2018 Cadillac Escalade ESV Review

[MUSIC PLAYING] ELANA SCHERR: Cadillac practically invented the luxury SUV when it first introduced the Escalade. It has always been a car that can make you feel like this even when you're just doing this. Can the 2018 Escalade still impress? There's only one way to find out. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you have the kind of lifestyle where you regularly need to carry around more than five people and you are not into the minivan, well, you don't have a whole lot of choices. There's the Yukon and the Suburban. But if you want to dress it up a little, there's basically just the Lincoln Navigator and the Escalade. The number one thing that I like most about it is the way that it looks on the outside. The fact that it hasn't changed that much, that it's still this maybe even slightly outdated giant box-- but I mean, Bentley doesn't change the way that the cars look because they're like, we're so good that we're just going to keep doing this. And I feel like the Escalade is a little bit like that too. The second best thing about a Cadillac Escalade is the power plan. It's got a 6.2-liter V8. It sounds really good. It has great power. It has a really good tip-in, that first initial burst of power when you first get on the gas. See, like that. You wouldn't think that a truck would move when you do that when it weighs so much, but it does. And it ran a 14.8 quarter-mile time when they tested it at the track, which honestly is about on par with what muscle cars in the '60s ran. So that's pretty impressive. But even if it was twice that, you still wouldn't have any problem merging on freeways because this thing is so intimidating. People move out of your way. In 2018, Cadillac put the 10-speed automatic into the Escalade. That's pretty much the same transmission that you're going to find in Chevrolet and Ford, that they're all coming from the same place. And it's a really good transmission. Sometimes these super multi-speed transmissions are always looking for somewhere else to be. In this car, it's very well-tuned. It doesn't constantly drop gears trying to find you something better. And you really only notice that you have 10 gears if you floor it in a straight line and wait for it to go through all of them, and then it's a little bit slower than you would like. Breaking in the Escalade is a lot better than you would expect it to be. I mean, again, it's this super heavy truck, and it's not something that you would want to go autocrossing in. It will absolutely bring it down to a stop. The 60-to-zero, when they tested it at the track, they said was completely in line with other vehicles that are this size and this weight. Calvin, who was testing it, told me that he wishes that the brakes were a little grabbier just at the beginning because it's nice to have that reassurance that they are about to stop you, but they do stop you. It just comes in a little bit later than you might want it to. Not exactly impressive around a road course, but it certainly could handle the turns. The steering was their major complaint. They felt it had a little dead spot. I notice it only because they pointed it out to me. It isn't something that would really bother me in daily driving. Turning radius in the Escalade is actually better than I expected it to be. You're not going to get it into itty-bitty spaces. But again, it's humongous, so why would you be trying to get it into itty-bitty spaces? Steering is something that can be changed slightly. There are three different modes that you can go through. I mean, there's no super track mode like on the CTS-V or anything like that, but there is a sport mode. It makes the steering a little bit heavier-feeling. This might be the only time you ever hear me say this, but I prefer the normal driving mode to the sport mode because I feel like having the steering be a little bit lighter makes the entire vehicle feel a little bit smaller, easier to move around. When I have to really pull on the wheel, it really reminds me how big this truck is. Because the Escalade is, underneath it all, a truck, you might get a little bit more road feel than you'd expect from a vehicle that costs $100,000 and is in the luxury realm like this is. To me, it's not a problem. If I feel a few bumps here or there, that's not going to ruin my day, and I still think that this truck is a lot of fun to drive and very comfortable. There are some downsides visibility-wise-- these big triangles of blindspot. So when you're going around corners and stuff, it can be a little difficult, and then especially in the back of the truck where all you see are the seats. So to get around that, Cadillac has this cool mirror camera. So there's a camera in the back of the tailgate, and it's projected onto the rear view mirror so it shows everything as if there was nothing in the way, but you don't see anything in the truck. And when you first get into it, you're sort of freaking out like, oh, my god, is everybody in here a vampire? I don't see them reflected. And if you did have passengers who you wanted to check on-- maybe a kid or something-- you can just use it as a regular mirror. There's also front collision warning, rear camera, cross-traffic warning. It will warn you about pretty much everything. And again, you need it. [MUSIC PLAYING] If the exterior of the Escalade is dated in a way that makes it look really good, really venerable, big, heavy, recognizable thing, the interior is a little disappointing. I just feel like nobody was really trying that hard. This is a new color combination for 2018. It has a beautiful name-- burnt maple sugar or something like that. But it's really just tan. It's nice, but there's a lot of it. They break it up a little bit with some metal and some piano black. It doesn't have any patterns, and the speakers don't have neat grills. There's a lot of storage up here. This door panel, while I don't think it's very pretty, it has some really nice pockets in it. The console isn't what you'd expect. Sure, it has cup holders. That's pretty normal, and they look nice. And that's really fun to do. This feels fancy. There are USB ports and a 12-volt socket. And then there's this little button, which is pretty fun. It's got a little beverage in it and a snowflake. That is for the refrigerated cooler that's in the console. Very cool, no pun intended, except that's it. It's in there. It's permanent. So you have no console whatsoever. That is just a refrigerator. One thing that I do like about the interior, because I do want to be a little bit positive-- this little charging pad is great. It works really well. It holds the phone. It would hold a pretty big phone. And I think it's cool because you don't have to plug anything in. You don't have to have a wire. The Escalade's gauges and infotainment system are just modern enough. I mean, they use a digital setup here in the dashboard. You can customize it a little bit, and there's not that much to put in it. I mean, you can put directions, or you can put your music. With the infotainment system-- and Cadillac calls it CUE, which is C-U-E-- it's not great. I don't want to pick on it too much because other people have in the past. First of all, you don't touch what you think you're going to touch. I mean, these look like buttons. [RADIO PLAYING] Oops. Everything's really slow to respond. It's kind of like a panic every time you're trying to do something. Inside the cabin of the Escalade is big and comfortable, as you would expect. The seats, while they aren't very fancy and they don't have the adjustability of some of the competitors, they're very comfortable. They're very big, in the front. In the back, the second row is fine. It's not as exciting as I would like it to be, but it's certainly not uncomfortable. What is uncomfortable is the third row. I get sad back here. It's like this is where you put the kid you don't like. Like, hey, Mom? Mom? Hey, Mom! This is the ESV, which means that it's actually bigger than the standard Escalade, but they added about 20 inches onto the back. But most of that is behind the rear seat. You get a tiny bit more leg room here, but most of it is for cargo space. The ESV has one of the best cargo ratings of any vehicles in its class. You can fit a lot in there. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you're interested in the Cadillac Escalade and you want to know if it's still a good buy in 2018 or a good lease, you have to ask yourself why you want it. There are competitors that do other things better. For example, the interior in the Lincoln Navigator is probably 100 times nicer. And if you want more horsepower, you can look at a Mercedes GLS AMG. Nothing in the class does exactly what the Escalade does, which is that intimidating, imposing, impressive thing of just coming up on someone in their rear view mirror. And they're like, either that's a VIP driving or there's a VIP in the back. And either way, I'm getting out of the way. It's a neat feeling to feel that important. That's a thing that's worth considering. That is worth paying for. For more information on the Escalade, go to Edmunds. For more videos like this, please subscribe. And make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.