2025 Cadillac Celestiq First Drive: Marvelous Moonshot

• The 2025 Celestiq is like no other Cadillac that's come before.
• This $340,000 EV competes with the Bentleys and Rolls-Royces of the world.
• The Celestiq delivers an over-the-top experience.

Cadillac House belongs to clients or prospects for a full day, including after nearby landings in private planes, perhaps met by a Celestiq for a get-to-know-you drive. Upon entering Cadillac House, buyers are walked through a painstaking commissioning process that's familiar to customers of Rolls-Royce or Aston Martin, but not a brand that has often struggled to compete against BMW, Mercedes-Benz or even Lexus. 

Passing through the doors, I'm met by a wall-sized welcome screen with my name on it. I'm soon selecting Celestiq colors and trims that are rendered on screen from more than 350,000 possible standard combinations. Additional custom colors and whims are met, within the realm of reason. One client wanted a model inspired by Game of Thrones, with nods to castle stone and red-velvet tapestries. (Which is very '70s Cadillac, come to think of it.) A team of four engineers focuses entirely on the technical feasibility and potential costs of customer requests. 

I dream up a real yacht rocker, and watch it come to life onscreen: a classy navy blue body with subtle red undertones, and an off-white interior replete with rosewood-style timber that makes the four freestanding seats look just like Eames chairs. (None of that hot-pink nouveau riche garbage for me.)

Tony Roma, recently named Corvette chief engineer, led the Celestiq's six-year journey from concept to production. The cars are largely hand-built down the road from Cadillac House, by just 16 craftspeople, selected from a team that typically makes company prototypes. "The best of the best," Roma calls them.

This Caddy is built atop six aluminum megacastings. GM managed to create its sand-casting tools for a bargain $4 million, versus roughly $100 million for the complicated castings and extrusions of a typical mass-produced car. More than 130 components are 3D-printed metal, including a gleaming steering-wheel center. A fair question is whether potential customers will care how the sausage is made if you can't spot any real difference. Other artisan work is noticeable, such as paint jobs that take two weeks for a standard color — the same time it takes to hand brush and polish optional exposed metal inside doors, the hatch or below the stretched hood. 

Cadillac is currently working with about 100 paying clients and plans to build only about 25 Celestiqs for the 2025 model year. These buyers want what they want when they want it, Roma says. For a client whose first date took place in a 1961 Cadillac, the brand hustled over a beautifully restored '61 model from its Heritage Center to spark, um, romantic memories and help close the deal. 

"You don't think of half-million-dollar cars as an impulse buy, but they often are," Roma says. 

GM can build the Celestiq at the rate of two per day, at most. Stretching beyond 18 feet long and nearly 82 inches wide, the Celestiq looks every bit the fanciful show car that Cadillac has often teased but never built, like the 2003 Sixteen Concept with its V16 engine. Motorized doors swing open at the touch of a button — but only partway if you're standing too close — and operate hands-free from inside the cabin. 

The cabin's natural, hand-finished materials give off a Fifth Avenue boutique vibe, including the aggressively caramelized leather in my test model. Yet compared with a Rolls-Royce or Bentley, the interior is more Silicon Valley than Old World. A clever electrochromic roof lets four passengers darken or lighten their individual quadrant of glass. Acid-etched, laser-treated metal grilles highlight a 38-speaker AKG audio system that suffuses the cabin in lush Dolby Atmos-enhanced sound. A 55-inch diagonal HD screen envelops the upper dash like a theater proscenium.

Rear passengers get another trio of screens, including 12.6-inch displays perched on front seatbacks, that unfortunately recall minivans as much as megabuck sedans. The front center screen responds to touch. But it's also managed by an overtaxed rotary console controller whose cursor traipses almost randomly around screen icons and offers an unpleasantly stiff action. (If I'm the bespoke buyer, I'm demanding more damping in my hand-built car.) The seatbacks also feel a bit unyielding despite their graceful leather wrapping.

Those missteps aside, the Celestiq is ready to step out. GM engineers, serially underrated for their talents with large cars and SUVs, have taken this Cadillac's performance to genuine ultra-luxury heights. 

A 111-kWh battery is good for up to 303 miles of driving range, according to the EPA, with charging rates peaking at a modest 190 kW.  A pair of electric motors, one at each axle, spin up a healthy 655 horsepower and 646 lb-ft of torque. The Celestiq's 3.7-second surge to 60 mph feels plenty quick, though acceleration tails off noticeably beyond 100 mph. But Roma and other engineers stress the Celestiq isn't about winning drag races with Teslas or Lucids. 

Instead, the Celestiq blends a remarkably serene cabin with a graceful, almost quicksilver feel that utterly belies its hulking 6,840-pound weight. The Cadillac may not be quite as cemetery-quiet as the Rolls-Royce, but it steers and handles even better. The magic kit includes GM's excellent adaptive magnetic suspension with air springs. Rear-wheel steering palpably boosts maneuverability at lower speeds and pivots the rear wheels in tandem with the fronts at higher speeds for confident directional changes. 

On narrow, cracked two-lane roads near Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Celestiq flaunts its blend of old-school isolation and bracing modern control. Active anti-roll bars virtually eliminate the body roll and brake dive you might expect from the massive proportions. Before I know it, I'm gliding through corners at speeds fit for a much-smaller sport sedan, yet I could practically balance a teacup in one hand — pinky extended of course. This Caddy really does drive like a rare and special car, well beyond a garden-variety gasoline-burning Mercedes-Benz S-Class or BMW 7 Series. 

Another fair question: Will these dynamic virtues and technical bona fides be lost on people shopping Rolls-Royces or Bentleys?  

From a pure business perspective, the Celestiq — which rhymes with "quixotic," by the way — may not make much sense. It's hard enough taking on the likes of Tesla, Lucid, BMW or Mercedes in EVs. Why devote limited money and engineering resources to a passion project that likely won't earn Cadillac a dime? 

On the other hand, why shouldn't Cadillac aim big and puff its chest a little? That's how luxury works in today's LVMH world, with a formula of design ambition, engineered exclusivity and ego-stroking of customers. For some buyers or collectors, nothing is too over-the-top.

For now, the Celestiq feels as much a design lodestar as anything that will move the sales needle for mortal-priced Cadillacs. But with Cadillac busily reinventing itself as a maker of desirable electric luxury cars, a model like the Celestiq can be the rare cherry on top. Now, if Cadillac would only build the stunning Soleil convertible — never say never, according to executives — it might actually make those haughty British brands nervous.