Apparently, he has the clout and the money to make Cadillac into that international emblem he talks about, an emblem with the kind of street cred currently reserved for Mercedes-Benz and BMW.
Cadillac's path to this rarefied atmosphere involves the use of Art & Science, which is marketing's way of saying great looking cars with lots of engineering advances, and Evoq is particularly well suited to express the former attribute, I am reliably informed.
Evoq's sharp, stylish lines will be evident in all future Cadillacs, beginning with the completely new version of the entry-level Catera, which is due out in about 18 months to two years. After that, each successive vehicle from Cadillac (including another sport-ute and a pickup truck as well as revisions of current nameplates) will speak the style vocabulary outlined by Evoq with greater fluency.
With each examination of Evoq, I find this increasingly welcome news, and I hope designer Kip Wasenko and his team can translate its full metal jacket styling into other vehicles.
I'm more confident that the engineering team responsible for developing the car that Evoq actually becomes can hold onto the visceral appeal of the concept car I drove. As big a thrill as the Evoq was to throw around the test track here, it was easy to see at least a couple of ways it could be better, and those things are going to happen.
Before getting to those improvements, however, a few words on Evoq as it currently is: Hot, horny, and fast. You get a sense of the first two attributes from photos, but when you swing the door open and drop way low into the seat it becomes even more gorgeous.
As for how it feels under stress, well this is the horny and fast part. It sounds great and goes like a rocket, getting to 100 km/h in a little over five seconds on the strength of the 4.2-litres of its supercharged V-8. It felt like an overweight kit car that would reduce the owners of production cars to tears.