[ last update: 12.19.2014]

The (new) Cadillac Database^©

The Cadillac V-16

Series 452-452A
1930-1931

Part 1j(i)
Production Records

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This description of the new Cadillac Sixteen [the first production automobile to be equipped with a sixteen-cylinder engine] is from the 1930 London Motor Show catalog :

 

It must have been quite a thrill to come across the V-16 exhibit at any of the major, annual motor shows in the thirties.  But in those bleak years following the Wall Street crash in Black October, 1929, few people could afford a car, never mind a Cadillac and even less one with a sixteen-cylinder engine.  

By October 1930, production of the sixteen had begun to dwindle in the wake of   the worst depression in US history.  From a high of 576 units a month in April it dropped to  54 units in October, a mere 10% of the former figure.  Yet the V-16 survived for another 10 years, albeit in very small numbers.

Who could afford such luxury, such prestige in the mid-thirties? Who were these buyers?  Who dared flaunt such wealth in the USA, as the infamous bread lines grew longer and longer?

In 50 years as an admirer of these super-models, only once did I ever talk to someone who could claim to have had a new V-16 in the family. This was Al Brander, an auto enthusiast of Phoenix, AZ.  The car  was bought new by his grandmother and Al's own mother had learned to drive at its wheel !

As a matter of interest [and we shall go into details in subsequent chapters] only fifty-odd V-16 models found buyers each year in the period from 1934 through 1937. 

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to list and illustrate all the sixteen-cylinder models ever built, in ascending order of rarity.  That way, if you've got one, you can exclaim either, "Hey, I've got one of the rarest V-16s ever built", or, "Hey, they didn't make many cars like mine", or "Oh, heck, I thought I had myself a rare car but they made more than 500 of them!"

On that (failed) attempt at humor, seriously, if you have a sixteen-cylinder car, no matter what year, no matter which model, you are a very fortunate and equally discerning individual.  Don't let anyone, least of all me, try to tell you that your car is just a "regular", "standard" or "mass-produced" V-16.

The Fleetwood designers had other, fancy, high-falutin' names for most of the models listed below;  I have chosen to use body styling descriptions with which I expect most Database users are familiar.  For example, do you know what is an Imperial Landau cabriolet ? No ?  Well, its just a limousine (a car with a glass division), featuring a leather-covered roof, part of which folds back behind the rear passenger seating area.

As an interesting aside, I should mention here the "M-D-B Scientific (?) Expedition", named after three men who organized and participated in it :  H.L. Menke, H.M.F. Behneman and C.J. Dixon. Their purpose was primarily to enjoy a vacation but also to demonstrate the reliability and endurance of the new sixteen by taking a used one (owned by Menke, the tour promoter) on a grand tour of the USA, from San Francisco to New Orleans (by boat from New Orleans to Havana, Cuba, and back to Miami, from Miami to New York and from New York to San Francisco.

The trip was made in 24 days. The trio had not set out to better any land speed records but simply to cover the distance in total comfort).  On the 10,000-mile journey the only maintenance required was to change a spark plug, adjust the ignition and burn off some built-up carbon deposits.

A full report on the "Expedition" was published in the in-house magazine, The Cadillac-LaSalle Service Man for July 15, 1931.

 

How many different body styles
were actually built on the V-16 chassis

The Fleetwood catalog of models for 1930-31 came with an envelope containing 20-30 designer's drawings of proposed body styles.  It appears that the number and variety of designs could vary from one envelope to another.  At this writing the experts are agreed that more than sixty different designs by Fleetwood were effectively built around the eleven basic body styles described in the table, below [LH column].

 

I have listed in the next pages, in numerical sequence and in ascending order of their rarity, the majority of Fleetwood and Fisher designs built on the Series 452-452A sixteen-cylinder chassis from December 1929 up to February 1932.  I got copies of most of the Fleetwood designer drawings at auction on e-Bay, in 2001.  The vendor, it turned out, was Craig Watrous, a fellow CLC member and V-16 enthusiast like me. I am guessing the majority of them are from an in-house Fleetwood book, probably dated early in 1932;  indeed, none of the early Madame X cars with the vertical, "V" windshield are included; on the other hand, there are four designs there for the Series 452-B sixteen of 1932.

In this listing, the style numbers shown in italics, followed by the letter "D", in brackets, indicate a "duplicate" designer's drawing that is over-written with inner and outer body dimensions. Those that are struck through, like this: "4211",   indicate that no single unit of this style was actually built. Those in italics followed by the letter "O", in brackets, indicate again a duplicate line drawing showing an open car with the top lowered, or a town car with the chauffeur's canopy in place, or a landaulet style with the rear roof portion folded back. Those followed by the letter "V", in brackets, indicate the  Madame X  models with the almost vertical, "V" windshield and split instrument panel, built at the old Fleetwood shops in Pennsylvania, prior to May 1930.

 

Those appearing in red type are drawings of styles NOT included in the selection of copies I got from Craig but that we know were effectively built. These are from my own collection and that of a fellow Cadillac sales literature enthusiast, Z. Taylor Vinson of Washington, DC.

