Leland, Lincoln, Cadillac, and Clippers

I have been combing the annals of automotive history to bring to light some of the more interesting facts and details about our passion. I was brushing up on my American car history, and I discovered that the founder of Lincoln and Cadillac also changed the face of men’s grooming, a fact that left me bristling with excitement.

During my research, I discovered that this past Friday, February 16th was the birthdate of automaker Henry Leland. He not only originated the marquees for the luxury arms of America’s two biggest automotive rivals, but he also invented the electric barber clippers.

Leland started his engineering career in machining and tooling at Browne & Sharpe in Providence, Rhode Island. He then went to work for Colt Firearms, where he learned about the 19th-century principle of interchangeability. It was around this time that Leland used these machining and engineering principles to invent the first electric clippers. Always the entrepreneur, Leland then partnered with Robert Faulconer to found Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing. Their primary business was crafting the single-cylinder engines for Oldsmobile.

At the time, the Henry Ford Company was failing and several of its leaders needed a new venture. They approached Leland in the hopes of buying his business and reorganizing it to build single-cylinder cars, and out of the ashes of the original incarnation of Ford, Cadillac was born. Leland brought the principles of interchangeable parts that he had learned at Colt to the automotive industry. Though we take this concept for granted in nearly every technology produced today, it was Leland who first popularized the idea for diverse industries. GM took notice of Cadillac’s early success and Leland’s innovations, and they quickly bought the company and incorporated it as its premier automobile, where Leland also pioneered self-starting engines as an alternative to the traditional crank.

After a dispute with GM during World War I over the production of military hardware, Leland left GM and founded Lincoln, quickly receiving a $10,000,000 contract from Ford to produce the Liberty V12. Lincoln became insolvent in 1922, and Ford bought the company, which was valued at over $16,000,000, for only $8,000,000. The were the only company at the time to produce a bid, and they deliberately low-balled their offer as revenge for Leland’s founding of Cadillac with several of their directors nearly two decades earlier.

And that is the story of how one man founded two of America’s most iconic luxury car rivals and also contributed to some of the greatest facial hair of the 20th century.

-Trey Fennell

2011 Cadillac CTS Coco Mats #91 Jaspe (Calico)