All About the Benjamins, Baby: Cadillaq Celestiq Electriq Fastbacq

Matthew Guy
by Matthew Guy

We’ve known for some time that the top rung of General Motors is all in on electrification, a decision that has elated some and caused others to flee. Set to serve as the brand’s flagship is the Celestiq, a slinky fastback with an expected price tag north of a quarter million dollars.

What’s your take on the specter of a $300,000 Cadillac?

It would be possible to ruminate for hours on the direction in which decision-makers are taking the storied brand. With electrification serving as something of a reset button for the entire industry, is Cadillac’s smartest play one in which it seeks to reclaim its ‘Standard of the World’ label? A large-and-in-charge four-place fastback costing $300,000 could do much to erase sins of the past – provided it has a mouth to match its trousers. Those answers will come later. For now, we’ll have to be content with these teaser photos.

According to Cadillac, each Celestiq (technically CELESTIQ but we refuse to play the ALL CAPS marketing game) will be hand-built from globally-sourced parts at GM’s Global Tech Center in Michigan. Prior to assembly, there will apparently be an opportunity for “creative collaboration” between customers and the brand, a notion which sounds markedly like Audi Exclusive or the services available from Mercedes-Maybach.

If Cadillac is planning on charging 300 large for a Celestiq, they’ll need to play even above that rarified air, since that sum sits squarely in Rolls and Bentley territory.

“Every Celestiq will be instantly identifiable as one of a kind, giving each client a personal connection to Cadillac’s newest flagship,” said Erin Crossley, a design director at Cadillac. While that is certainly a bowlful of PR word salad, it is these types of experiences that are expected by customers plunking down this type of money.

While this is still being billed as a show car and not necessarily a production concept, we will nevertheless permit ourselves to make a few observations about the machine in these images. Those tail lamps take much from the Lyriq, suggesting this design is going to appear in some form on all Cadillacs for the next however many design cycles. The shot of the Celestiq’s rear seat shows a Rolls (and Maybach, et al) style center console with plenty of tech toys, plus German-esque seat controls on the door and snazzy light signatures behind its trim panel. The shot from its cargo area shows seats with integrated high backs and a dashboard that stretches across the car like that found in the Mercedes-AMG EQS. Is this $300,000? Again, we’ll have to see the real thing.

Also, while we rarely read too much into the simulated images placed on the screens in these types of photos, if the Celestiq can actually juice its battery from 80 percent to full in just ten minutes then it is packing one hell of a charging system. That last twenty percent is the slowest to accumulate, generally taking as much time as the first four-fifths of the recharge combined.

Longtime readers will recall Jack Baruth drove a 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman down to Houston and correctly opined in his review that its original price was less about the product itself and more about one’s place on the social ladder. This is an accurate and nuanced assessment of how Cadillac operated in its day. The car he drove stickered in the mid-1970s for about thirteen grand, a sum he estimated to be roughly five times the asking price of a basic compact car at that time, and the Talisman could apparently be opted up to $17,000. When accounting for inflation, that’s poking its nose into six-figure territory – quite a ways from $300k but Jack’s point is still valid.

How about it? Are we seeing a return of that Standard of the World swagger? Or is this a think-of-a-price-and-then-double-it marketing exercise?

[Images: GM]

Matthew Guy
Matthew Guy

Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.

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  • N8iveVA N8iveVA on Jul 18, 2022

    They new Lyriq is less than $75k and it shares no switchgear with any other GM vehicle.

  • DweezilSFV DweezilSFV on Aug 24, 2022

    And the super size stupid console eats up another seating position and more room.


    Pretty soon there will be a pony wall running down the middle of the car.


    Room for 4 passengers. $300,000.


    Yeah, that'll work.

  • 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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