(le résumé en français se trouve en bas de page)
La Salle Miscellaneous Insignia
I guess that growing automobile traffic and related safety issues had something to do with the demise of the hood ornament. Indeed, who would have enjoyed being impaled on the sharply-pointed beak of a Heron hood mascot or on the speeding bullet of the one mounted atop the 1940 La Salle ?!?!
Hood mascots
1. A cast figurine representing Sieur Rene Robert Cavelier De La Salle, the French explorer, who gave his name to Cadillac's lesser marque, was used on the early La Salle models, up to 1932. That mascot, like the Cadillac trumpet tooter, was available from accessory houses in the late twenties and early thirties. La Salle was an adventurer and explorer of the Mississippi; the mascot shows him standing beside a campfire with the tools of his adventuresome trade, including an axe and a broken canoe paddle, from the days when he regularly got lost in Canada's frozen north while looking for a direct route south, to the great Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The statuette is marked Cadillac Motor Car Co. Des Pat. 1927; it is made of nickel-plated pewter. This is a patented design by E.E. Burr (#74168 of January 3, 1928).
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