Aussie buys $1m-plus car you can't even drive here: This little known luxury car is competing with some of the biggest players in the game, and it's starting to make an impact in Australia

Cadillac has created a hand-made luxury EV with proportions that it admitted “look impossible to achieve”, a price tag that can run well north of $1 million, and an Active Roll Control system it claims can deliver “zero degrees of roll, which is better than any sports car out there”.

And one Australian customer has already flown all the way to Cadillac House in Detroit to build, bespoke and buy his very own Celestiq.

It might sound like Cadillac is making some very bold claims for the car it said is setting the tone for its EV future, while also pushing the revered (at least in America) brand into the rarefied air occupied by Rolls-Royce, which builds the only realistic competitor the Celestiq has, the luxury EV Spectre.

Bold is definitely the word that comes to mind when you encounter the Celestiq, which is being built in left-hand drive only “for now”, in the flesh. It looks like a very expensive and slightly station wagon, and it truly is huge. The car’s chief engineer, Kathy Gillespie, pointed out that it’s the same length as a Cadillac Escalade (5.5m) and has the same 23-inch wheels as well.

The company has created a special facility for its high-end customers to visit (Cadillac House, which sits inside GM’s previously off limits to the public HQ in Detroit) and spend the day bespoke-ing every inch of their Celestiq, which offers more than 350,000 possible combinations of colours and materials.

Buyers - including the mystery Australian customer who we’re told has already bought a Celestiq but has homes all around the world, so it’s hard to say if the car will make it Down Under - can really go to town in the interior, but it’s already quite spectacular, with almost Rolls-like levels of luxury detail.

“From a material perspective, everything that looks like metal on this car, is made of real metal and this is something that is particularly unique, because this is a technique that we generally only use in show cars, and even in this market segment, it’s unusual to find this much real metal on a vehicle,” Gillespie explained.

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It costs much more than a million and you can't even drive it here, but one Australian customer has already flown all the way to Cadillac House in Detroit to build, bespoke and buy his very own Celestiq! Would you do the same if you had the means? #Cadillac #Celestiq #CadillacCelestiq #luxurycar #electriccar #car #carsguide #fyp

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“We also used more than 200 3D-printed parts on this car - the first time we’ve used that technology - so we could make pieces that were entirely bespoke. One thing we’re especially proud of is the full metal piece that highlights the steering wheel, which would not be possible to create using any sort of a die. But because we 3D print them, we can make it the exact shapes that our designers want.”

The colossal Celestiq is powered by a 111kWh battery and two electric motors and its 450kW and 870Nm outputs are enough to fire it to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds. With its plush proportions and interior it looks and feels like more of a cruising limousine, or a cruise ship on wheels, but Gillespie insists that the Celeste “needs to do more than look good”.

“We really designed this car to have two personas and from a luxury standpoint, if you're in the Tour mode, it eats all the bumps on the road, it’s a very smooth, very comfortable ride. But then with our Active Roll Control, when you’re cornering in Sport mode, it has zero degrees roll, which is better than any sports car out there,” she claimed.

“It’s a lot of fun to drive through a twisty mountain road, it can really keep up with the sports cars out there.”

Honestly, looking at the Celestiq in the flesh, this all seems a little hard to believe, but it’s doubtful that very many people in the world will put it to the test. The ultimate Cadillac starts at $549,000, but that’s very much just the starting point before the personalisation process begins, with most customers spending at least twice that much on their finished, one-of-a-kind Celestiq.