Cadillac is the oldest automotive manufacturer in America, having continuously produced vehicles since its founding in 1902—yet the brand’s latest model is definitively future-focused. Just unveiled, the CELESTIQ is a low, glass-hatched, fully electric sedan. Limousine-long, and looking almost exactly like的浓缩的ept car that inspired it, it is also the first Cadillac to be hand-built since the 1957 Eldorado Brougham. That midcentury Caddy cost over $13,000, at a time when a Rolls-Royce cost around $9,000. This 21st-century one is meant to compete with contemporary Rolls-Royce as well, with a purported starting price of around $300,000.
像劳斯莱斯,每个CELESTIQ将有限公司nfigured and customized to the specifications of each buyer, in a highly involved and individuated process. “CELESTIQ clients will be connected to a personal concierge, somebody who will be their single point of contact through the entire design development process,” says Erin Crossley, Cadillac’s design director. “Every client will also have the ability to connect directly with someone from the Cadillac design team to walk them through—as in-depth as they want to go.”
Having a concierge and a designer as liaison will be useful, as the options to customize are nearly infinite. “We like to say that really anything can be customized—as long as it’s not an impact to safety,” Crossley says. This includes typical things like interior or exterior colors, but it extends well beyond. “The entire interior is hand-wrapped, so we can hand-wrap with a multitude of things from a material perspective, from a color perspective,” Crossley adds. Even the large decorative trim pieces that runs along the center of the interior can be similarly custom designed.
Clients will be exposed to a starter kit of metals, woods, and carbon fibers, but if there are other materials they want to include (and they are deemed appropriately durable) these can also be incorporated. And because there’s so much real metal in the car’s interior, and much of it is custom produced, it can all be adjusted to a client’s needs. “For example, the sill plates in the doors can be etched with the client’s signature, or the large metal trim piece that runs across the dashboard has a pattern, and that pattern could be customized,” Crossley says. Even the window lift switches in the door are customizable. “They’re 3D printed. So we could 3D print a pattern into those,” she adds.
