During the top-secret development of the V-16, Cadillac occasionally claimed that they were working on a V-12 engine. Although the V-12 story was used as a cover for the V-16, it was not false. Owen Nacker, Cadillac's head of engine development, was also designing a 12-cylinder engine, sharing the tooling and many of the components of the V-16. It was announced on July 30, 1930, and it went on sale in November.

The V-12 was essentially a V-16 shorn of four cylinders, although its bore was increased slightly, giving it a displacement of 368 cubic inches (6.0 liters). It shared the V-16's 45° bank angle, rather than the 60° angle that would have been ideal, but it made little difference in practical terms. The V-12 was very smooth, but far less powerful than its 16-cylinder sibling, rated at 135 gross horsepower (101 kW).

The V-12 chassis rode a shorter wheelbase than the V-16, a choice of 140 or 143 inches (3,556 mm or 3,632 mm), compared to the V-16's 148 inches (3,759 mm), but it offered a similar assortment of Fisher and Fleetwood semi-custom bodies. It was difficult to tell them apart unless you were close enough to read the emblems, but the V-12 cost about $2,000 less, model for model, starting at $3,795.


By 1936, Cadillacs had independent front suspension, hydraulic brakes, and all-steel bodies, replacing the previous wood-metal composites. The sidemount spare tires were becoming old fashioned, despite efforts to integrate them stylistically by adding painted covers, but Cadillac customers tended to be conservative in their tastes.

The V-12 might have had less snob value than the V-16, but it was still in a very elite class. Thanks to its lower prices, it quickly outsold the V-16. Cadillac sold 5,725 V-12 cars in the 1931 model year, remarkable for a car that cost more than many upper-middle-class annual salaries.

INTO THE ABYSS

By the middle of 1931, however, it was clear that no matter how many times President Herbert Hoover insisted that a return to prosperity was just around the corner, the economy was getting worse, not better. As unemployment figures mounted, even buyers who could still afford prestige cars were becoming more circumspect. For the 1932 model year, sales shrank to 296 V-16s and 1,709 V-12s. Cadillac's overall sales dropped from about 15,000 in 1931 to only 4,698 in '32. For the 1933 model year, they were only 3,173, including 952 V-12s and 125 V-16s. In an effort to make the limited sales sound like a mark of exclusivity, Cadillac announced that they would limit V-16 production to only 400 units a year. It was in vain: V-16 sales never even approached that level again.

By 1932, GM's leadership was seriously considering dropping the entire Cadillac division. Its sales were well below the break-even level, and it was clear that the staggering $54 million investment in the V-16 cars (around $700 million in today's dollars) would never be recouped. Many of Cadillac's rivals were already bankrupt, or close to it.


By 1936, the antiquarian styling of the early V-12 and V-16 models had evolved considerably. Note the "fencer's mask" grille, the increasingly massive front fenders, and the streamlined headlight pods. Harley Earl's stylists were gradually integrating the disparate components of the automobile into a single, unified whole, hiding the actual mechanical components from view.

RACE RELATIONS

A major part of Cadillac's salvation was not exotic prestige cars, but a new marketing approach. The division's strict but unwritten policy had always been to sell only to white customers. Service manager Nicholas Dreystadt, however, realized that Cadillac had a large number of middle- and upper-class black customers, who had bought their cars using white friends as intermediaries. Dreystadt walked into a meeting of GM's Executive Committee and suggested that Cadillac could be restored to profitability within 18 months if it marketed its cars directly to black customers. The Executive Committee was not enthusiastic, but they reluctantly agreed. As Dreystadt predicted, sales for the 1934 model year rose by more than 70%.

In June 1934, Dreystadt replaced Larry Fisher as Cadillac's general manager. Dreystadt, a German immigrant who had once been an apprentice at Mercedes-Benz, was very different from the flashy, ostentatious Fisher. He favored tweed sport coats to business suits, and his secretary allegedly kept a pair of dress shoes in the office for days when Dreystadt came to work wearing mismatched shoes. Dreystadt's focus was on efficiency. He abhorred the cost-no-object attitude that Fisher had taken towards the cars; Dreystadt was happy to spend money for better design or equipment, but he took a ruthless approach to cost cutting. By 1937, Cadillac's average per-unit production costs were no higher than Chevrolet's, which made Cadillac once again GM's most profitable division.

THE END OF THE MULTICYLINDER ERA

Fisher had attempted to bolster the sales of the V-12 and V-16 with a few minor improvements for 1934, including higher compression ratios that boosted power to 150 horsepower (112 kW) and 185 horsepower (138 kW), respectively. The extensive list of factory custom bodies was also whittled down to a more manageable size. It was to little avail: only about 50 V-16s and a few hundred V-12s were sold each year.


