GM Explains Cadillac Lyriq Name Origins
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Cadillac announced late last year that it would revert back to real model names and slowly phase out the current alphanumeric nomenclature over the next little while. The first vehicle to arrive under this new naming convention will be the Cadillac Lyriq EV. Lyriq is a brand new name for Cadillac, so many fans may be wondering how General Motors came up with it and what its origins are.
We were also wondering what was behind the Cadillac Lyriq nameplate, so we asked Cadillac’s head of global brand strategy, Phil Dauchy, to shed some light on the matter. Dauchy told GM Authority executive editor, Alex Luft, that the Lyriq name is part of a new Cadillac naming structure that will see all vehicle names end in “iq.” These “iq” names will replace the CT# and XT# nomenclature used on current cars and crossovers powered by internal combustion engines and are intended to signal a change of course at Cadillac – that being from ICE to EV.
Dauchy also said the new nomenclature “signals that Cadillac is bringing a different type of vehicle to market, one that works in concert with man, nature, and machine.”
As for how Cadillac came up with Lyriq specifically, Dauchy explained that the name is a nod to the fact that Cadillac is the most mentioned brand in songs. No other brand (not just automotive brands) is mentioned in more songs than Cadillac.
Additionally, the “iq” suffix names provide a sort of alteration of sorts for Cadillac brand cars. With Cadillac and the model name both ending in an “ick” sound, these names roll off the tongue quite well. Take the Cadillac Celestiq nameplate, for example, the smooth-flowing name assigned to the automaker’s upcoming flagship luxury sedan. Speaking of the Celestiq, Dauchy promises fans will be wowed by what the hand-built electric full-size sedan has to offer when it finally debuts.
“When you see [the Cadillac Celestiq], its size, presence and scale all connote the emotion associated with the name,” Dauchy explained.
The Cadillac Lyriq, which will be the first fully electric Cadillac production vehicle, was originally scheduled to make its debut in April. The vehicle will now make its debut in concept form during a virtual event, online set for August 6th, 2020 at 7 PM EST.
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A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site, Cadillac Society.
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Every Cadillac name Will end by saying ICK. That should be a clue and a half not to use that name.
You got that right brother
I guess people will now start writing songs about Volvos…..
The only song I know off the top of my head that mentions Volvo is “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”.
Will they change the brand’s name to Cadillick?
Its stupid. Maybe once the brand has been reestablished and is thriving you go this weird route. This will not be successful… its just stupid.. .
Naming cars is a difficult, expensive and time consuming process.
You have to have legal spend time and money to make sure you can trade mark it.
You have to have standards and practices make sure it is not offensive in any language and culture.
You have to run clinics to find if it works.
You have to have Marketing come up with a plan for it.
You have to come up with a meaning at times or a story to make it appear to mean something.
Then there is the internal fight on who wants what name.
It can be a mess.
Good case was the Fiero.
GM was going to call it a Banshee GM had rejected it due to the evil involved with the name several times.
Then they had several other names.
Then it went to Pegasus. It was killed so late the emblem was not changed.
It then went o Fiero with no explanation.
Pontiac put out a story that it means a Proud in Italian. Well that is sort of true. They also said John Schinella came up with it looking in an Italian dictionary.
That all sounded great but!
GM also owned the name Fiero and had it already trademarked. How do we know this? Pontiac had a Firebird Show car in 1969 by the same name. Then it meant FI bird aERO Concept.
Now look names today mean little in the success or failure of a car outside a Ferrari.
If you style it right, Build it right, Design it right and market right it will sell no matter the name.
At this point the old name at Cadillac hold little equity with the cars we have today. Let’s face it the Eldorado name would not work well on what we have today. As younger people don’t care and it does not resemble the car remembered by the old.
So there is no problem with new names here. But the reality is these electric cars need to beat Tesla in every area. GM can not afford any good enough thinking with these cars. They must be impressive and excite people to set the level of the class.
A great car excites the senses and makes you feel it inside. That is what the C8;is doing to many now.
Then you have to build it right not to let anything get in the way to dull that excitement.
The bottom line is the car defines the name not the name defining the car.
No one passes up a good car just because of the name.
Great post C8.R
Especially the last few paragraphs. I think people can sometimes only see a name the way it was last used but it’s the product that defines the name. While the last Fleetwood wasn’t great, many before it were and a great future car worthy of that name would reset the imagery of the nameplate. Sadly though, as I state below, I don’t believe today’s GM is capable of building a modern Fleetwood, Eldorado, or Seville that would be worthy inheritors of those classic names.
I’m ready to be impressed. For now I’ll reserve judgment
Great comment Joel, reserve judgement but every GM launch in the last 10 years (cept the C8) has been underwhelming. If the new BOF SUV’s storm the market that will be a good sign that maybe they’ve learned.
However if Quid Pro Joe should somehow win he’s already said we’ll not be energy independent ever again so gas prices and taxes will go up which will ruin the new SUV line, and the global economy. Secretly this is what Typhoid Mary wants so we are forced to shift to EV’s… So with Trump Americans have choices but with DemoRats the state decides… let freedom ring… and let them eat cake…
Xjug, your gas prices are already hilariously low, you’re due for an increase down there it’s like half the price of the rest of the civilized world. Time to more on from liquified dinosaurs.
Yes name easily is important and Fleetwood was a great name with tons of equity but it was squandered on product well below the quality it once represented.
A new name is a struggle to establish but an old name can even harder if it does not live up to the standards that it once represented. It not Only has to reestablish itself but it has to overcome the damaged done.
In the case of the last version just was nowhere close to what the name once represented.
Escaladiq?… Is that x-rated?
Well, I guess if it sells more cars to the MGBGTq community…
Great piece here. I would argue about “no one passes up a good car just because of the name.” Yes naming vehicles is extremely tricky. A name should resonate and identify. Case in point, alpha/numeric names lead to confusion. On paper it makes sense, total sense, but in reality people are confused . . . was that a ABC45 or XYZ67 I just show zooming down the street, they also don’t resonate with most and certainly don’t evoke any kind of emotion or passion. If people don’t know or recognize a name how do you sell it. Take a Mustang or Camry, people know the name and it conjures up an image. Now say I drive a CT6 or C-class, most would say what is that.
I also disagree about classic names, there is an instant visual that conjures up. Lincoln Continental is a good example. an old name repurposed on a modern vehicle. All this buzz around it when they reintroduce the name and people could instantly relate to something vs naming it MK whatever that means nothing. The caveat here with classics names is doing it right. As you note it needs to be built right. Another example, I’m waiting on Buick to revive the “Electra” nameplate – a great old classic name repurposed on an electric vehicle. Yes you could have a great name on a crappy car and the name is damaged forever. Chevette, a cleaver name for a small Chevy, but the name is forever associated with cheaply made cars
It’s a terrible name honestly. Their first electric sedan/coupe should be called the E-ldorado. Now that’s money right there, y’all can have that one for free.
gm had better impress with these cadillac EVs otherwise their final model should be named the pyrriq before they fade into history.
I have to agree, this name is strange for the sake of being strange. People wont pronounce it right.
Cadillac’s naming of vehicles made absolutely no sense until a few years ago when it was decided a car would be designated as CT and XT for crossover; but it would be refreshing for some if Cadillac search their roots and went old school like naming their new electric vehicle.. the Eldorado.
So what will happen with Escalade if “iq” is the new thing at Cadillac? Escaladiq?
Reading the above comments, I can see the points being made in them all. I agree with the fact that it’s not just reaching into a hat and pulling out some name that people threw in. There’s a lot to it! With that said, I certainly like that they are going back to names and I’ve been harping on this for many (many) years. Anything is better than CT/XT/ELR/ATS/SRX……..or whatever other junk they have attached. However, these “iq” ending name listed above do not roll off the tongue easily at all. There is zero reason why older names from Cadillac’s past could not be used. For the younger folks who can’t related to names like Eldorado, then there should be no reason to not re-use them. For those of us who fondly recall those names, it would be a huge welcome. And for those who recognize those names but don’t like them, why try to reinvent yet more names? Oh well, at least we are getting names again. But Cadillac would be smart to look at Lincoln in this department.
Lincoln already is discontinuing the Continental while the CUV Corsair goes on.
Might note the Continental was their greatest name yet the Corsair was the name of a little remembered Edsel model. Ranger also a Edsel model has returned at Ford.
Again it is the products not the name.
I can see the EV models are going with IQ at the end. Outdoor that be part of the marketing to imply intelligence in design and engineering?
Tesla did a S and X model with the 3 intended to be an E model. Marketing finally went to the 3 to not offend but you still have S3X models that still gets the intended idea planted.
