Cadillac’s maximum lavish version is set to get a sports activities improve, with the 2023 Escalade V-Series marking the primary time the SUV has worn the badge. While already infamous for its scale, luxurious cabin, and preferred excess, the V-Series taste of Escalade will upload overall performance to that mix.
Full info of the 2023 Escalade V-Series won’t be shared till spring of this year, Cadillac has warned. These newly-launched photos, meanwhile, display the pre-manufacturing shape of the SUV. Still, it offers us masses to move on, as does the trajectory of the V-Series line in preferred.
For Cadillac, V-Series is extra than simply velocity
You can’t accuse Cadillac of underplaying simply what a V-badged version can do. “With almost many years of racing-stimulated prowess,” the automaker promises, “the V-Series designation is reserved for motors that embody the height of Cadillac overall performance, bold, outstanding design, and modern technology.”
The course from V-Series’ founding in 2003 to nowadays has visible some huge modifications alongside the manner. Initially meant as a manner for Cadillac to compete with Mercedes-AMG and BMW’s M division, it debuted with the 2004 Cadillac CTS-V sports activities sedan. That controlled to attain a function withinside the unique Matrix film series, (particularly The Matrix Reloaded, launched in 2003), supporting steady the green-mild for the second-era V Series in 2009.
Cadillac caught with a acquainted strategy: huge, high-horsepower V8 engines, paired with its Magnetic Ride Control gadget for a sedan that would flick from luxurious cruiser to song hero at the rush of a button. By the time the ATS-V arrived in 2015, however, the standards had expanded. Smaller and extra low-cost than the third-era CTS-V – which were given the Corvette C7’s 6.2-liter LT4 V8 to play with – the ATS-V packed a twin-faster V6.
Beyond that, Cadillac tried to duplicate what BMW and Mercedes had achieved, expanding “V” as a broader badge to suggest a extra sporting – aleven though now no longer always the maximum sporting – new release of a normal version. It tried, and abandoned, the V-Sport trim, and has maximum these days settled on “V” badged fashions as being entry-degree overall performance alternatives. The CT5-V and CT4-V are the contemporary examples of that.
Meanwhile, a brand new Blackwing designation flags the maximum excessive examples of V-Series overall performance. Initially relating to Cadillac’s new Blackwing engine, however given that expanded, the trim has to date seemed at the CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing, every produced in restrained number.
What we anticipate from the 2023 Cadillac Escalade V-Series
For the 2023 Escalade V-Series, the expectancy is an evolution in overall performance instead of the outright soar that Blackwing badging might indicate. The contemporary Escalade – now in its fifth-era – already capabilities a V8 engine as standard. That’s 6.2-liters in length and gives 420 horsepower and 460 lb-feet of torque. A 10-velocity automated is standard.
They’re now no longer small numbers, however on the other hand the Escalade isn’t a small SUV. One opportunity for an improve is the V8 from the CT5-V Blackwing, supercharged and with upwards of six hundred horsepower on tap. Cadillac might manifestly want to improve different additives inclusive of the brakes to stability that uptick in power, aleven though Magnetic Ride suspension is already to be had at the SUV in its contemporary shape.
To higher distinguish the V-Series truck visually, Cadillac has given it a moody makeover. The grille switches to black mesh, and maximum of the chrome has been deleted in prefer of gloss-black trim. The bumpers the front and rear, and the facet sills, were tweaked, and of direction there are big blacked-out wheels, too.
For the inside, Cadillac is gambling it even extra coy. A unmarried photograph previews the “V” badging at the steerage wheel, aleven though we’d anticipate a truthful quantity of carbon fiber and Alcantara to feature, primarily based totally on the opposite V-Series cars. The Escalade already gives a huge, curved dashboard show and masses of area throughout 3 rows, now no longer to say an entire host of toys to play with.
As for 2023 Escalade V-Series pricing, there too Cadillac is saving complete info. The contemporary version spirals as much as over $109k for the standard-period 4 wheel drive Sport Platinum trim, and that’s earlier than you head into the alternatives list. A six-parent V-Series is essentially guaranteed, then, as Cadillac takes on well-esteemed (and well-equipped) overall performance SUVs from its German rivals.