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Cadillac's Blackwing V8 was the best engine at the worst time

It should be clear that GM knows how to innovate and engineer excellent products when it wants to. Cadillac's 4.2-liter twin-turbo Blackwing V8 is recent proof of that. Yet, as related in an extensive Road & Track piece, the Blackwing became victim to some of The General's bugbears, like the reticence to — for whatever reasons — unleash its excellence everywhere, fund that excellence, and be consistent with that excellence over the long term beyond the Corvette and full-sized pickups and SUVs. The R/T story relates tales told by "several people deeply involved with the Blackwing project" about how an engine 18 years in the making was deprived of its reasons for being in less than three. Starting around 2000, GM spent a dozen years building Cadillac up to the point where the American luxury brand could rationally flip to the chapter called, "Taking the Fight to the Germans, but for Real this Time." The first steps in the plan meant an exclusive platform and an exclusive engine. The platform was called Omega. You know the engine's name. They were going to be the aluminum-blocked fist and velvet glove enabling Cadillac to break on through to the other side of luxury — proper luxury to global standards, that is — with a range of beautiful and dynamic crossovers and sedans. An engineer involved in the project estimates GM poured $16 million into the Blackwing's clean-sheet development. Many more seven-figure sums went into creating the first sedan on the Omega platform, the CT6. The automaker dropped millions again poaching ex-Audi and Infiniti chief Johan de Nysschen, and moving Cadillac's headquarters to New York City in 2014. Further pallets of cash funded the development and debut of the Escala concept at Pebble Beach in 2016. In 2018, GM revealed its dramatically named DOHC twin-turbo V8. Considering what came before, the Blackwing clearly wasn't designed for cars. It was designed for world domination. However, against the backdrop of plummeting sedan sales, the CT6 didn't sell like GM had hoped. The automaker hesitated to marshal another fleet of Brinks trucks to fund entries into a cratering bodystyle. Removing sedans from the world domination equation created more difficult math for the crossovers and the Escala.

GM design boss Welburn says Lincoln isn't a Cadillac rival [w/poll]

General Motors Vice President of Global Design, Ed Welburn, had some dismissive words for a certain cross-town luxury brand during an interview with Car and Driver. When asked about his thoughts on Lincoln, Welburn deflected, before saying, "I don't consider Lincoln to be a competitor for Cadillac."
"They're not a global luxury brand. I don't consider them a competitor. Are they a competitor for Buick? Quite possibly. But not for Cadillac," GM's head designer explained. Welburn, who's been at the helm of GM Design North America since 2003 and is the first to hold the position of VP of Global Design, has been instrumental in the styling renaissance at GM, so predictably, Car and Driver's interview with him focused on the design aspect of cars.
During the interview, Welburn explicitly denied plans for a reborn Cadillac XLR, even as a new Chevrolet Corvette is hitting the market and strides are being made with Cadillac's V-Series performance arm saying, "We have a lot of cars that we're working on for the Cadillac brand. The XLR is not one of them right now."

2021 Cadillac Escalade Onyx package adds monochrome logos

The 2016 Cadillac Escala concept showed off a number of features never seen on a Cadillac, one of them being a redesigned, entirely silver, untextured logo. Cadillac had been putting all-silver versions of its crest on the fenders of some of its vehicles, but those bore patterned silver inserts where the yellow, black, red, and blue would have appeared on the standard mark. The Escala logo, on top of being squatter and wider, displayed silver blanks where the colors went. Cadillac Society has found out a similar treatment is on the way for the 2021 Escalade as part of a new Onyx package. This time, instead of being brightwork, a Cadillac spokesperson told CS the logos are "more grey versus [the] silver/chrome [on the fenders]." And for the first time on a Cadillac on the showroom floor, these monochrome badges will appear on the grille and tailgate. Buyers can add a Sport Edition package to the current Escalade, dressing almost all the brightwork grille in gloss black and bolting on a set of 22-inch Midnight Silver wheels. The Cadillac logos, however, stay in color, and the Escalade lettering stays in chrome. That changes with the Onyx package, those gray monochrome crests joined by Escalade lettering in gloss black, plus 22-inch, 12-spoke wheels in high gloss black, and a similar blackout of all the other brightwork as found on the Sport Edition package. The Sport Edition is only available on three of the eight possible colors; a limited color selection could hold true for the Onyx package as well. Branding could get even more interesting when the crest's animated illumination shows up on the Lyriq electric crossover.  The 2021 Escalade will move to the new forked trim strategy, Premium Luxury on one side, Sport on the other, the Onyx package only available on the Sport side. For shoppers who want to go the other way, we're sure the new Escalade will offer something equivalent to the current Radiant Package that makes any Escalade even more impossible to miss on a sunny day. Related Video: