The upcoming Cadillac Celestiq is one of the brand’s most anticipated products ever, serving as the most advanced, luxurious and exclusive vehicles ever offered by the luxury marque. Now, it seems as though interest for the Celestiq may translate into at least 18 months’ worth of production capacity.
During a recent interview on Autoline After Hours, Cadillac Celestiq Chief Engineer Tony Roma said that GM plans to build roughly two vehicles per day, by hand, at the GM Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan starting in December 2023. It’s worth noting that the Celestiq will be the first production vehicle to be built at this facility.
Romo also went on to say, “We have quite a few hand-raisers. Many, many more than we’re going to be able to build in the first year, 18 months.”
According to Roma, this means that Cadillac has quite a few interested customers, including Lenny Kravitz, looking to get their hands on the bespoke luxury vehicle, so many that production could potentially be locked in for a year and a half. This is interesting news, as the Celestiq carries a substantial starting MSRP north of $300,000.
As a reminder, the Cadillac Celestiq will serve as the luxury marque’s flagship vehicle, and offers prospective buyers an almost-extreme level of customization. Stylistically, the Celestiq is intended to represent the avant-garde, with bold design themes throughout.
That theme continues into the interior, with hand-finished trim pieces throughout the cabin. A 55-inch center screen is just one of five high-definition displays in the vehicle, while rear-seat passengers have their own advanced 12.6-inch-diagonal displays. Meanwhile, above the occupants’ heads sits an all-glass roof panel using Suspended Particle Device (SPD) to allow variable transmission of sunlight into the cabin.
As for powertrain specifications, the Cadillac Celestiq rides on GM’s BEV3 platform and uses a 111-kWh battery pack to power an advanced all-wheel drivetrain. Total output is a GM-estimated 600 horsepower and 640 pound-feet of torque, yielding a 0-60 acceleration of 3.8 seconds.
As previously mentioned, production is expected to begin in December 2023, while availability will be by waitlist only.
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Comments
Wow gm is building 2 a day. gm is so innovating what a time to be alive.
They are bespoke so it will be a slow process. No different than any other car over 300k. You pretty much have a blank canvas on the inside and outside for colors.
I agree the fake pleather looks really nice inside
Andy is joking and being sarcastic because he knows it’s not real pleather. We get it Andy!
Wonder how many are going to Southern California. Wonder how many are going to NFL and NBA players.
???
I bet 80% of the next 18 months of production.
The General best park one on Rodeo Drive like Rolls Royce does to create further interest in this head turner.
18 months of orders is $320 million. Pretty good for only two a day.
Small drop in the bucket. General Motors’ annual revenue for 2021 was $127.004B.
2 vehicles per day? They must be making a lot more of them than the unseen Lyriq. !!!
Love to see it. Flies right in the face of all the haters who were absolutely convinced Cadillac could never sell a $300,000 car. I imagine we are going to hear crickets from those types now.
Jack: Although I will agree with you, I’m playing it safe for now. Hand raisers are very different from orders with deposits (true sold orders). Even with a deposit/order, they can still back out. Also, a lot can change from now till then. Take gas prices for example. We are a country with very short memory, and already we have forgotten the $6.00 + per gallon gas. Heck, even in expensive Los Angeles area, I found a station with gas under $4.00 now. So if gas prices go lower and stay low, EV’s may slow down again. However, this isn’t just another EV.
Those considerations don’t play the same at $300k. If you weren’t offered to buy one, you couldn’t. Also, ZERO people in this customer base give a crap about gas prices.
Just because a person is mega wealthy doesn’t mean they don’t show interest and then buy something else. I feel that I made it clear that this car is not just another EV (thus subject to the same market/fuel fluctuations). My point about the gas is that those same mega rich people may instead opt for the ICE RR or Maybach, or whatever instead of pulling the trigger on this car.
The mega rich can afford all three cars in their collection if they truly are crazy rich. A poor millionaire with a networth of less than $10M would choose one or the other which I don’t consider mega rich but still lives comfortably.
Don’t worry. The economy is going into recession and the wealthy are finally starting to get defunded.
Remember all those crypto millionaire and billionaires? They are getting sent to the poor house or prison like Sam Bankman Fried. No more $$$ for their silly rich people toys
I’d think that a number of the early builds will be provided free to selected celebs to use and be seen in, both in the US and presumingly, China, where I’ve read the car will be eventually imported.
Ted P: That would make sense especially if they did a short term lease type (24 months tops) but didn’t charge the client a dime. That way, when the cars come back in 24 months, GM could go over them with a fine tooth comb and learn a lot about how it holds up and what/where it can be improved. Plus, they could have those people sign a contract where they wouldn’t be allowed to talk badly about the product and to promote it in exchange for the free 2 year ride. Then GM could re-sell them to recoup some of the costs.
That is one beautiful vehicle.
We are in the high-end bespoke/custom vehicle biz and have been for over a hundred years building custom hearses, carriages, hacks, etc, back in the 1800s. Money was no object even back then. The Celestiq will sell because people can get it their way altho those options will be limited due to corporate limitations. However, the $450k Rolls Royce has a busy business building unique rides where the buyer wants it truly one-of-a-kind. Wealthy individuals will spend more to have the Celestiq personalized their way. There are shops that will do the job. I have already spoken with 3 buyers as to what we can do with one asking about an LS9 conversion. Yep, million-dollar rides have gone way crazy. It’s big business.
The Celestiq is Cadillacs 21st century ’67 Eldorado.
Nah, that would be the ’21st century ’57 Eldorado Brougham.
Downright hideous.
I tend to think that if Cadillac built the Escala as a $100K – $150 vehicle, it would have been an over the top home run. And from that success, individually appointed versions could have been offered to push the price into the rarified Rolls segment. I believe my ’78 Seville Elegante that had a door sill badge that said something like “Custom Built by Fischer Body,” so Cadillac was probably hinting at creating a custom coachbuilder market even back then. Fleetwood was a custom coachbuilder in the golden era, so that name could have been revived as GM/Cadillac’s in-house custom shop.
But Cadillac hasn’t built cars in even the S class range for years, so it’s a leap, I think, to introduce a car with an alleged base price of $300K. Lucid’s are higher-end EV’s that clearly were designed from ground up as EV’s – rather than reworking a design that was originally intended for an ICE vehicle. The difference, for me, and it’s just an opinion, is that it seems wrong for an EV to have a grill or a blanked-out space where a grill should be. The vehicle doesn’t need one, and the designers should have taken advantage of that to show what a high-end, electric luxury car should look like. If you’re including a grill on an electric vehicle, you may as well consider including a Lincolnesqe spare tire bulge on the truck.
BTW, does this car have a frunk?
Looks like a 6000 SUX from robocop. 8.2 mpg. An American tradition.
Honest.
Bring the CT6 bw back for those who cannot afford or don’t want to wait for celestiq. Just import ct6 from china and install proper v8 under the hood in us.
Maybe the Sultan of Brunei ordered 10 of them.
I would love to know the ethnic profile of the buyers. I’m sure GM has this in their marketing database. Would be fun to know.