The Cadillac Le Mans is a 2-door convertible from Cadillac, built from 1953, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 331 cuin V8 engine. Harley Earl / Irv Rybicki (interior) drew it.
How it came about
The Cadillac Le Mans was a concept car designed by Harley Earl and developed by Cadillac. It was named for the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, in which Cadillac competed in 1950. Displayed at the 1953 General Motors Motorama in New York City, the design was a low-profile (51 inches (1,300 mm) to the windshield frame), two-seat, fiberglass-bodied roadster.
This concept showcased Cadillac's first wrap-around windshield. It was powered by a 250 hp (186 kW) version of Cadillac's 331 cu in (5,420 cc) V8 engine, a power output not realized in production Cadillacs until 1955. The overall length of the Le Mans was 196 in (4,978 mm). Though four prototypes were built, the model never went into production.
The hardware
Power comes from 331 cuin V8 engine. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Clark Street Assembly, Detroit. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Chevrolet Corvette, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL — show what else the money bought that year. Its Cadillac stablemates include the Cadillac 353 and the Cadillac ATS.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Cadillac Le Mans — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.