New Motor Car

Window trimmers, decorating showrooms last week for the Cadillac Spring Salon, teetered around a new motorcar. Salesmen studied its points: plenty of nickel plate; narrow, high radiator; low, elliptical lines; 8-cylinder, V-type motor; 125-in. wheelbase; six body types-- roadster, phaeton, coupe, convertible coupe, victoria and sedan. It looked like a Cadillac slightly reduced in size. It was just that--designedly the "companion car to Cadillac." And, like the Cadillac, this new model is being built by President Lawrence P. Fisher of the Cadillac Motor Car Co. for General Motors. He is one of six brothers who, leaving their father's blacksmith shop in Norwalk, Ohio, to build motor car (Fisher) bodies, have won high positions in the General Motors organization.* General Motors officials pondered long over a name for this new model. They knew the price--$2,495 to $2,685. In fact, corporation engineers had built this new car to meet the price, and so to fill the price gap in General Motors' group. Chevrolet is the cheapest. Then by even increase of sales price come Pontiac (made by Oakland), Oldsmobile, Oakland, Buick Standard 6 and Buick Master 6; then a long jump to Cadillac, which sells for from $2,995 to $8,985.

Out of cogitations and conferences came, by easy mental association, the name of Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur de LaSalle. The Cadillac, General Motors' pride, had been named for Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who in the 18th Century established Detroit. He was King Louis XIV's Governor of Louisiana Territory, but the man who had explored and named that territory a few years before was the intrepid, swashbuckling Sieur de LaSalle. In his name were connotations of reverence, dash, finesse. Therefore the new General Motors car is called the LaSalle.

*The six are, according to age, Fred J., Will, Alfred, Charles, Lawrence P. and Edward.