Tumbling Dice: Gambling On Tailfins

At a time when only the flashiest and most unique luxury sedans are postured to thrive in a market increasingly shifting toward SUVs, a strong case can be made for Cadillac to go balls to the wall with their sedans. Bring back the names, like Fleetwood and DeVille, bring on the chrome and tailfins. Make Cadillac sedans look bespoke, eye-catching and stylish beyond compare. Make the design proudly American, with bold lines and fearlessly shaped sheet metal.  A Cadillac emblem atop the grille is a must. It might take awhile before Cadillac ratchets things up to that level, however in the meantime the 2019 Cadillac CT6 provides the perfect template for the start of the brand’s renaissance era.

CT6-Before.png
The existing Cadillac CT6 has strong bones to build up. However, it is letdown by elegantly rendered but anonymous styling; it doesn’t look like a Cadillac.

Should Cadillac decide to go all in with a bolder design direction, they have an excellent foundation to build upon with the current CT6. With an excellent chassis and advanced lightweight construction, it is only letdown by ho-hum exterior styling and an interior design that lacks wow-factor.

Fleetwood-After.png
Let’s call this the 2020 Cadillac Fleetwood. Adding classic design cues to the foundation of the CT6 result in the Fleetwood imbuing the presence of thundering Cadillacs of yesteryear. A character line starting at the front fender extends the length of the vehicle and transitions into the tailfin, which is punctuated by an exuberantly extended tail lamp design. Wheels are at once elegant and powerful and come directly from the 2003 Cadillac Sixteen concept car.

Improving the exterior is easy, just add tailfins. Elegantly extended taillamps flanked along the rear-quarter shoulder of the vehicle is a statement piece that sets the tone for a complex and eye-catching design philosophy. Leveraging shadow and light, the doors and fenders take on a more cohesive look with sculpting all the way from beneath the A-pillar, across the doors, and into the tailfins, lending a graceful forward motion to the design.

Cadillac Sixteen- Wikipedia
The 2003 Cadillac Sixteen concept car provides hits of Cadillac’s potential if a more expressive design language is embraced.

Pulled from the 2003 Cadillac Sixteen concept sedan, the gorgeous wheel look like nothing else on the market and are at once modern and a nod to the brand’s decades of design excellence, with echos thundering 1960’s Cadillacs in their detailing.

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The legendary 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, replete with gloriously large tailfins.

These updates would be fairly easy to implement with a refresh of the CT6 and would go a long way toward making Cadillac a fearless design leader, rather than a follower. Using a mildly undated CT6 as a springboard for truly revolutionary designs the brand could easily begin a return to the glory of its golden era in the 1950’s and follow-up with a succession of ground-up elegant, powerful and distinctly American designs that honor the past while looking toward the future.

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[Images: Cadillac, Wikipedia, ThirdAuto.com]

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Brian Rogers

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