Knock, Knock? Who's There? Not A Future Cadillac XLR
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?
More by Jack Baruth
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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.
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.