Europe is a continent rife with aristocracy. Even in the passive and peaceful days of the EU, echoes of past rigid social structures permeate the way Europeans live and conduct business. That's pretty self-evident when you look at the true upper echelon of the executive full-size luxury car market.
For what feels like a quarter century, the same three European OEMs, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Maybach, have essentially kept this uber upper-end of the luxury car spectrum all to themselves in the West. In part, that's because other automakers seldom dared to even attempt fielding a competitor. That is, until Cadillac changed all that with the all-new Celestiq, the kind of flagship halo vehicle the brand hasn't built in a long, long time.
Even on first impressions alone, the Celestiq is a radical departure from even what Caddy's gradual brand refresh over the last decade and change has strived for. If Cadillac's policy was to creep ever so slowly towards the same levels of quality as Japanese and Euro brands, the Celestiq skips that and goes straight to Apollo 11 levels of giant leaps. Why? Because Cadillac was once mentioned in the same breath as juggernauts from Great Britain and Germany. If anything, the hum drum mailaise era from the mid 70s and 80s through the badge engineering crisis of the 2000s was the exception, not the rule.
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