When you think “Cadillac”, you think of storied names of years past.
DeVille.
Fleetwood.
Cimarron.
Escalade.
What you don’t think is an alphanumeric name, like S500 or 525i.
Apparently, in the rush to bring Cadillac into the 21st century, Johann de Nysschen was appointed to lead the company.
He’d been successful at Audi.
And later Infiniti.
So of course he could bring some of that mojo to Cadillac.
But instead of bringing sexy, modern design or soft-touch, expensive build quality, he brought a radical new idea:
Change all of Cadillac’s named cars to numbers and letters.
That way, if you tell someone at the country club you drive a CT6, maybe they’ll be so many martinis in they’ll think you got a new Lexus and congratulate you accordingly.
The problem is it…didn’t work.
After just four short years, the CT6 went out of production.
Considering Cadillac had a DeVille in its lineup for nearly sixty years – the car the CT6 was intended to replace – it’s clear the fancy schmancy C + another letter + “a number to denote the size of the vehicle” scheme wasn’t working.
By 2019, Cadillac dropped de Nysschen and his fancy foreign naming system and going back to good ‘ol American names for their new, electrified lineup.
Like Lyriq (the spelling is as intentional as the drink pricing at the strip club it was named after).
Well, at least they look better.
