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Cadillac electric crossover will be revealed in April

Cadillac will unveil a midsize electric crossover in April, brand President Steve Carlisle told dealers at the National Auto Dealer Association (NADA) Convention Monday. The new crossover will be Cadillac's first all-electric vehicle.  The New York Auto Show is April 10-19, with press days April 8-9. It's unclear whether the Cadillac reveal would happen there, or as a standalone event before or after. Per Automotive News, Carlisle told the assembled representatives that Cadillac has big plans for transitioning from an all internal-combustion lineup to one anchored in electric cars.  "We enter this decade as an internal combustion engine brand. We want to position ourselves to exit as a battery-electric brand, so we have to manage both at the same time," he said.  Early last year, Cadillac teased the new midsized crossover, telling us to expect it to come in two- and four-wheel-drive flavors and to be offered as a global model. The last we heard of GM's plans to electrify its luxury brand came in December, when Carlisle laid out an aggressive plan to switch over its entire lineup by 2030.  Just a week later, parent company GM canceled its plans to appear at CES earlier this year because the model it planned to showcase was not ready to be unveiled due to delays introduced by the UAW strike last fall.  Not even two weeks after the tech show concluded, GM introduced of the self-driving Cruise Origin at a private event in San Francisco, prompting speculation that it was the original subject of GM's CES plans. Whether the Cruise Origin or Cadillac's new mystery midsizer was to bow at CES, there's only one left to reveal now.  Cadillac has been keeping news of its future EV offerings largely on the back burner. The brand has been busy effectively re-launching its entire lineup — an effort that will culminate with the rollout of the new Escalade SUV later this year.  In Carlisle's NADA remarks, he indicated that Cadillac dealers will learn more about the company's plans at a meeting in September.    Green Cadillac GM Crossover Concept Cars Electric Future Vehicles Luxury

Don Draper's 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville up for auction

Few have ever nor ever will embody the sheer confidence and style of Don Draper, the main character on the hit AMC drama Mad Men. But if you can't quite match his style, at least you can drive his car. Now that the series has now concluded its eight-year run, the studio behind it is selling off a whole mess of artifacts from the show through ScreenBid, a specialist Hollywood memorabilia auctioneer. There's a good 1,300 lots up for grabs, from props to costumes. But the lot that's caught our attention is this 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Don picked this car up in the fifth season and drove it until the penultimate episode. These are the wheels he (spoiler alert!) drove across the country, got repaired in Oklahoma, and ultimately gave to a kid working at the motel before making his way by bus to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the final episode. At the time of writing, bidding had reached $25,000 with four days still to go. Cadillac first used the de Ville as a trim level on the Series 62 before spinning it off into its own model line. 1965 was the first year of the third-generation de Ville, stretching a massive 224 inches (over 18 and a half feet!) long. Powering over 4,600 pounds of personal American luxury was an equally massive 7.0-liter V8 that drove 340 horsepower through a three-speed automatic transmission. The name wasn't retired until 2005 when the final DeVille (as it was styled by then) was replaced by the DTS, which itself was shorthand for DeVille Touring Sedan. Cadillac produced the last DTS in 2011, finally putting to rest a name that had, in one form or another, been used since 1949. Few cars had the kind of presence that the third-gen Coupe de Ville did, though, and Draper knew it. Or at least the show's producers did.

Luxury car brands scrambling to avoid a blue Christmas

DETROIT — When financial markets surge to new records, sales of luxury cars usually rise, too. Instead, October U.S. auto sales reports on Wednesday showed that a collapse in sales of luxury sedans is accelerating. Consumers have gradually shifted over to luxury sport utility vehicles from sedans in the past decade, but the trend — which has occurred in both the non-luxury and luxury sedan segments of the auto market — was particularly pronounced in October. Sales of Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz S-Class, long a global benchmark for large, premium sedans, plunged 49 percent in October, and are down 24.8 percent for the year to date. General Motors' Cadillac brand said it sold just 779 of its CTS sedans in October. Demand for that car, designed to compete with German luxury sedans, is down nearly 33 percent for the year. "There's still a significant portion of the market that wants a car, but I'm sure there were people who preferred a horse to a car at one point." Cadillac's best-selling model this year is the XT5 compact SUV, which has more than doubled sales from a year ago. The shift within the luxury vehicle market away from sedans toward SUVs of all sizes is forcing some of the most prestigious brands to scramble to add SUV models to their lineups or boost SUV production to meet demand. "In the short term, there will be pressure to add (consumer) incentives, cut production or both," said Cox Automotive analyst Michelle Krebs. "And we just don't see an end in sight to this trend." The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been trading at all-time highs, usually a good sign for luxury sedans, but as major automakers reported new U.S. vehicle sales for October on Wednesday, sales for passenger cars continued their slide while luxury SUV and crossover sales rose again. According to Kelley Blue Book data, in 2007 luxury sedans made up 7.6 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales, while luxury SUVs made up 4.2 percent. Through September this year, luxury SUVs made up just over 7 percent of the market, compared with 4.9 percent for luxury sedans. In the short term, luxury brands could use holiday season sales promotions to clear slow-selling sedans off dealer lots, analysts said. Toyota's Lexus brand said on Wednesday it will launch its "December to Remember" year-end sales promotion for the 18th straight year.