1929 Cadillac 341B Fisher 7-passenger Imperial Sedan in Calumet Blue and black / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
I found an auction listing for this 1929 Cadillac Imperial limousine while looking for pictures for a different article, and while I only ended up using one photo of the car in that post, I thought this handsome relic of Jazz Age luxury deserved a closer look.
1929 Cadillac 341B / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
If pre-WW2 Classics aren’t your area of expertise, the first thing you probably ask on seeing a car like this is probably, “Okay, so what is it?” Most cars of this era were available in a dizzying array of body styles, some hard to tell apart without careful inspection, some so different it’s hard to believe they share the same chassis.
1929 Cadillac 341-B Fisher 7-passenger Imperial sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The blue car (Calumet Blue with a black roof) is a 1929 Series 341-B, which identifies the chassis, wearing body style 8630, which is a seven-passenger Imperial Sedan, a formal sedan with a divider window. This was the most expensive of the less-lavish Fisher Body styles, with a base price of $3,895, $600 more than the rumble seat convertible coupe shown below:
1929 Cadillac 341B Fisher 2/4-passenger convertible coupe / Corey Escobar — RM Sotheby’s
If you use an inflation adjustment calculator, it’ll tell you that price is the equivalent of about $72,800 in May 2025, which undersells how much money that was for most people in 1929. MeasuringWorth estimates its “relative worth” as $147,119, which is probably closer to the mark. For comparison, you could get a pretty nice 1929 Ford Model A Town Sedan for $695 (a relative worth of about $26,251).
1929 Cadillac 341 cu. in. L-head V-8 / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
You might be aware that in the ’30s, Cadillac offered a range of spectacular 12- and 16-cylinder engines. This isn’t one of those, which were still a year or so in the future. In 1929, Cadillac had only a V-8, an L-head engine displacing about 341 cubic inches (5,578 cc) — hence the “341” part of the model designation — and making about 90 hp. That wasn’t bad for 1929, but even the lightest Cadillac body style had a shipping weight of almost 4,700 lb, and an Imperial Sedan weighed at least 5,180 lb, not including fuel or other fluids.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
On the plus side, Cadillac now had a Silent Synchro-Mesh three-speed transmission with synchronization between second and third, so the chauffeur didn’t have to worry so much about being fired for grinding the gears.
I say “chauffeur” because this was very definitely a limousine, with a glass divider between the passenger compartment and the front seat. The driver got a plain black leather bench, which wasn’t adjustable.
1929 Cadillac 341-B 7-passenger Imperial sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
One consolation was that the driver’s compartment was at least enclosed. Some of the fancier Fleetwood styles Cadillac offered, like the Transformable Town Cabriolet (below), forced the driver to sit out in the rain, just to show off the owner’s wealth.
1929 Cadillac 341B Fleetwood Transformable Town Cabriolet / Bob Abbott — CCCA
The paying customers sat in the rear seat, which was well-padded and upholstered in mohair velvet or broadcloth, with a folding footrest. The gold rope is an assist cord, to help a passenger extract themselves from the seat with some dignity.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
For safety, the divider window that limited the chauffeur’s ability to eavesdrop (which could be lowered with the crank) was now Security-Plate safety glass, as were all the windows on 1929 Cadillacs.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The rope on the divider was a robe cord, for carrying a lap robe — essentially a big, luxurious blanket to keep rear passengers from freezing to death. A heater was still an extra-cost option (about $32), and it wasn’t very effective. Below the robe cord were two folding jump seats, which were what differentiated the seven-passenger Imperial from the $150 cheaper five-passenger version. They were intended for maids, footmen, or maybe bodyguards:
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The signor and signora in back got fancy ashtrays on the quarter panels, which the dealer guide describes as having “oxidized silver finish, with oval escutcheon plates inset with Catalin stone” …
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
… and a bud vase behind each rear side window:
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
Incidentally, car radios were available in 1929, but they weren’t yet offered as factory equipment at Cadillac, I think because the wiring and antenna installation were too complicated. A Cadillac dealer could presumably have arranged an installation, which on an Imperial Sedan like this would probably have been in the rear compartment.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
For a car this size — the wheelbase was a whopping 140 inches — there wasn’t much luggage space. The trunk was really a trunk, carried on a folding rack. You paid $25 for the rack, and the trunk itself ranged from $60 to $100.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
You also paid extra for the side mounts and spare tires (a set of six wire wheels ran an extra $250 over the standard wooden wheels), and for the tire-mounted side mirrors (an extra $30).
