Cadillac Vistiq Reviews

Cadillac offers a firm "maybe" to the possibility of bringing its most iconic V8-powered SUV to Australia.

Cadillac outlines the kinds of vehicles it benchmarked in development as it promises a fun-to-drive EV.

One of Australia's most celebrated automotive designers and executives has asked local car buyers to not do to what "Australians have a habit of doing", and instead reserve judgement on the newest entry to our auto landscape.

This might seem controversial, but really it’s just logical. If the idea of switching to electric vehicles instead of using combustion-engined cars was entirely about reducing the amount of CO2 produced, it stands to reason car companies would design EVs to be as small, and light, as possible, which, at first, they did (witness the Nissan Leaf, which was, for some time, the world’s biggest-selling

“No, we would not do a pick-up at Cadillac,” is Senior Vice President of Global Design Michael Simcoe’s refreshingly blunt answer.“That'd be a waste of an entry. You'd spend that sort of capital and that sort of showroom spot on something much more exciting and more appropriate to Cadillac,” he explained. Instead, a Cadillac hypercar – electric or plug-in hybrid – is a much smarter play for the performance-oriented brand. A smaller SUV to play against the Audi Q4 e-tron and BMW iX1 could be clever, too. Yet there’s no update on either of those possibilities today. Simcoe’s robust response didn’t stop us having a brainstorm of what a Cadillac ute might look like – the top example is a modern rebirth of the Escalade EXT based on the latest Lyriq electric large SUV from Cadillac (top image). The Lyriq lends itself well to becoming a ute. Its bluff, square front end with menacing front mask runs up to a black A-pillar to a chunky sloped C-pillar that blends into the long tray. Of course, if Cadillac were to do a ute it could also take Chevrolet’s existing Silverado frame and add some luxury tinsel on the top (below image). It would be unlikely any pick-up would really suit the Cadillac image, according to Simcoe. Still, the imagination has some swagger.  Simcoe expands on whether he’s brought any information from his time at Holden back to the US regarding Australian utes, “everything's still an emotional purchase”, he said.“ that are all about sport and performance, be it off-road or rock climbing and we have ones that are better suited to being on road as very, very high level luxury vehicles. A truck’s not a tool of the trade necessarily anymore,” he continued. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a luxury brand had entertained the idea of creating a ute for lifestyle customers – Genesis, BMW and others all admitted to the thought. One brand actually did it, and the result didn’t go well. The Mercedes X-Class was a Nissan Navara-based luxury ute that lived a very short life. It was produced from 2018 to 2020, surviving just two years before it was axed due to slow sales. Anecdotally, buyers don’t want 'fancy' utes. If they’re after sheer opulence or imposition on the road, a sedan or large SUV – like Celestiq or Lyriq – delivers that just fine. The Ford Ranger Raptor and Ram 1500 TRX are so expensive not because of interior fit-out or infinite ambient lighting but because of their Fox racing shocks and bombastic engines. That is what sells high-end utes and Cadillac won’t be getting into that game. 

