Walt Disney Wants to Sell You A Cadillac

After all of the recent Walt Disney mudslinging, it’s nice to see a positive mention of the man, even if that positivity happens to be in the form of a TV commercial trying to sell you a luxury automobile.

To promote its new 2014 Cadillac CTS Sedan, GM created a spot celebrating American innovators who have launched big ideas and companies from garages. Walt Disney’s humble launch of the Disney studio out of his uncle’s garage is featured alongside other garage-bred individuals and companies: the Wright brothers, Amazon.com, Hewlett Packard, Mattel, and the Ramones.

What I appreciated about the spot is that most of the garages shown, including Disney’s, are accurate representations of the actual garages used by these people. When the image of Walt’s garage appears, the street address shown is 4406. That refers to 4406 Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles, the home of Walt’s uncle, Robert, which is where Disney launched his first Los Angeles studio in 1923.

While the Disney garage shown in the commercial is no longer located on Kingswell Avenue, it has been preserved and placed on public display at the Garden Grove Historical Society’s Stanley Ranch Museum. Here it is in its current state:

(Disney garage photo via You-are-here.com)