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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.

Cadillac applies to trademark Ascendiq and Escalade IQ

Let's start with what we know. Earlier this month, CarBuzz discovered trademark applications Cadillac submitted to various agencies in the U.S. and Europe to reserve the names Vistiq, Lumistiq, and Escalade IQL. Now, before the month is out, CarBuzz has found another pair of trademark applications that Cadillac has submitted to gain exclusive rights to the names Ascendiq and Escalade IQ. Sticking with what we know, the suffix -iq, as in Lyriq and Celestiq (pronounced "ik," not "eek"), indicates Cadillac's coming lineup of battery-electric vehicles. That starts with the Lyriq crossover early next year, then the Celestiq flagship sedan in 2023 (pictured). The all-electric Escalade is due by 2025. We assume an Escalade IQ and a longer version called the Escalade IQL will be battery-electric twins for the current ICE-powered Escalade and Escalade ESV. They are three of the six electrified vehicles we're expecting from Cadillac by the end of 2025. Moving on to what we suspect, two of the other three are crossovers, the last has only been referred to as a "low-roof" EV. In July 2020, GM applied to trademark the names Symboliq and Optiq. It had been thought that these would be the two coming crossovers, but a check with the United States Trademark and Patent Office showed both trademarks dead at the time of writing. GM does have an open brand mark application for "optiq," but it's not classified with motor vehicles, it's for a downloadable software application. As we've written many times before, USPTO applications don't mean we'll ever see the name or product being applied for. With that out of the way, we do have three remaining mysterious Cadillac vehicles and three names: Vistiq, Lumistiq, and Ascendiq. We also have a question: Will this be too much iq? Many of us have applauded brands abandoning alphanumerics on their cars for proper names because it could finally mean clear distinctions between one vehicle and another. If all the names are going to pull from the same or similar phonemes, this could end up being like meeting five siblings named Barry, Mary, Terry, Larry, and Gary. And we know how jokey and cruel that can get. So stay tuned. Related video: 2023 Cadillac LYRIQ revealed

Ford C-Max spot aimed squarely at Cadillac ELR 'Poolside' hubris [UPDATE]

If we had tried to predict the first video response to the controversial Poolside video for the Cadillac ELR, we would not have thought it would center on compost. But, hey, it's always nice to be reminded that the real world is sometimes better than fiction. Instead of the chic swagger of 'Poolside,' 'Anything Is Possible' is all about getting dirty. The new short in question is called Upside: Anything Is Possible and it promotes two things: Detroit Dirt and the Ford C-Max Energi. As in the ELR ad, Ford's plug-in C-Max only makes an appearance at the tail end of the spot, but instead of the chic swagger of Poolside, Anything Is Possible is all about getting dirty. The ad stars Pashon Murray, co-founder of Detroit Dirt, which takes natural waste from around Detroit, composts it into soil and then spreads that around "forgotten parcels" of Detroit to create urban farms. Detroit Dirt gets its bio-waste from a lot of sources, including the Detroit Zoological Society (all that herbivore manure has to go somewhere), Ford and General Motors, but this particular ad was the idea of Ford's PR agency, Team Detroit. It was a frenetic shoot, filmed with an LA-based director right after a big winter storm blew through Detroit, and Murray couldn't be happier with the result. "This was Ford Motor Company pushing my story, letting me tell the story that I believe in," Murray tells AutoblogGreen. "I get to help push this car and I get to tell my story." She says that the Team Detroit and Ford had to agree on the message, "from my understanding, [YouTube] is where they wanted to start, not where they wanted to finish." The ad is already getting a positive response on Twitter, so we won't be surprised if it shows up in more places soon. "It's not saying Ford is better than GM. It's telling the story of a black woman who's working hard in Detroit." As Detroit Dirt has off-screen support from both GM and Ford, it's unsurprising to hear Murray say that the video "is not a rivalry thing." She notes that the ad agency Team Detroit came to her and offered to tell the Detroit Dirt story using the framework of the GM ad. "It's a parody on this commercial, but it's not saying Ford is better than GM," she said. "It's telling the story of a black woman who's working hard in Detroit." What is that story? It's about urban farming, recovery and recycling. Murray tells us that for the last seven or eight years, she's been dedicated to sustainability.