's Pennsylvania plant through December 1930]. The Detroit-built imperial landaulets for 5 passengers were assigned the standard Fleetwood styling code #4155C. Ten of the latter were built. They got a new, flat windshield, raked at an angle of 18 degrees, as well as a new instrument panel.

(source: CarNection)