► Cadillac’s tumultuous past
► Used to be The Standard of the World
► Can it be once again?
Cadillac. Once, as its 1908 advertising slogan proclaimed, The Standard of the World. The company that built cars with V16 engines years before Rolls-Royce debuted its first V12 Phantom; that built cars with a four-speed automatic transmission, air suspension, power steering, air conditioning, power seats and windows, central locking, automatic dipping headlights and cruise control when Harold Macmillan was telling Brits driving wheezy Ford Anglias they’d never had it so good. For decades Cadillac defined automotive luxury – American automotive luxury – its cars reflecting the brash optimism of the American Dream.
It couldn’t last. A misguided attempt by General Motors in the 1970s to democratise its luxury brand led to the 1982 launch of the Cadillac Cimarron. Essentially a Vauxhall Cavalier with delusions of grandeur, the Cimarron delivered a body blow to the Cadillac brand from which it still has not recovered.
But now, in 2025, there are signs of recovery, or at least pretty big ambition, on several fronts: increasingly luxurious road cars, many of the them electric; an impressive showing at Le Mans this summer; and its imminent arrival on the Formula 1 grid.
There have been attempts to kickstart the renaissance going back more than 20 years. In 2003 GM launched the edgy, wedgy Cadillac XLR, a two-seat sports car built on the chassis and powertrain hardware that would underpin the following year’s C6 Chevrolet Corvette. In 2004 it unveiled a high-performance variant of the Cadillac CTS saloon, the CTS-V, powered by a 400bhp V8. The second-generation CTS added stylish coupe and wagon models to the CTS-V mix, powered, like the saloon, by 556bhp supercharged V8s and available with a manual transmission.
The problem was none of those cars resonated with the core DNA of the Cadillac brand, American luxury. By the fuzzy logic beloved of automotive marketing types, they were indeed luxury cars, but their flavour was more European; quietly restrained and clinically logical, with none of the exuberance expected from a brand that for many was still defined by the big and flamboyant cars that once reflected the upbeat aspirations of a generation of Americans.
Cadillac today builds three car lines. The other eight name plates in the current Cadillac catalogue are all SUVs. And the hulking Escalade, which still rolls on a truck chassis and still has an overhead valve V8 under the bonnet, is still one of Cadillac’s best-sellers. It’s far from The Standard of the World. And yet… Cadillac appears to be the on-ramp for GM to again be a car maker with a global presence.
GM is today a shadow of its former self. It no longer makes and sells Opels in Germany, Daweoos in Korea or Holdens in Australia. But Cadillacs are now available in each of those countries, and many more.
There are signs GM’s luxury brand may again become famous for more than building the world’s most luxurious trucks. Cadillac is in the FIA World Endurance Championship, its thundering V8-powered V-Series.R hypercar securing a front-row lockout for this year’s Le Mans 24 hour race. Cadillac is joining Formula 1 in 2026. And Cadillac has finally launched a car that properly hews to its luxury traditions, the Celestiq.
Not quite as long overall as a Rolls-Royce Phantom, but lower and wider, the Celestiq is a grandiose hatchback with a 655bhp, 646lb ft dual-motor electric powertrain, a bespoke modernist interior, and stunning road presence. Priced from the equivalent of £260,000, the Celestiq is hand-built in Warren, Michigan, taking about 12 weeks to complete; production is limited to fewer than 300 cars a year. It’s at once a 21st-century homage to Cadillac’s heritage and an impressive statement of intent.
The Celestiq is already being trailed on Cadillac websites in the Middle East and in South Korea, where the streets of the trendy Gangnam district of Seoul are awash with Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. Could it come to Europe? Perhaps. Meeting Europe’s different lighting standards would be a costly part of the homologation process for this extremely low-volume car. Nevertheless, Cadillac could decide to leverage its presence in F1 to sell small numbers in Europe as a brand halo for the electric-powered Vistiq, Lyriq and Optiq models, all of which share some of the Celestiq’s design cues – and in the case of the high-performance Lyriq-V, powertrain components, too.
Beyond that, GM is rumoured to be looking at building a two-seat Cadillac sports car, based on the platform being developed for the electric-powered C9 Corvette, with design cues lifted from the V-Series.R Hypercar. What’s giving the project oxygen inside GM headquarters is the sobering realisation that American buyers are not yet ready for an electric-powered Corvette. Allowing the C9 architecture to underpin a Cadillac (just as the C6 Corvette hardware underpinned the Cadillac XLR more than 20 years ago) would allow GM to build it in lower volumes and charge a higher price. And Europe, where EV adoption rates are higher than almost anywhere else, and where Cadillac will have a big on-track presence in F1 and WEC, would be a logical market for the car.
For all the misfires and missteps of the past 50 years, Cadillac remains GM’s only luxury brand. It is also now the only GM brand other than Corvette the company can leverage outside North America and China. For that reason, Cadillac is now more important to GM than at any time in its history. Cadillac matters.
Angus MacKenzie is one of the world's most respected motoring journalists – and another Australian former editor of CAR magazines, no less.
By Angus MacKenzie
Car critic, sage and another Australian former editor of CAR magazine
