There were giants walking the Earth in those days, at least in the marketing department; whoever coined the name “Twilight Sentinel” for Cadillac’s newest technological feature back in 1964 was certainly one of them. One has to assume that the early concept sessions for said feature, in which a photoelectric device switched the headlamps on at dusk and back off at dawn, included a lot of “Light-O-Matics” and “Senso-Solar” and suchlike. It was the early ’60s, after all. Yet there was one person who could dream a little bigger and consequently invested the device with some authentic grandeur. Sixty years later, pretty much every car on the market has automatic headlamps — but only Cadillacs really have a Twilight Sentinel.
Celestiq, on the other hand … that could be a drug for erectile dysfunction or seasonal depression, advertised in the afternoons on broadcast television using terrifying medical disclaimers intoned slowly while a video montage of active seniors doing Tai Chi or playing Connect Four distracts the viewer. It’s not. Instead, it’s a new Cadillac sedan, hand built to order, no two alike — although, to be fair, that was also true of the notoriously misassembled 1980 Seville Diesel. Prices begin at a robust $300,000. And it’s electric, naturally.
In the Twilight Sentinel era, big-money, bespoke Cadillacs were a fairly common thing, from the original Eldorado to the velour-lined 1975 Fleetwood Talisman. But the brand sold in the biggest numbers when it focused on “badge-engineered” versions of Chevrolets sold at a slightly higher price, so General Motors was unable to resist the lure of degrading the wreath and crest until it found itself attached to a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck and sold to a bewildered public as an “Escalade EXT.” In 2022, Cadillac is primarily a vendor of tarted-up Chevrolet Equinoxes and Tahoes that shed their value upon purchase and use in a manner rivaled by few products besides chili dogs and condoms.
Therefore, moronic name aside, the Celestiq is a welcome return to something of which Cadillac fans have dreamed for years. Namely, a cost-no-object luxury sedan aimed at the world’s movers and shakers, shining a benevolent halo on the lesser machinery with which it will share a showroom. Fans of the brand — and they are legion, even among the young — have been begging for such a vehicle since Ronald Reagan’s second term. Now, they have it. If it had the company’s troubled “Blackwing” V-8 engine, or even one of the prosaic Chevy truck engines that have powered Cadillacs in the recent past, they’d be thrilled. Instead, they’re furious.
Not that GM really cares, mind you. They’ve been given a mandate to build EVs, one they initially fulfilled by building horrible little phone booths for which the primary source of excitement was the chance of being immolated in a sudden battery-related fire. (In a bizarre plot twist, the company offered some owners a $6,000 post-sale rebate if they waived their right to sue regarding said fires.) This strategy having failed at a likely 10-figure loss, they’re trying something else: building four-ton electric chariots for the Eloi who drive policy in the current administration. GM’s new electric Hummer weighs an astonishing 9,000 pounds, almost twice as much as a military Humvee. In any America but the current one, that would be a tone-deaf move. Today, however, we generally assume that our betters, from the leather-lined seats of their private jets, are going to consume fuel and resources at a rate that would have shamed Nero, even as they lecture us on the virtues of eating bugs.
The Celestiq is a Hummer relative beneath the skin, so it won’t be as lithe in practice as it looks in computer renderings and early press photos. Shame, really, because it has a genuine presence. The man on the street probably won’t confuse it with a Honda Accord, despite their remarkable resemblance in profile. And it’s loaded with features that are as interesting in 2022 as the Twilight Sentinel was in 1964: a 55-inch widescreen LCD dash, a glass roof that can dim over individual passengers, a broad variety of color and trim options not seen in Cadillacs since the ’70s.
A few wags have suggested that the Celestiq is uncomfortably similar in mien, mojo, and general proportion to the “6000 SUX” from the movie RoboCop. That car, built in real life on the 1977 Cutlass Supreme and boasting 8.2 mpg in the film, was meant to suggest a dystopian gap between rich and poor in the crime-ridden Detroit of the, ahem, imaginary future. The poor of RoboCop live in burned-out buildings and dress in rags; the corporate-government kleptocracy that actually runs the place, by contrast, is able to luxuriate in isolated high-rises and drive 6000 SUXes through burned-out streets.
Expect this scenario to be unintentionally, and unironically, recreated with the first deliveries of Celestiqs to favored public officials.
With the arrival of this $300,000 EV, Cadillac is now in the enviable position of having two flagships. The people who earn their own money will likely choose the $149,990 Escalade-V, a supercharged truck capable of pulling boats to lakes and hauling children to school. Celebrities, billionaires, and those who are assigned a living by the party can drive a Celestiq. Symbolically, the engineering and production costs for the latter will likely be paid by profits produced by the former.
It’s been 50 years since Cadillac had a sedan this special, this unique to the brand. What a shame that it’s a range-limited toy for the connected and influential. But that’s appropriate nowadays for GM, a company that has been hand in glove with various administrations for a while now. The Celestiq’s cost, consumption, and appetite for rare earth elements will be truly prodigious, even as the economic prospects of the average American continue to narrow.
If you want a vision of the automotive future, Winston, imagine a Washington suburb full of inner party members self-dealing in Caddys that sell in the Rolls price range, even as regular internal combustion engine cars and the fuels they run on are increasingly regulated and priced out of the market. Viewed in this light, the Celestiq is truly a luxury, truly a Cadillac — something that the embarrassingly popular, jumped-up Chevrolets of Cadillacs past cannot claim to have been. It just needs a better name. Something to suggest that it is impersonally and callously present at the end of the American dream, the setting of the sun that used to shine over our global power and reach. Hey, wait … is Twilight Sentinel still available?
Jack Baruth was born in Brooklyn and lives in Ohio. He is a pro-am race car driver and former columnist for Road and Track and Hagerty magazines who writes the Avoidable Contact Forever newsletter.
