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Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the
Henry Ford Company when
Henry Ford departed along with several of his key partners.
With the intent of liquidating the firm's assets, Ford's
financial backers,
William Murphy and
Lemuel Bowen called in engineer
Henry M. Leland to appraise the plant and equipment prior to
selling them. Instead, Leland persuaded them to continue in the
automobile business. Henry Ford's departure required a new name,
and on
August 22,
1902,
the company reformed as the Cadillac Automobile Company.
The Cadillac automobile was named after the 17th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan in 1701.