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The other big questions people are likely to have about this are, “How do you even start it?” and “Is it hard to drive?” I can’t claim to have driven a car of this vintage, but the owner’s manual suggests that you could drive a 1929 Cadillac almost like a later car. The accelerator, brake, and clutch work in a fairly orthodox manner. As mentioned, second and third gear were now synchronized, and there were huge four-wheel drums (new and improved for 1929, though still mechanical), so you could stop reasonably well within the limits of the car’s performance.
However, figuring out where the minor controls were located might take a bit of study for a modern driver — for instance, the light controls were on the steering wheel along with the hand throttle:
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The dashboard, finished in black Duco lacquer with nickeled moldings around the gauges, was full of minor controls the manual assured were only occasionally necessary, like the manual spark control (usually only needed to adjust for low-octane fuel).
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
Starting, especially with a cold engine, could be a bit of a project. The ignition lock was separate from the ignition switch (which was on the other side of the instrument panel), and the actual electric starter motor was controlled by a pedal to the right of the accelerator.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
The bigger challenge was that if the engine was cold, you had to pull out and hold the carburetor enrichment button (the black knob to the left of the odometer) while cranking the engine, and set the hand throttle high enough to keep the engine from stalling before it warmed up. Also, there was a manual control on the dashboard to open the carburetor heat riser. The manual describes the starting procedure like this:
- Make sure that the transmission control lever is in neutral. [In cold weather, the manual also recommended releasing the clutch, although it wasn’t strictly required.]
- Place the throttle lever about one-fourth the way down from the idling position.
- See that the carburetor heat control lever is all the way toward “Heat On.”
- Switch on the ignition.
- Unless the engine is still warm, pull back the carburetor enriching button and hold it back. If the engine is still warm, do not pull back the enriching button unless the engine fails to start on the normal mixture.
- Push the starter pedal forward and hold it until the engine starts. Release it immediately as soon as the engine starts.
- Let the carburetor enriching button partly in as soon as the engine starts, and all the way in as soon as the engine is warm enough to permit it.
- Note whether pressure is indicated on the oil pressure gauge and stop the engine at once if no pressure is indicated.
- Move the throttle lever up to the idling position as soon as the engine is warm enough to permit it.
Over the next few years, Cadillac would gradually automate more of these functions, with a starter button instead of a pedal and automatic enrichment controls. The above procedure probably wasn’t TOO bad, but you can see why some owners would have been happier to leave all that fuss to the chauffeur.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
Although it definitely looks more modern than a Model T Ford, this Cadillac doesn’t yet have independent front suspension or hydraulic brakes, and for all its craftsmanship, the body still has a lot of wood framing beneath its metal skin, which Fisher Body considered quieter and more solid than all-steel construction.
1929 Cadillac 341B 7-passenger Imperial Sedan / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
Cars like this 1929 Cadillac were still in an interesting transitional period. They were rapidly becoming easier to operate and easier to handle, with fewer of the arcane rituals required by older cars. They were still fairly primitive, but they were increasingly self-conscious of their limitations, which cars in this class were beginning to paper over with gadgets.
The hood ornament cost an extra $12 on a 1929 Cadillac / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
For at least 60 years, it’s been common for automotive pundits to complain about encroaching technology: Road tests of the ’60s and ’70s seemed to complain about every new warning light or automated convenience, and today, we’re beset by touchscreens and electronics. If there was one real overriding difference about the cars of 90 to 100 years ago, it was that back then, carmakers — and a lot of car buyers — were positively straining for modernity. If you’d told the average Cadillac buyer that in not too many years, the cars would have automatic chokes and self-shifting transmissions, I think their reaction would have been, “Oh, thank g*d.” It wasn’t a love of technology for its own sake, but an awareness that the state of the art was still lagging behind both need and demand. Catching up would take another decade.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1925 Ford Model T – A Short Encounter With A Century-Old Legend (by Steve Lenius)
Auction Classic: The Rapid Evolution Of American Cars, part 1 of 4 1903-1912 (by Jon Stephenson)
Auction Classic: The Rapid Evolution Of American Cars, part 2 of 4 – 1914-1919 (by Jon Stephenson)
The Rapid Evolution Of American Cars, Part 3 of 4: 1920-1930 (by Jon Stephenson)
Auction Classics: The Rapid Evolution Of American Cars, Part 4 of 4 1931-1939 (by Jon Stephenson)
Curbside Classic: 1929 Ford Model A – The Best Ford Ever – Maybe Even The Best Car Ever (by Paul N)
Museum Classic: 1929 Auburn Cabin Speedster (by Kevin Martin)
1929 Cadillac/LaSalle Synchro-Mesh Transmission – “Shifting Is Made Simple And Clashing Of Gears Is Ended” (by me)
“For at least 60 years, it’s been common for automotive pundits to complain about encroaching technology: Road tests of the ’60s and ’70s seemed to complain about every new warning light or automated convenience”
I recently read a review – I don’t remember by whom or in what publication, maybe SCI – I think of the first Thunderbird, in which the author spent several paragraphs whining about “the gook boys” adding useless fripperies like electric windshield wipers, side mirrors, and heaters.
