It’s unclear whether the Cadillac team simply wanted to have a bit of the fine chocolate in the most famous country in the world for the sweet stuff or if they really did need to fly halfway around the world just to tell us their plans. Either way, Cadillac showed up at that Geneva Motor Show, not with a new model in tow, but with several of the same models we’ve seen and have been enjoying on the market for the past few years. Normally, that might be enough to test the patience of anyone in attendance, but the brand paid its way into the show and they apparently had something to say.
One of the bits of news we received from the president of Cadillac, Johan de Nysschen, is the fact that the Escala will never actually become a production model. He didn’t outright say it couldn’t be one in the future, but what he did say is that this is a Concept car that will continue to serve as a basis for design and performance going forward for the brand. That, hopefully, will include the 4.2-liter twin turbocharged V8 engine that was part of the concept and is a prototype that may show up for the future V-models.
If Cadillac came all the way to Geneva simply to deliver this bit of disheartening news we would all be extremely disappointed, but that’s not the case at all. What we have been told is there will be a new compact crossover SUV that will be called the XT4 and it will show up in the US sometime in 2018 and then follow to the European market after making its debut. This new crossover will sit below the current XT5 but will only make the second crossover SUV in the Cadillac lineup.
In a market that’s full of crossover SUVs Cadillac is severely lacking and the call for the number of small SUVs may pass if they don’t take some decisive action to fill the market with a variety of crossovers. Because the Cadillac team has recognized this they have also announced an XT3 will be offered six months after the XT4 and that we will see a new crossover SUV every six months for the next two years until there will be a total of five crossover SUVs in the lineup from Cadillac of various sizes.
Since this was the big news from Cadillac it seems this is a set of announcements that was well worth the trip even if we’ll never see the Escala on the market as a production model. Of course, the Cadillac team also had the pleasure of enjoying what Geneva has to offer, seeing the other models from some of the competition and being able to taste the fine chocolate that is made in Switzerland. All this together, made it worth the time and energy that it took to head to Geneva to make the announcement of what we can expect from Cadillac regarding crossover SUVs.
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