Like the V-16, the V-12s came standard with a trunk-mounted spare, normally carried in the lower rear compartment, but deleted in this case in favor of the optional sidemounts. The upper compartment on this convertible coupe is the rumble seat -- note the steps on the right side of the bumper and the right fender.

The V-12's final year was 1937. Cadillac's new monobloc V8 was nearly as powerful (135 hp), far lighter, and much cheaper to build. Much of Cadillac's business was shifting to less-expensive models like the Series Sixty. Thanks to Dreystadt's cost cutting, the cheaper models were still profitable, but sold in far greater numbers than the multicylinder cars.

It would not have been surprising if Cadillac had also dropped the V-16, which had sold only 207 units in the previous four years. Since both Lincoln and Packard still had V-12s, however, Dreystadt could not afford to lose face by dropping all multicylinder models. Instead, in 1938 Cadillac unveiled a completely new V-16 engine. Sharing nothing with its predecessor other than the number of cylinders, the new engine was a flathead design, with its cylinder banks set at an unusual 135° cylinder bank. It was around 250 pounds (115 kg) lighter than the earlier engine, but was rated at the same 185 horsepower (138 kW). Sadly, it looked like an undistinguished lump of metal, with none of the earlier V-16's fine detailing. The cars that carried it were also less distinguished. Although bodywork was still built by Fleetwood, the vast array of semi-custom bodies was gone, and the V-16 models looked much like any other Cadillac, save for length and price. Two special limousines were built for the use of President Roosevelt, but the real star of the Cadillac line was the new Sixty Special, which was less than half the price of the V-16.


This 1936 V-12 car shows off the optional hood ornament, the Goddess. Although a heron mascot was also available in the early thirties, the Goddess would become Cadillac's standard hood ornament, although its design became increasingly abstract after the war.

These final V-16s sold better than their predecessors, but not by much: 311 in 1938, 136 in 1939, and 61 in 1940, its final year. By then, only Lincoln still offered a V-12, a thoroughly unremarkable, notoriously unreliable flathead with less horsepower than even Cadillac's V8. Packard dropped its Twelve after 1939, and Packard's leaders, Alvin Macauley and George Christopher, were now focused more on near-luxury models like the Packard One Twenty.

THE FALL AND RISE OF THE DINOSAURS

In all, Cadillac sold 4,386 V-16s and 10,821 V-12s between 1930 and 1940. They would have sold better had it not been for the Depression, but they would probably have faded away by the early 1940s anyway. Improved technology made eight-cylinder engines nearly as smooth and powerful as the old multicylinders, with far lower costs and more modest fuel consumption. The age of custom coachwork was coming to an end, as well. Harley Earl's Art & Colour division was now setting the pace for automotive styling, and even wealthy customers were increasingly content with cheaper, factory-built luxury cars.

By the time civilian automobile production resumed after the war, Cadillac had largely taken Packard's place as America's preeminent luxury marque. It was not until 1950 that Cadillac consistently outsold Packard, but the latter's sales would only decline from there, where Cadillac's grew steadily almost every year until 1979.

Although some European manufacturers returned to the V-12 layout after the war, multicylinder engines largely disappeared in the U.S. after Lincoln's V-12 Continental went out of production in 1948. Packard contemplated a new, 480 cu. in. (7.8 L) V-12 in 1955, essentially a 12-cylinder version of its new V8, but by then Packard was living on borrowed time. GM's corporate engineering staff developed an advanced all-aluminum SOHC V-12 for Cadillac in the early sixties, displacing up to 500 cu. in. (8.2 L) and making about 400 hp (298 kW). At one point, it was slated for the front-wheel-drive 1967 Eldorado, but it was canceled around 1965, and GM refused to even release photos of the engine until decades later. It was not until Chrysler unveiled its V-10 in 1991 that any American automaker again offered engine with more than eight cylinders.


The badge on a 1938 Cadillac V16. Sadly, the car no longer has its original engine.

As for the V-16 layout, the only postwar sixteen-cylinder engines offered for production cars were the short-lived Cizeta-Moroder V16T, sold in tiny numbers in the early 1990s, and the Bugatti Veyron's 8.0 L (488 cu. in.), turbocharged W16. Cadillac built a sixteen-cylinder concept engine for its 2003 Cadillac Sixteen show car, but it was not intended for production, and, with rising fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions standards, it's unlikely Cadillac will ever build anything like it again.

In strictly practical terms, the Cadillac V-12s and V-16s were absurd even in their time, but they're magnificent cars in every respect, acclaimed even by the snobbish Classic Car Club of America as genuine Classics. Survivors are prized collector's items today, commanding very high prices. We believe that our V-16 photo subject (from our first installment) is the same car that sold at auction in early 2008 for a reported $302,500, and other V-16s have commanded similar prices. Just as it was in 1930, that's enough to buy a nice house in many parts of the U.S. -- a king's ransom for a decidedly regal car.

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