Knock, Knock? Who's There? Not A Future Cadillac XLR

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

The Red Pants Douchebag Marketing Garden Party debut of Cadillac’s Elmiraj concept was hugely exciting for everyone naive enough to think that Cadillac might be able to whip up a $100K rear-wheel-drive monster coupe with whatever funds they saved by plopping the XTS on top of the LaCrosse. I thought it looked great myself. As an American, I’m very proud of the fact that General Motors can fearlessly create a one-off prototype of the kind of highly improbable flagship that Mercedes has been nonchalantly building since the W126 SEC came out. Come to think of it, that W126 coupe came out just before Cadillac turned the Eldorado into a car that managed to be about as physically big as a current Sonata while appearing to be the same size as the current Accent. Goodbye Cadillac, hello Mercedes. Changing of the guard and all that.

Those of us who remain fans of the brand yet have some minor understanding of the auto business understand that the Elmiraj is about zero percent “El” and about one hundred percent mirage. Fair enough. But what about a new XLR that kind of looks like an Elmiraj? There’s a new Corvette, and the old, old (C5) Corvette spawned the XLR, so perhaps something could be done there?


Not so fast. Speaking to Fox News, Corvette chief engineer Tadge Jeuchter crushed the dreams of up to one hundred people, most of whom are the spouses of GM dealer principals, when he said that “This is a Corvette, it’s optimized for the Corvette market… there’s no intent to offer any other nameplate, aside from the Corvette.”

Sounds fairly definitive, doesn’t it? Still, this is GM, so there’s always hope that they’ll change their minds and develop the thing halfway through the model cycle of the C7 or something, right?

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • MRF 95 T-Bird MRF 95 T-Bird on Aug 24, 2013

    Back in the late 80's early 90's when the Allante, Reatta and Corvette were GM's halo cars and the low-end sports-commuter Fiero was living up to its name by self-imolating on the road. I remember seeing an article in one of the car magazines saying that each GM division would have its own unique two-seater covering appropriate price ranges. It even had a picture of a prototype Olds 2-seater, since they were the only division that did not have one. In fact Olds never had a 2-seat coupe unless you include the Business coupe. It looked like a cross between a Trofeo, an Allante and a Reatta. Most likely it was based on the E-body which those cars were based on.

  • BklynPete BklynPete on Aug 26, 2013

    Yes, it is Brian Wilson. And I believe that's Mrs. Wilson. Some context of what they're doing in this picture would be nice.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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