Cadillac Senior Vice President of Global Design Michael Simcoe explained how the Celestiq, Lyriq and Optiq get away without looking like computer mouses or soap bars despite solid driving range ratings. Along with his current role at Cadillac, Simcoe has been with GM for forty years now after starting at Holden in 1983. He can boast credit for the Monaro, VE Commodore and more recently rebirthing Cadillac as an EV-first brand with the Celestiq. “Aerodynamics is a very well understood black science,” he told CarsGuide last week. “We have a lot of people who are very intelligent in that space so we know what we have to do to make a vehicle perform in a fashion.”For comparison's sake, the Tesla Model Y ekes 531km of EPA driving range out of its 75kWh battery pack thanks to a small frontal area and slippery 0.23Cd. The AWD Cadillac Optiq uses an 85kWh battery and gets 480km EPA driving range – we don’t know its Cd figure.The Tesla is better then, right? On paper, sure. But Cadillac is not in the business of making efficiency an absolute. Buyers of Cadillacs are chasing opulence, performance and style. The brand naturally has an internal efficiency goal for EVs, with Simcoe saying the team is able to ‘dial up and down’ various factors to achieve the desired result.“Anyone who tells you that to do an efficient vehicle, you have to do a lozenge with wheels is wrong”, he emphasises. “You can make very efficient vehicles that have style as well.”Yet anyone who has looked at vehicles coming out of China to target Tesla – the GAC Aion hyper GT, IM L6, BYD Sealion 6, Xpeng G6 and more – can see the resemblance to the American brand’s soft-sided vehicles.Interestingly, Simcoe sees this phenomena as copycatting for the sake of style rather than outright aero efficiency, citing hidden tricks such as shielding suspension components from the wind and other techniques. “That's more about commoditisation of design and a power to see something that works in the showroom, with customers, and a whole industry that has the speed to – within a couple of years – move in that direction. “And then two years later there's somewhere else, and then somewhere else. But that's commoditisation of vehicles, it's not necessarily aerodynamics that are doing that,” Simcoe explains. “If you've got the speed to react quickly to a trend and you're seeing something on the other side of town that's working and people are buying and you've got the speed to get there before the market dries up, then you're dealing with commodities rather than a real focus on your brand and the value you have in the design itself.“If we all did that you could forget the brand thing because everybody would be buying the same interior and the same exterior. And there is a bit of that in the market right now, globally.” Cadillac is gearing up to launch its first vehicle in Australia, the large luxury BMW iX and Audi Q8 e-tron-rivalling Lyriq, before the end of the year. More models, including the Optiq, are likely to follow shortly after. 

Cadillac's design bosses believe it will be fairly straightforward talking buyers out of their Audis, BMWs and Benzes with new electric cars.

Cadillac has detailed its Optiq electric car, which becomes the US brand’s smallest EV SUV. 

The top-end luxury electric car market is about to get a lot more crowded.Cadillac is coming to Australia at the end of the year with its Lyriq electric SUV to rival the Mercedes-Benz EQE and BMW iX.The American luxury car brand synonymous with US Presidents, celebrities and royalty has its sights set firmly on the big German brands and will price their vehicle accordingly, said local boss Jess Bala.“We are targeting the European luxury brands and our price will be right in the realm of where their equivalent entries are,” said Bala.That would put the Lyriq’s starting point in the circa-$130,000 range. The Lyriq has some impressive numbers on paper.It uses two electric motors that deliver 373kW and 610Nm to all four wheels. A giant 102kWh battery provides a driving range of up to 530km.The brand couldn’t provide details of what models would be added to the range but said more are coming and it would have a full portfolio.“We listen to customers, we are guided by the segments that are growing and that people are asking for entries for,” said Bala.“Cadillac has made some announcements already, so you’re getting a bit of a hint there but we will definitely make our own announcements locally in the not too far future.”This means vehicles such as the smaller Optiq, seven-seat Vistiq and giant Escalade iQ SUVs could be on the cards for Australia.Sales of electric cars are soaring in Australia, but the growth is being driven mainly by more affordable Chinese brands and Tesla.High-end electric cars from premium bands have been slow sellers, but Bala wasn’t concerned.“No, I think there is still definitely a growth opportunity here as well. It’s still something that is very fluid that is obviously evolving,” said Bala.Cadillac in the US announced it would persist with petrol-powered vehicles for the foreseeable future but Bala ruled out any of those vehicles coming to Australia.The brand didn’t take plug-in hybrids off the table, though.“We will have to watch and see, we don’t have a crystal ball for the next 10 years from now and so I’ll say the plan is now fully EV but we’ll have to continue and watch what the market’s doing,” said a Cadillac spokesperson.

The American brand known for its big, luxurious sedans and SUVs had planned to be EV-only by 2023 but not any more according to reports.