Preview: Cadillac Escalade Hybrid and Platinum Editions

By Gunnar Heinrich with photography by Neil Rogers

UNDER the soft blue cast of an early New York summer’s eve, Cadillac’s PR staff quietly set the stage in the gated court yard of New York’s Palace Hotel to offer members of the press a preview of the Escalade Hybrid and Platinum editions.

GM’s G.M. for Cadillac Jim Taylor led the talking points by noting how far he felt Cadillac had come since the dour days of the late 90s. The Escalade is the focal point of Cadillac’s cool new image.

And on the subject of image, it’s worth taking notes on just what the Escalade presents to the world.

For those who can’t afford four dollars a gallon, gas prices have made driving truck framed SUVs as palatable as chasing three Martinis with four quarts of Drano. For those who can afford the cost to filler-up, the image association with driving such a beast is akin in its saintliness to supplying the Drano to the hapless boozer.

In this politically correct age of in… incontinent truths, who but Texans and a certain set of oily haired customers from Jersey dare ride high on a 5,700 pound, 74.3 inch high by 79 inch wide by 202.5 inch long carbon footprint whose 6.2 Liter, 403 horsepower V8 guzzles as much dino-juice exiting a parking lot as the Queen Mary II uses when leaving port?

Don’t know for sure.

But, would it help matters if Cadillac put a Caddy sized green on chrome colored “Hybrid” badge over a fake quarter-panel air intake?

Maybe…

Or would it assuage guilty feelings if Cadillac implemented a two-stage hybrid system that kicks in at various levels of speed and load so that it’s neither/nor but either and both gas and electric?

Perhaps…

Or could Cadillac convince you that if a full size SUV is what you need to tow and haul people, that the big Caddy can do it using less gas than any foreign rival of similar size?

It’s 20 mpg urban and 21 mpg highway.

No truck this size has a right to be so frugal.

But for customers who just don’t care (about much of anything, really), there’s the gas powered Platinum edition (12/18 mpg) that shows off with premium leather (worth the upgrade), all kinds of DVD and TV sets, trick LED headlamps, and an assortment of other goods and services to pamper occupants.

Yours (or theirs) for $12,000 over standard MSRP ($60,000 +/-).

Worth it?

I’ll share my notes from that last night’s ride-along in the next post. In the meantime, check out the following gallery of pictures shot by the one and only Neil Rogers.

[Click to enlarge]

Special thanks to General Motors for graciously hosting Automobiles De Luxe.