To this day, a common term Americans use to describe the absolute best of a particular product, service, or expertise is "the Cadillac" of something.
Given the storied history of the General Motors-backed (GM) luxury automaker, it deserves such a moniker. Models like the de Ville, the Sixty Special, the Series 62, and the Eldorado represented the absolute best of what the American auto industry had to offer at their respective times.
These days, Cadillac is amongst a crowd of European and Asian competitors, as the typical luxury buyer's palette includes the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and South Korean newcomer Genesis. However, a new interview with a GM executive reveals that the brand's next product aims for an echelon far more upward than its luxury contemporaries.
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As per reports in Australian automotive magazine Drive and auto marketplace blog Autosales, GM Vice President of Global Design Michael Simcoe hinted at a possibility of the Cadillac brand entering the wild world of hypercars; a class of powerful, technologically advanced super sports cars that carry jaw-dropping price tags.
"Could we build a hypercar? Yes. Would we like to build one? Yes. Are we building one? That would be giving too much away," Simcoe said.
The Australian GM exec also hinted that the potential flagship could retain a gas-powered internal combustion engine, even though the brand is still insistent on its EV transition.
“No, it wouldn’t have to be [electric], but it could be,” the Australian GM exec said.
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Cadillac's racing influence:
Though the Cadillac brand is more known for making cars with the driving dynamics of boats, the luxury brand has a storied history in motorsports, racing in various series like NASCAR and the former American Le Mans series.
Currently, it's racing division fields cars in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, and the FIA World Endurance Championship, where it races the V-Series.R against the likes of Porsche and Lamborghini in the Le Mans Hypercar class of the latter series.
Previewed by the Project GTP Hypercar concept in 2022, the V-Series.R is powered by a hybrid powertrain consisting of a GM-developed 5.5L V8 combined with electric motors and hybrid components supplied by Bosch.
In 2023, Cadillac's V-Series.R entries won third and fourth place overall at the infamous 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, beating teams fielded by Porsche, Peugeot and Toyota along the way.
Recently, figureheads from Bosch revealed that it is considering supplying automakers with hybrid propulsion systems for production cars.
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Cadillac has also been eager to race in Formula 1, joining the Mario Andretti-backed Andretti Global in its November 2023 bid to join the Formula 1 grid in 2026, an effort that gained enough controversy for the House Judiciary Committee to step in when its application was denied by F1 management in February 2024.
Though its position on the grid is in contention, automakers that have involvement in Formula 1 will be the primary competition that Cadillac will be up against if it decides to build its hypercar.
One such vehicle is the Mercedes-AMG One; a sleek hypercar that was built in conjunction with the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team. Powered by a hybrid engine lifted from an F1 car, the seven-figure car's main competitor is a soon to be revealed machine called the RB17 by Red Bull Advanced Technologies.
According to Adrian Newey, the Chief Technical Officer of Oracle Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the future car is set to have a 1,100 horsepower engine and will incorporate tech ripped from Max Verstappen's championship-winning cars.
"The RB17 distills everything we know about creating championship-winning Formula One cars into a package that delivers extreme levels of performance in a two-seat track car," Newey said in a statement. "Driven by our passion for performance at every level, the RB17 pushes design and technical boundaries far beyond what has been previously available to enthusiasts and collectors."
Currently, Cadillac creates a series of high-performance road cars under the V-SERIES Performance line, which compete with the likes of BMW's M-Series cars like the M3 sedan and M4 2-door coupe. Simcoe emphasized that high-performance sports cars are a key part of Cadillac's brand and admitted to Drive that it would be "silly" to ignore such a segment.
"Whether it's [internal-combustion engines] or whether it's [electric vehicles], Cadillac is committed to performance," he said.
"Otherwise we wouldn't be having a conversation about [Formula One]."
General Motors, which trades under GM on the New York Stock Exchange, is down 0.3%, trading at $45.50 at the time of writing.
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