The 2024 Cadillac Celestiq is a stunning vehicle and a questionable idea.
An all-electric super luxury car, it has head-turning looks outside and a breathtaking art-deco-meets-touchscreens cabin.
Cadillac claims a 0-to-60-mph time of 3.8 seconds despite almost comically long proportions and a likely scale-crushing weight. Active noise cancelation will erase road noise, but it’s hard to imagine there will be any. Michelin developed special foam-filled self-sealing tires to give the Celestiq a tranquil ride.
What’s the questionable part? The price. At a projected cost of $300,000-plus, Cadillac hasn’t designed the Celestiq to compete with BMW, Mercedes, and other luxury rivals. Its target competition is Bentley and Rolls Royce.
Cadillac once had the cachet to play in that company. But it’s been decades since people dreamed of reaching the 1% income level and buying a Cadillac to show it off.
Can General Motors’ best compete in the quarter-million-dollar-and-up space?
Yes, according to chief engineer Tony Roma. He tells the Autoline podcast there’s already an 18-plus-month wait for the car.
“We already have quite a few hand-raisers,” Roma says. “Many more than we’re gonna be able to build in the first year or 18 months.”
The line is so long, partly because production is so slow. “The rate we’re going to build these things is around two per day,” he says. “They are essentially hand-assembled by artisans.”
Hand-raisers, we should note, are people who have expressed interest in buying the car. None have yet laid down hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many could back out.
But Roma says some customers have already started the design process. Cadillac is offering the sort of bespoke design process more typically of Bentley and Rolls. Buyers work with a concierge to choose colors and materials unique to their car. One buyer, for instance, plans to use “woods from their grandfather’s orchards.”
