USAToday: GM CEO confirms super-size Cadillac sedan

[Bruce Nunnally]

Cadillac will launch a car bigger than its XTS large sedan within the next two years, General Motors CEO Dan Akerson says.

The XTS is the biggest Cadillac car, and there have been dueling reports for at least two years about whether GM's luxury brand planned to stop there, or go bigger.

Akerson's remarks seem to settle that.

The only question is whether Caddy should develop specialty models, such as a sleek coupe, based on the same hardware as the unnamed large sedan.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/07/19/gm-ceo-akerson-cadillac-big-sedan/2570275/

[cdgrinci]

So, is this announcement a confirmation of the rumored LTS? And on the other hand, this announcement follows the other announcement that the CIEL concept vehicle 'halo' car will not be produced (as had also been rumored to be produced).

[Cadillac Jim]

The CIEL was always iffy, and would have been a 2009 model in the $100K-$200K price range, a halo car like the Veyron but without the Nurmeburg pedigree. If they had a do-over, the car would be very different now. By 2009, they had another halo car that is affordable, the CTS-V, and their production roadster, the XLR, had gone by the wayside.

If they do want a halo car above all the rest, they need a Veryon-beater or it won't server the purpose of such a car, getting people into showrooms and expanding your market base. Those cars are not money-makers in themselves.

Of course, they could just do a world-class GT car like Ford did when rebuffed by Ferrari to drive them out of the GT business, the GT 40 - but wait, we already have that with the Corvette, which is affordable, driveable, fully warrantied, and available. Or, they could just do a Lamborghini-beater, which is what the Ciel might have become.

When I bought my ETC in 1997 in October of 1997, I went into a Chevrolet-Cadillac dealer to buy a Corvette. But I couldn't get the two kids that drove their two demos to show me an option sheet. They wanted me to buy one of their demos. They let me get in, expected me to get all excited when I was asked to depress the clutch pedal (which I found unremarkable, thank goodness), etc. but, browsing the Northstars, the Cadillac people found that I wanted the best-performing model they had, which in 1997 was the ETC, and they still had some 1997 models on the lot that they had to move... and after the sale, I told the Cadillac people that Chevrolet had the wrong culture to sell a car like the Corvette.