Tesla couldn’t use “Model E” because of Ford. Musk wanted the lineup to spell SEXY with the rollout of the Model Y
How people can tell you the names of Telsa models and get it right.
Because people like to crap on GM for doing it but not any other brand who does it. Tesla,BMW,Audi,Mercedes,Lexus,Infiniti on and on and on.
” Ranger also a Edsel model has returned at Ford.”
It took barely 5 years for Ranger to reappear on a Ford model after Edsel’s demise (as a trim package on the F-100/250).
AI like the bow to Cadillac being the car named in more songs then any. Why was that? They had a myth about them; lifestyle, glamour bold , presence, technology, image.
But sorry, just dont get it. Who are these people Cadillac hires to ruin the brand?
The CT 6 was RUINED by the name. Nobody could grasp what it meant ,and if you mentioned it ,the most informed people did not know what it was ,so it did not exist to them.
I drove cars with no names…..sorry they lose personality.
Cadillac has a treasure trove of names; produced and not: Esacala , Solitaire, Cyclone, Ceil , Eldorado, Fleetwood, 60 Special, but ‘ Lyriq ?’
Well good luck, they are going to need it.
I agree. Why not even recycle some other names…. Calais? Take Catalina from Pontiac? If you think of the “luxury” names from the past…they all reflected places people wanted to be or where the rich played. Riviera, Park Avenue, etc. And Fleetwood works just don’t use Brougham. Alpha-numeric is terrible because most of them don’t mean anything anymore….remember when the lower case “i” meant injected on many 80’s cars from other brands?
I’m ok with bringing some names back, others not so much. Brougham (spelling?) and fleetwood sound old and stale but the thought of a Tesla model S or Mercedes S class fighter being called Eldorado is wicked in a good way.
I’m excited to see the upcoming EVs and believe that GM knows it’s the last chance, if the president of the company is saying it out loud to the public then Mary knows it to.
The names could use some work, ending in “iq” just seems weird. Use elmiraj, sixteen, solitaire and other intriguing names from the past.
I think Cadillac needs names again but I don’t care for the “ick” scheme devised by their marketing department. Those names will perpetually be misspelled just like Infiniti (Infinity) and they sound stupid and conjure no image of luxury or exclusivity. The name Escala did. Lyriq does not. I’m not too worried about it though because about five minutes after these products launch, Cadillac will change direction again so the “First Ever!” Lyriq will also be the last. By 2025, the Lyriq name will be gone.
As for Eldorado, Seville, Fleetwood or the great names from Cadillac’s past, I think they need to stay in the past. I haven’t always felt that way but I have no confidence that today’s GM could execute products that live up to those names. Therefore, let them rest with dignity. Cadillac already did great harm to the names in their latter iterations so let’s not do more damage.
It’s those names and those cars from the past that artists were inspired to write and sing about. They were dream cars that Americans across our land aspired to own. Nobody writes songs about the “First Ever!” Cadillac XT6 or dreams of the day they can own one. For a Cadillac exec to brag about Cadillac’s prominence in musical lyrics (Lyriq) only serves to reinforce the notion that they’re a brand still trying to live off of their past glory and reputation rather than living up to that reputation.
We’ll see how they do with electrollacs but I’m not expecting much even though I know it’s Cadillac’s last chance. Frankly the talk about how amazed we’ll all be is something they’ve said before. They said that about the frumpy little XT4.
I wish them the best but their road to redemption was long and hard five years ago when they merely wanted to emulate entrenched German luxury; making Caddy into a hip Tesla clone is a far more ambitious mission
For their blackwing series they have said it will be called “BigDyq”
Ick indeed. I dont get the sense that Mr. Douchey douche really believes that contrived explanation for the silly name. Who says “cattle-lick” when referring to the once glorious brand? Personally, the “iq” at the end comes off as too cute for school and very dated, as if it was 1997 and we were prefacing everything remotely electronic with e- or i-. If the alliteration angle is intentional, maybe that explains the naming of the Cue system too, things that make you go “eeeewwwwwww”.
Im so disheartened to see Cadillac constantly faceplant themselves at every turn. It just seems they cant help but make the wrong choice even when they announce an intention to do something smart. It has reached a point where you can reliably predict them to always make laughably bad choices and then only correct the few accidental successes. Cases in point, killing ct6 just as sales interest was exploding, flooding their showrooms in boring fwd tall wagons only after the market was saturated while failing to capitalize on the void that existed for what should have been their strong suite, stylish rwd based performance luxury crossovers. Or, downgrading powertrains just as the rest of the market was improving theirs and democratizing performance. Now we have mazda 3 econoboxes outdoing ct4 and ct5. Failing to deliver on repeated promises of supercruise rollouts and holding back standard safety features so that now base Japanese cars appear superior to pricey Cadillac’s. The incompetence has reached a level that looks like sabotage.
