Free Shipping Cont! Donohooauto, Prefered Equipment Group 1, Navigation System on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Cadillac Celestiq electric sedan could top $200,000

General Motors teased a slew of new electric vehicles last week at a media event where cameras weren’t allowed, and now thereÂ’s more news about the Celestiq, one of the two EVs in the pipeline for Cadillac. Reports suggest it wonÂ’t come cheap and will retail for at least $200,000. Wall Street Journal auto writer Mike Colias dished that detail, along with word of a mid-2020 launch, on Twitter, attributing it directly to Cadillac President Steve Carlisle. Cadillac has made no official mention of starting price for either the Celestiq luxury sedan or the Lyriq, an EV SUV that it has previously teased. A spokesman told Autoblog the brand wouldnÂ’t comment on future product speculation. Leftover scraps from Cadillac flagship ‘CelestiqÂ’ news: ItÂ’ll be hand-built in the hundreds per year, Caddy chief Steve Carlisle said. Price? Six figures Â… “and it wonÂ’t have a 1 in front of it.” Due mid-2022. — Mike Colias (@MikeColias) March 5, 2020 If true, the six-figure MSRP would make the Celestiq the most expensive Caddy ever assembled, at least outside of one-off coach builds and the presidential limo, vaunting it into the same class as brands like Bentley, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce. By way of comparison, the limited-edition ultra-luxury 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham four-door debuted with a $13,074 price tag, the most expensive car of its day and the equivalent of around $120,000 in todayÂ’s dollars. So what do we know about the Celestiq? For starters, itÂ’ll be a halo flagship hand-built in limited quantities somewhere in the Detroit area. Our reporters who saw the white four-seater describe it as having a long, fastback roofline, no side mirrors or visible door handles, with a long wheelbase, short overhangs and a tinted glass roof. A rendering of the interior showed an LED instrument cluster and infotainment display that stretches between both A pillars, with touchscreen interfaces on the rear of the front seats. It also reportedly features a hatch instead of a conventional trunk and styling cues from the Escala concept from 2016, shown above. Cadillac teased it as the “ultimate luxury experience” and said it would be highly customizable. Cadillac also showed off the Lyriq, the name itÂ’s given to its midsize electric crossover that it had previously promised to unveil in April, possibly at the New York Auto Show, if it manages to happen given the coronavirus.

Will attaching the electrodes re-animate Cadillac?

This announcement last week from General Motors —"Cadillac will be GM's lead electric vehicle brand"— followed quickly by the surprise reveal Sunday night of a Cadillac EV crossover, leads one to wonder whether this is a case of GM pulling out the defibrillator and hoping a full-on jolt of electricity will revive Cadillac from its ongoing diminution in the market. In 2018, Cadillac U.S. sales were 154,702 vehicles, which was down from the 156,440 it had sold in 2017. And the 2017 sales were down significantly from the 170,006 vehicles delivered by Cadillac in 2016. And that is down from the 175,267 sales of 2015. Sure, part of Cadillac's problem — one shared by some other OEMs — is that its sedans aren't selling. But if we put those to the side, realize that in 2018 sales of the venerable Escalade were down by 2.2 percent. Admittedly, that rig is a little old in the grille, and it's suddenly gotten strong competition from the Lincoln Navigator, so a sales decline isn't too surprising. But the XT5, the compact lux vehicle that was launched in 2016 as a model-year 2017 product, had an 11.3 percent decline in a segment that is doing nothing but growing. This is not promising. Although the argument at GM HQ might be that Cadillac can reinvent itself as a Tesla fighter, one of the things that isn't often noted about Tesla vis-a-vis other OEMs is that while sedan sales are generally down, Tesla, which had an estimated 2018 sales volume of 197,680 (according to Cleantechnica.com), made its numbers primarily with the Model 3 and Model S, both sedans, as it has just the Model X crossover. So it isn't just about vehicle architecture. It is going to take more than an electric SUV to change Cadillac's performance. But here's where circumstances can fall in Cadillac's favor. Scale can be highly beneficial to Cadillac versus Tesla. The Chinese market, even though it is weakening of late, will be largely predicated on "New Energy Vehicles," which means electrified and fully electric. And while Tesla only just now broke ground on a factory in China, LMC Automotive reports that as of December 2018, SAIC GM is already well-established there and is the third-largest vehicle manufacturer in China (behind SAIC Volkswagen and FAW Volkswagen). Cadillac is going to be able to take advantage of GM's global efforts in developing EVs, so soon the Cadillac showroom could be filled with an array of luxury EVs that may make even Tesla loyalists take another look.

Cadillac Elmiraj Concept slinks in Leno's Garage

Jay Leno's Garage has moved to Pebble Beach for the week. This time around, the affable comedian is taking a look at the Cadillac Elmiraj Concept that debuted during the Monterey car week, and is talking to General Motors vice president of global design, Ed Welburn.
There's plenty of reminiscing about what concept cars were like when these two were kids, before a fairly deep dive into the striking Elmiraj Concept itself. Welburn shares a few anecdotes about the design process behind the two-door concept, including how his designers changed his mind on the grille design.
After bringing up the Cimarron, Leno makes a solid point that the Elmiraj would be a solid production car that could even spawn a four-door variant. We couldn't agree more. Take a look below for the full video from Jay Leno's Garage.