cadillac
Kathy McCormick left this question in a comment on the Typography post:
I have a friend that has been trying to figure out what year this Cadillac emblem is from. I have spent hours on the web trying to help him out to no avail. Maybe you can help. I’m thinking the style looks like something popular in the 20′s or early 30′s but that is just a guess.
I usually make a point to look up and answer these kinds of questions myself, but I’m running a bit late tonight. Anyway, it’s worth just looking at if you don’t know the answer, Although I know someone will.
This looks very “art deco” to me and strikes me as being late 1920s-late 1930s. Unfortunately, I have wasted more time than I should today googling images, and have come up dry. Maybe some of our industrial-designer-types will have more luck here.
Someone with more time & patience than I might be able to find something similar for sale on EBay. Unfortunately, a search on EBay for “Cadillac emblem” comes up with thousands of hits.
I too have been looking for a long time and I come up blank. I agree with your guess because of the art deco look to it, but I’ve never seen it written that way
Someone will probably get to it here first, but I will post this in my Cadillac LaSalle Club and one of the older guys will def have a definitive answer soon. I’ll post the reply here as soon it comes thru.
Kind of reminds me of the script on the front of the famous Casa de Cadillac building in LA. area. A quick google search shows that Casa De Cadillac was originally Don Lee Cadillac and there is a 1949 post card with with Don Lee Cadillac listed on the building. The Don Lee part was block letters but the Cadillac was in the same script that it still is on that building today
I came up empty, too, but would guess this is late 1930s or early 1940s based on the similarity to the hood badge from those years:
I’d suspect that if anyone finds out what this is, it’ll turn out not to be off a Cadillac car.
Part of the “Welcome to Cadillac, Michigan” sign?
In any event, it may not be a car script at all, because it’s too flat, and auto script is generally more well-formed in relief. GEOZINGER might have a clue, as he’s an artist – much more so than me.
Probably from a building or something. Perhaps even a brand name of some appliance, life a vacuum or something.
Hey Zackman! Thanks for the shout out!
Unfortunately, I’m sitting down after work looking at this and the mystery has been solved.
No lie, I was going to guess 1940’s era, I know I’ve seen this script before… But, Driver8/Mark got it figured out, so “no worries”!
This is Mark, from earlier here (I finally joined up on the site after years of lurking/reading from the outside :)…
Anyhow, I got a reply from my Cadillac Club, a Senior member who owns a couple 1940’s Cadillacs.
He said that the emblem is def from a 39/40 (possibly a couple other model years), Cadillac under-dash heater unit.
Hope this helps. Mark~
Thank you; I’ll forward this to Kathy. That makes sense too, as it’s clearly not a script from the outside of any Cadillac that I’m familiar with.
Hey! I mentioned “appliance”! Does an in-car heater count?
Ta Daaaaaaaaa!! I found the image on the original part for you.
http://www.caddydaddy.com/1939-Cadillac-Under-Dash-Heater-Unit-p1927.html
Enjoy! Mark~
Great work! Thanks.