It’s also possible to find articles consistently from the ’50s onward regularly declaring the end of shade-tree mechanics. And yet.
Starting procedure not much different than starting my ’49 Chevy pickup. All of which amounts to anti-theft for today’s driver.
Any car with a manual gearbox and a carb has pretty much all of those steps.
Interesting that it also includes the optional step of releasing the clutch. I’ve always been aware that it is marginally better to start a car with the clutch down, as you have a little bit less mass for the starter to spin. Very marginal, as most of the work that a starter motor does is overcoming compression
The owner’s manual discusses the latter point in some detail. Cadillac recommended releasing the clutch when starting in the cold not because of the additional rotating mass, but because of the additional fluid drag of the cold transmission oil. They said this was not significant when everything was fairly warm, but in cold weather, it would add to the load on the starter, which would increase the risk of running down the battery if the engine didn’t start immediately.
A point I thought was interesting was the manual control for the carburetor heat riser. The manual recommended leaving it on most of the time, but noted that in extended running at higher speeds, you could turn it off, which would give a bit more power.
That is interesting about the riser. I have a 1932 Chevy owners manual, unfortunately not immediately to hand, but it says to push the carburetor heat control in (off) as soon as possible, I think? Hmm.
My 66 petrol car starts the same way richen the mixture crank the engine ignition on, of the hundreds of petrol/carb driven cars Ive owned or driven that is starting procedure it hasnt changed, Controls on the steering wheel still feature today on modern cars, marking them as to what that button does has improved but for all intents and purposes that old Caddy would be easy to drive.
My parents had a near mint ’31 Cadillac in the early Fifties. It was just an anachronistic, impractical old car then. The problem was my mom couldn’t turn the steering wheel (so she said). Maybe if it was moving, but parking was impossible. These cars didn’t have the slow steering of later Detroit iron, which was good if you were strong enough, I guess. But by modern standards, they’re like driving a truck.
The steering ratio is listed as about 15 to 1, so in a 5,000+ lb car with no power assist, that would probably take some arm strength, yeah.
It makes me wonder, as someone who definitely bemoans the demise of the manual transmission, were there a similar group of “enthusiasts” who equally bemoaned the lack of, for example, manual spark controls or manual carb heat controls (which remain in some light aircraft, as I understand it), etc. as those things faded away?
Or were these advancements seen as “good things”? In my lifetime I have also seen the replacement of manual choke with automatic, which I appreciated at the time. And certainly I now see the benefits of fuel injection over carburettors, although at the time that was changing in the mainstream you could probably have heard me discussing the unnecessary complexity of FI 😉
I think it depended a lot on the class. In luxury cars, probably not so much, although for chauffeur-driven models, there was clearly a certain amount of “Why should *I* pay more to make things easier for the hired help?” attitude. (For instance, after the war, I think the Series 75 was the last to standardize automatic transmission.)
In the English sports car realm, on the other hand, I’m sure there was some of that, just as there have continued to be people who install aftermarket crash boxes in cars llike the FD RX-7.
People who need to have synchromesh simply werent taught to drive, the car I sat my licence in at 15 only had syncro on the top 3 gears shifting into low on the move is easy its called double de clutching it was taught as a normal part of driving. heel and toe same style of thing.
Consumer Research Bulletin complained about the lack of “octane selectors” in cars of the later Thirties. They believed that using high octane gasoline was a waste of money and most people would never notice the loss of performance by retarding the spark a bit. They also hated leaded gasoline, correctly, and at that point most regular gasoline was still unleaded and thus safer. In a few years most regular gasoline had lead, anyway, one of the last holdouts being Sunoco circa 1947.
I had a fair amount of experience in this car’s opposite, a 29 Ford Model A. This car’s starting procedure very much mirrored that of the Ford, except that the Ford also included opening the fuel shut-off valve and allowed the driver to adjust the carb fuel mixture. I love the lengths Cadillac went to in order to avoid using the common term of “choke”.
I’ll bet that Cadillac’s mechanical brakes and skinny tires would give modern drivers some real pucker moments when trying to stop in today’s traffic. The brakes on my Model A were perfectly suited to low-speed, low-traffic conditions of the time, but modern cars could stop way, way, way faster than I could. Something other drivers did not seem to understand or appreciate.
