1938 LaSalle Series 50 - $17,500

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For Sale or Trade This LaSalle Series 50 trunk back sedan was owned by the same enthusiast for the past 50 years. Clear Massachusetts title. Was purchased on February 14, 1973 when it was a 35-year-old classic car. The owner was a decorated WWII veteran and a lifelong mechanic who owned his own repair shop and drove, restored, and repaired multiple vintage cars and tractors, including this '38 LaSalle. The data plate, found on the firewall, decodes as a 1938 Model 5019 Four-Door Touring Sedan. This car has been repainted and the dark green finish appears to match the "Cloudmist Green" paint color used by Cadillac and LaSalle in '38 (this car was originally painted Deauville Beige, paint code 9). LaSalle was an American brand of luxury automobiles manufactured and marketed, as a separate brand, by General Motors' Cadillac division from 1927 through 1940. Alfred P. Sloan, GM's Chairman of the Board, developed the concept for four new GM marques brands - LaSalle, Marquette, Viking and Pontiac - paired with already established brands to fill price gaps he perceived in the General Motors product portfolio. Sloan created LaSalle as a companion marque for Cadillac. LaSalle automobiles were manufactured by Cadillac, but were priced lower than Cadillac-branded automobiles, were shorter, and were marketed as the second-most prestigious marque in the General Motors portfolio. LaSalles were titled as LaSalles, and not as Cadillacs. Like Cadillac — named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac — the LaSalle brand name was based on that of another French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle The LaSalle had its beginnings when General Motors' CEO Alfred P. Sloan noticed that his carefully crafted market segmentation program was beginning to develop price gaps in which General Motors had no products to sell.[1] In an era when automotive brands were somewhat restricted to building a specific car per model year, Sloan surmised that the best way to bridge the gaps was to develop "companion" marques that could be sold through the current sales network. As originally developed by Sloan, General Motors' market-segmentation strategy placed each of the company's individual automobile marques into specific price ranges, called the General Motors Companion Make Program. The Chevrolet was designated as the entry-level product. Next, (in ascending order), came the Pontiac, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Viking, Marquette, Buick, LaSalle, and Cadillac. By the 1920s, certain General Motors products began to shift out of the plan as the products improved and engine advances were made. Under the companion marque strategy, the gap between the Chevrolet and the Oakland would be filled by a new marque named Pontiac, a quality six-cylinder car designed to sell for the price of a four-cylinder. The wide gap between Oldsmobile and Buick would be filled by two companion marques: Oldsmobile was assigned the up-market V8 engine Viking and Buick was assigned the more compact six-cylinder Marquette. Cadillac, which had seen its base prices soar in the heady 1920s, was assigned the LaSalle as a companion marque to fill the gap that existed between it and Buick