Eliminating "O" and "D" versions, mentioned above, plus the four 1932 designs also included in the selection I got from Craig (viz. styles 5112 [Fisher #32-16-225], 5175S [Fisher #32-16-212], 5180 [none of which ever reached production] and 5181 [Fisher #32-16-222]), the total number of styles effectively built in 1930 and 1931 [and which I have highlighted in green] comes to a staggering sixty-nine¹. 

Here is that selection (BTW, many styles were built also on the V-8 and V-12 chassis, so you might want to multiply the total by three !): 2950X, 3289A, 3289B, 3981, 3991, 4108C, 4130, 4130 (D),  4130 (V), 4130S, 4130S (D), 4130S (V), 4155, 4155 (D), 4155 (V), 4155C, 4155S, 4155S (D), 4155S (V), 4155SC, 4161, 4161S, 4161S (D), 4161SC, +sure], 4200, 4200 (D), 4205, 4206, 4206 (D), 4207, 4207 (D), 4208, 4208 (D), 4210, 4211, 4212, 4212 (D), 4212 (O), 4212C, 4213, 4214², 4214 (O), 4218, 4220, 4220 (O), 4220B, 4220C, 4225, 4225 (D), 4225 (O), 4225C, 4235, 4235 (D), 4235 (O), 4248, 4257, 4257A, 4257H, 4257H (D), 4260, 4260 (D), 4260 [dual cowl], 4260 [dual cowl] (D), 4260A, 4260A (D), 4262, 4264, 4264 (D), 4264 (O), 4264B, 4264B (D), 4264B (O), 4264B [with cane work], 4275, 4275 (D), 4275C, 4276, 4276 (D), 4280, 4280 (D), 4280 (O), 4280A, 4285, 4285 (D), 4291, 4291 (D), 4291 (O), 4291C, 4302, 4302 (D), 4312, 4312 (D), 4312 (O), 4312C, 4320, 4320 (D), 4320 (O), 4320C, 4325, 4325 (D), 4325 (O), 4325C, 4330, 4330 (D), 4330C, 4330S, 4330S (D), 4330SC, 4335, 4335 (D), 4335 (O), 4355, 4355 (D), 4355S, 4355S (D), 4355C, 4355SC, 4361, 4361 (D), 4361C, 4361S, 4361S (D), 4361SC, 4375, 4375 (D), 4375C, 4375S, 4375S (D), 4375SC, 4376, 4376 (D), 4380, 4380 (D), 4380 (O-1), 4380 (O-2), 4381, 4381 (D), 4391, 4391 (D), 4391 (O), 4391C, 4412, 4476, 4476 (D).
______________________________
¹  By comparison, at the dawn of the new millennium, Cadillac automobile styles [I have deliberately excluded trucks and
    SUVs from this comparison since none were available on the V-16 chassis  -  and what a shame that must have been for
    the moneyed  outdoorsmen of their day!]  were down from an incredible SIXTY-NINE designs on the V-16 chassis alone
    for 1930-31,  to only FOUR: the De Ville, the Seville, the Catera and the Eldorado.  In 2004, the number of designs rose
    to FIVE, despite the (welcome) demise of the Catera and the unfortunate disappearance of the Eldorado]. Indeed, we have
    now these acronymic novelties on the manufacturer's catalog XLR, SRX, CTS.  What fabulous places do the names
    Excelar, Essarex and Seetee-Ess conjure up for YOU ? I much prefer Eldorado, Biarritz,  Seville, Park Avenue...
²   This looks like the cane-work version of style 4264B although the rear body is longer

If any users have one (or more) of the cars listed here and would like me to show a photo of it in the V-16 "Survivors"  section of The (New) Cadillac Database ©, please drop me an e-Mail:

 

Production figures of
the 1930-31 Cadillac V-16
[in ascending order of rarity]

 

The majority of photos were supplied graciously, over a number of years,
by Cadillac's Public Relations Department as well as by members of the
Cadillac-La Salle Club, Inc., owners or photographers of surviving cars

[the larger, improved images added in November, 2009 are cropped from a photographic showroom album
in the exceptional automobile literature collection of the late Z. Taylor Vinson of Alexandria, VA]

 

Regular Production Models
with Coachwork by
Fleetwood and Fisher

¹  The Fisher styling codes consist of  1 to 4 digits;  however, in the thirties, it was customary for Fisher to include also the year [in this case "30"] and, sometimes, the number of cylinders [i.e. "8", "12" or "16"].  A typical Fisher body tag on the 1930 V-16 would show the style number or styling code  as "30-168" or "30-16-168".  I have chosen to show only the last part of that code, as it corresponds to the numbers listed in the Database section devoted to the Fisher body coding system.

²  It was previously believed that this car had been exported to Europe; that belief was dispelled when a larger photo of the car was published in 2003, in the superb coffee table book, Cadillac - 100 Years of Innovation, by Angelo Van Bogart, where the Ontario (Canada) license tags are perfectly visible.

Luxurious interior of 1930-31 Fleetwood style #4375, 7-pass. limousine      Regular instrument panel (left); split panel of Pennsylvania-built enclosed cars (right) 1930-31 Dash panel - Detroit cars

Continued in Part 2

 

Return to The (New) Cadillac Database © Index Page
or to the "V-16" index page

© 1996, Yann Saunders and the Cadillac-LaSalle Club, Inc.
[ Background image: Fleetwood designer's drawing of style 4375, the most common V-16 of 1930-31 ]