Cadillac has a big reveal in the works. Literally.
The 2015 Escalade SUV is set to debut at a media event on New York City October 7. A thorough redesign is expected of the Escalade, quintessential car of the early 2000s.
The new Escalade will ride on the revised General Motors full-size truck platform that underpins the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups and recently unveiled GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban SUVs.
Past Escalades were little more than Tahoes and Suburbans with a little leather and a lot of bling. This time around, however, Cadillac will reportedly try to distance its full-size SUV from the cousins.
Cadillac isn’t revealing much in its teaser photos, but it’s likely that the 2015 Escalade will have more extroverted styling.
The 2015 Tahoe and Yukon have already debuted with a few styling tricks of their own, so Cadillac will have to do something fairly bold to stand out. Let’s hope it’s not too bold, though. It may not be possible to surpass the amount of chrome on the current Escalade without blinding people.
Hopefully we’ll see improvement to the interior, too. The current Escalade interior shares – by our approximation – too much with the Tahoe, Suburban, and Yukon, emphasizing the fact that the Cadillac is a re-badged version of a cheaper model.
Like the Chevy and GMC, the 2015 Escalade will probably have one of GM’s new EcoTec3 engines under its hood. Cadillac may skip the base 5.3-liter V8 and go for the 6.2-liter engine offered in the 2015 GMC Yukon Denali. A six-speed automatic will most likely be the sole transmission option.
When the Escalade debuted in the waning years of the Clinton Administration, just having a big SUV with a luxury badge was enough. Now, Cadillac will faces competition from the equally gigantic Mercedes-Benz GL-Class, and it will have to convince buyers to spend their extra money on a bigger, slower, SUV, not a faster one.
What’s most disappointing about the American new car market is that no matter how good or bad the Escalade is, GM will sell a boatload of them. Year in and year out, Cadillac sells more Escalades than any other luxury SUV maker – even more than the Range Rover, which is like a million times better in every way.
Look for more details on the 2015 Cadillac Escalade after its October 7 reveal.
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