2009 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid: An Oxymoron for Gas Guzzling

While people are dumping their gas guzzlers as fast as possible, it comes as a reminder that “gas guzzling” is a highly relative term for most people.

If you’re driving a vehicle that is getting 12/19 mpg city/highway, something with 20/21 becomes a lot more attractive, never mind if it isn’t that fuel efficient.

Hybrid SUVs like the GMC Yukon and Chevrolet’s Tahoe along with Chrysler’s later additions, the Durango and Aspen, have actually seen their sales numbers jump recently. Now the 2009 Cadillac Escalade is about to join the lineup with a MSRP of $71,685.

Its two-mode hybrid system can leave off gasoline entirely at low speeds, similar to the Prius. Its Active Fuel Management enables its V-8 to run on just four cylinders during light load driving.

Another luxury illusion for stooges who want to feel like they’re doing something for the environment. If you’re driving any sort of SUV then you don’t actually care about your carbon footprint at all. It also boggles the mind as to why someone who is willing to shell out over $70,000 on a car would care about gas prices.

Our take? This Cadillac Escalade is like a self-contradiction, and yet scrubs will still fall for it.

CTS Wagon - Anomaly or Trend?

I am a wagon fan. Have been for quite a while. Especially the European formula of packing all the high-octane goodness of their top-tier sport sedans into a tidy hunchback package. And contrary to most of my peers, I often prefer the styling of the wagon models over their sedan brethren.

So as soon as I heard rumors that Cadillac was working on a wagon variant of the chiseled new CTS sedan, I was thrilled. Granted, it's not in my budget, and likely won't be for a few years to come. But the fact that historically conservative GM (sometimes cripplingly so, I might add) is willing to take a chance on this seemingly risky proposition gives me hope.

Admittedly, this vehicle was conceived with the European market as much in mind as the North American market. Europeans do not have the instinctive revulsion toward wagons as us Yanks do. In fact, wagons sell quite well on the continent. But since most CTSs sold worldwide are riveted together stateside, GM probably figured it could afford to siphon off a few wagons for the U.S. market to test the waters.

Concurrent with the announcement and introduction of the CTS wagon came word of a re-designed, slimmer, trimmer SRX crossover. Therein lies the dilemma. The biggest threat to the CTS wagon might be sitting in the same showroom. To some, they're entirely different vehicles. The athletic, tuned CTS with some added cargo utility vs. the taller, more utilitarian SRX. But what percentage of the potential CTS wagon buyers will actually take it on canyon or mountain runs over the weekend? Possibly quite a few, but if utility is the main aspect buyers are looking for, the low-slung, snazzy CTS wagon will probably lose out to the more practically-packaged SRX.

I guess the bottom line is I hope there are enough people that can appreciate that CTS wagon's beauty and small measure of utility and are willing to buy it, rather than be seduced by the SRX's utility. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wishing ill of the new SRX, but I'm just not sure there's room in Cadillac's showroom for both of them. Time will tell.