After a string of 3-speed beaters, my father’s first brand-new car was a ’52 Chevy with Powerglide. He never looked back.
Many, many years later, I visited him at a time when I owned a 1985 Ranger with a 5-speed. He asked me to drive it. “I wonder if I still know how to shift a car.”
He got behind the wheel, and within a few hundred yards it all came back to him and he was doing just fine. And then he said, “I guess I *can* still shift a car, but why would I *want* to?” I get it, Pop. I get it.
I don’t get why early synchromesh transmissions still weren’t synchronized on the first gear, as getting from stop to first gear (or the less-common 2–>1) is still the most difficult part of driving a manual transmission. 2nd to 3rd gear change is alot easier and I’ve learnt to match revs before engaging the clutch for upshifts and downshift rather than rely on the synchronizers much.
Wouldn’t this body style be considered a limousine, as opposed to a 7-passenger sedan? In later Cadillacs, the distinction was that only limos had the separate driver and passenger compartments. Anyway, interesting that the 7- or 8-passenger sedan disappeared, though there is still clear demand for a 7 or 7 passenger vehicle, only they’re all SUVs/crossovers/vans now, not sedans.
Rear seat looks alot like that on a mid-’70s Fleetwood Talisman.
The trunk doesn’t look very secure. Looks rfarely easy to grab though there are probably some tiny locks on it, like that on modern luggage with those tiny keys.
I’m always stricken by the complete lack of attention to streamlining and aerodynamics on cars up to about 1932, but then I remember there was no place to drive these cars fast back then so it was largely inconsequential, at least at first.
I’m a bit surprised the early electric cars didn’t make it, as they were much simpler to start and drive, and quieter too. More expensive, but the price could have been absorbed by luxury cars like these.
To your first point, most of the cars of that time (with their torquey engines and short overall gearing) could pull in 2nd gear from 2 or 3 mph, so a synchro 1st would be kind of a waste.
Like a diesel truck JPC starting gear is as high as it will pull away at idling volume, bucket loads of low rpm torque.
In a generic sense, this was definitely a limousine, but there were several Cadillac body styles that fell into that category (e.g., the Fleetwood Transformable Town Cabriolet also pictured), and “Imperial Sedan” is what this one was called in the catalog. I think the 5-passenger Imperial Sedan was the same thing without the folding jump seats, although I didn’t immediately find a surviving example to compare.
Synchro-Mesh wouldn’t make starting in first any easier (or harder), since you’d be in gear before taking off. It would make it easier to get a 2–1 downshift at very low speeds, but that was less frequent, and Cadillac just recommended not doing it. (Even far more modern all-synchro 5-speed gearboxes don’t love 2–1 downshifts, I’ve found.)
A young lady in a 1974 Imperial LeBaron brochure featuring “built-in foam pillows and lavaliere straps” (left) and Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) in Cadillac presidential limousine demonstrating the correct grip of a lavaliere strap (right).
In the industry, “assist cords” came to be called “lavaliere straps”, the term borrowed from jewelry designers who used it to describes a pendant (typically with a single stone) suspended from a necklace. The name came from Françoise-Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of La Vallière and Vaujours (1644–1710) who was, between 1661-1667 (a reasonable run in her profession), a mistress of Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715). It’s the adaptation of her name for the pendants was based on the frequency with which the accessories appeared in her many portraits.
By an odd coincidence, The Autopian just had an article about the many steps needed to light off a similar vintage Rolls-Royce, in including the Starting Carburetor.
https://www.theautopian.com/a-cold-start-about-cold-starting-a-rolls-royce-and-a-weird-detail/
Oddly the only thing I’ve ever crank started was a diesel, which involved setting the compression release, turning on the fuel, cranking real hard and dropping the compression release. I suppose that is still simpler than using a whole separate engine to start a diesel like a 1930s Caterpillar
https://youtu.be/Jcz7qPz8QTE?si=62VDacUDIlNrd5ks
I believe tinted glass was first adopted by cadillac in the late 40s but this 1929 is clad in tinted glass. From what I know tint didnt exist in 29 so it must be laminate or newly made tinted glass.
1929 Cadillacs did have laminated safety glass, a new introduction for 1929, although this car has been restored, so it’s entirely possible that it has modern replacement glass. It doesn’t look particularly tinted to me; shots where light is passing through two panes at once make the windows look darker than in any of the photos shot through just one window. (Also, all the window reveals are painted Calumet Blue to match the body, so some of what looks at a glance like blue tint is actually a blue cast from the window frames.) However, not having seen the car in person and not knowing its restoration history, I can’t say more definitely than that.