TG’s US Manufacturer of the Year is... a company that’s gone from bland to bold

The Standard of the World. Be Iconic. Dare Greatly… Cadillac has had many different brand catchlines over the past couple of decades as it searched for its new identity. But it’s only quite recently that the brand has started to live up to the billing.

Dial back the calendar to 2015 and the range – as far as most people were concerned – was the Escalade SUV plus a range of good but confusingly similar large saloons with equally baffling three-digit names. What stopped us from writing Cadillac off back then were the occasional smoke signals that, deep down, the brand understood – remembered -– what American Luxury really meant.

Exhibit A was a duo of fabulous concept cars, both designed by Ariel Atom designer Niki Smart, comprising the 2011 four-door open topped hybrid-electric Ciel, and the full gangster 2013 Elmiraj executive coupe. If they had put both of those into production – and we know there were blank-cheque, take-my-money orders for more than 1,000 of the jaw-dropping Ciels – the Cadillac renaissance might have started a decade earlier.

But we had to wait another 10 years - and endure more cosmetic and bodywork changes than the entire Kardashian family - before the brand settled on a path to greatness once again. And what a path it’s turned out to be. In a seemingly continuous blur of activity, announcements and achievements the brand has gone from being bland to once again one of the most bold and ambitious nameplates on the planet.

Let’s start with the product. The marked upswing started in 2020 with a brave but clear decision to move the entire model range to electric power. A shift heralded, somewhat ironically, by announcing production versions of the Lyriq and Celestiq EV concept cars. Using GM’s very clever Lego-style modular Ultium battery system – used for all GM brands, including Hummer – as the spine, the Lyriq launched into the post Covid world in 2022. A BEV version of the storied Escalade, the IQ and IQL, joined it in 2024. And then the big news, the bespoke Celestiq, all 5.5 metres of it, emerged as the US answer to Rolls-Royce.

You might think that lot would be quite enough to occupy the team, but they were just getting started. Hot on the heels of the Kamm-backed limousine, Cadillac added the Optiq – its entry level EV – and the Vistiq, a three-row SUV which slots between the Lyriq and Escalade IQ. What makes this doubly impressive is that Cadillac did all this while still offering its best-ever regular Escalade and superb petrol-powered CT4 and CT5 Blackwing models – the latter now available with a Celestiq-like raft of bespoke options in their last year of production.

V-spec versions of all the EV models will replace the Blackwings on the road – Cadillac knows high-performance variants are essential – but the really big news is on the track. In 2025 its WEC Hertz Team Jota V-Series.R took the brand’s first-ever pole at the 24hrs of Le Mans and went onto win the six-hours of Sao Paulo. In IMSA, the US equivalent series, the Cadillac won Petit Le Mans for the second year running.

All great but still dwarfed by the head-spinning news that Cadillac – yes, Cadillac! – will be joining Formula One from 2026 as a full factory team. They’re doing it in partnership with TWG Motorsport but that is surely the final nail in the old Cadillac coffin.

In the space of a year, it has launched an entire range of new EVs, including a separate Rolls-Royce competitor, got pole at Le Mans and launched a full Formula One team. Cadillac’s catchline today is: ‘Cadillac. Never Stop Arriving’. But, based on all the above, we suggest something a bit more succinct for 2025. How about just: Wow.