Multiuse platforms must’ve become one of the best strategies ever created by the car industry in the last years. The idea of not having to start every project from scratch was always a temptation in many aspects, but the biggest barrier was finding the right “tune” between saving money by sharing and giving project freedom for each car. After decades of many GM experiments, this coupé’s proportions now arrive to prove that car-wise, there has never been a Cadillac like ELR efficiency-wise, technology-wise or otherwise-wise!
The first picture’s contrast between the writing style of brand and model’s names is a great example of what Cadillac has done in the last decades to stay successful and profitable. That excessively extravagant style from the 1950s could have been beautiful and irresistible (for many people it still is, in fact), but it wasn’t hard to expect it wouldn’t last long. Not only because of the plain time passage, events like the oil crises and the technology advances had a huge influence at the very concept of an automobile, which demanded a huge attention from the involved companies to keep offering something the customers would be willing to buy. This was a very important point specifically for GM’s luxury marque because after the drastic changes performed during the 1970s and the 1980s, their cars survived the following decade pretty much adrift. That’s why the 2000s seen such a revolution created by Cadillac: the whole new design language came with replacing the older projects with not only up-to-date ones but also shared with GM’s other brands, enabling it to participate much more intensely at the upcoming technologies’ development. ELR is precisely the youngest result of this new operating strategy, because it’s the luxury version of GM’s urban hybrid cars – that’s right, this car shares very much with Chevrolet Volt and Opel/Vauxhall Ampera.
If you’re familiar with the Converj concept, it won’t be necessary to explain very much about the design. ELR comes as its production version, so the designers’ idea was to keep the changes to a minimum. The design was smoothened, indeed, but it seems more elegant now. Some measures were changed in order to fit Volt’s platform, but they’ve also helped this car to avoid resembling the coupe CTS too much. But besides the boomerang-shaped lights, imponent front grille, gorgeous 20” wheels, LED-composed headlights and the typical very strong cuts and creases, the cabin really brings the expected finesse. Its four passengers will all enjoy very spacious individual seats, whose stitched leather can be paired to several options of coating colors and materials, including fine woods and real carbon fiber. And if you’ve noticed the big central console, this is one of Volt’s genes. The pictures show the T-shaped 288-cell, 16.5 kWh battery lies at the car’s center, to work with the two electric engines and the gasoline one, a four-cylinder 1.4L. This combined powertrain results at 208-hp power and 295-lb-ft torque, which doesn’t achieve the same performance as the sedan’s because they’re lighter cars: it’s estimated that ELR will make the 0-60 mph in around eight seconds. The all-electric mode’s autonomy will be 35 miles, extended to 300 miles with the 1.4 and technologies like regenerative braking. ELR will be priced only when closer to hitting the streets, which will be done around the end of this year.