In the end, a horrible name might be forgiven if the product is great but i have extremely serious doubts that the lyriq will in any way be impressive enough to overcome the established negativity around current Cadillac brand equity.
?????
Sales interest in the CT6 was ” exploding” ???? 😂
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The car was a flop in the US. Sales were dropping like rocks when it was killed. Only 8K last year.
Have you seen the Lyriq? I can answer for you: NO. You haven’t.
Sounds like most on here seem to agree. The bringing of real names is welcome. The names they (for now) have decided to go with have been thought up by non-car people who smoke too much weed. When higher-ups asked these same people to come up with reasons for those names, they panicked and thought up the quite stupid reasons listed in the article above.
I 100% agree with Ci2Eye (who I feel is always well spoken). Although I love the old and impressive names of the past, I’m just not convinced those names would fit Cadillac any more. They had the opportunity with the CT6 where that car would have (IMO) made a very nice Fleetwood. The CTS would have made a good start to the Seville. But until Cadillac comes out with truly astounding products that deserve those names, they need to stay in the past.
Dan,
Thanks for the compliment. I agree that had the CT6 launched with the Blackwing V8, a better interior and the letters F L E E T WO O D stretched across its lower front doors, the desperate place Cadillac finds itself today might’ve been quite different.
It was, in so many ways, what Cadillac had been needing for the past 25 years. It was the archetypal Cadillac reimagined and reborn: A large RWD sedan with beautiful proportions and road presence the likes of which Cadillac hadn’t offered in far too long. I think the car, unfortunately, didn’t make the splash it needed to because of a few grave errors on GM’s part. Those errors were the name, the interior, and the engine. If it’d been the new Cadillac Fleetwood powered by a 4.2 L Blackwing V8 that GM launched in New York circa 2016, the automotive press would’ve proclaimed Cadillac to be back! Car buyers would’ve then taken notice.
Mark Ruess is on record saying the upcoming scheme to make Cadillac into Tesla is their last chance. Perhaps the truth is that CT6 was their last chance at building a modern Cadillac in the classic tradition of the brand and they failed.
In the early days of Cadillac, they produced an excellent chassis and engine and coach builders like Fleetwood built beautiful bodies to ride atop Cadillac’s mechanicals. Cadillac later bought the Fleetwood body company and brought the entire operation in house; chassis, engine, and body. With Cadillac fully in charge, the era of their heyday and market domination began. CT6 Blackwing was a full reincarnation of that. It was a Cadillac-only chassis/platform/architecture (Omega) with a Cadillac engine and a Cadillac body that shared nothing with other GM models. Maybe it was the last chance to do that. Current products like XT6 aren’t that at all.
A skateboard chassis ultimum battery pack electric vehicle will be something quite different too. It puts Cadillac in the former role of Fleetwood. The GM skateboard will have a ‘Body by Cadillac’ married to it. A new era is coming.
Not to worry. The electric skate board cars will continue to suffer from all that bad about GM.. Every effort to cut cost will be obvious in the product when if eventually comes out after the typical GM dithering and directionless process they are famous for. They will be overpriced just like the Volt sorry XLR was. The new cadilacs will be built on a Chevy budget and priced at half again or double what the Chevy is priced. Once again GM mismanagement will be left dumbfounded by how they screwed it up again. Then shortly after the Electric project finaly gets going they will change direction again and dither another decade away on the next new thing…… Never will it ever get it right….
Sadly the Once great names that graced famed Cadillac of the past were reduced and neglected to the point of mockery by GM mismanagement. The 59 Eldorado was a monumental effort for Cadillac in every way. The 86 Eldorado was a total joke! A sad effort of relentless mediocrity and cost cutting. Bad badge engineering blotted to a monsterus level. GM killed these storied name hanging them on mass produced homogenize junk. Might as well bring back Cimmeron and hang it on some future model. Let these name lay buried with the shame they were forced to represent.
I think there may be too many millenials working at GM. Or, ICK’s, if you prefer!
Right, us millennials are ALWAYS the problem! 😒
Bitter old person syndrome. Blame the younger generation for everything.