For luxury compact SUVs, the iron's been hot for some time now, and Cadillac is finally striking it with the XT4, a new model that slots below the XT5 to make Cadillac's third SUV.
Transcript
For compact luxury SUVs, the iron's been hot for some time now, and Cadillac is finally striking it with the XT4! A new model that slots below the XT5 to make Cadillac's third SUV.
First thing you notice about the XT4 is actually just how small it is, only about 181 inches long, 74 inches wide, according to preliminary specs. That's a little bit shy of kinda leading compact competitors. And you see that kind of in the tidiness of the profile here, Checkout how close the rear axle is to actually the rear of the car overall, just very short overhangs, both in front and in back. You come around to the front here, some familiar CUEs from Cadillac, these sort of diving LEDs come all the way down the front fender here. They kind of branch out here as well with the headlights. You come around here, this is Cadillac's traditional grill shape. But there's actually some shared parts here in terms of just the overall look with Cadillacs V-Sport, It's very sporty models here. Not the traditional kind of Cadillac chrome slatted grill, at least on this XT4 here at the auto show. Lot of cladding here as you get down lower, there's just kind of one opening here instead of usually the three or so that you see on a lot of other Cadillacs. A simple look, might be a little bit too much cladding for some of you, though. Now in the XT4 here at the auto show, cabin materials seem competitive with the compact luxury segment. That means there's soft padded stuff where your arms and your elbows fall in, typical Cadillac tradition. Lots of stitched kind of overlapping materials here, especially at eye-level. But the big news is with some of the CUEs, we'll start with CUE, Cadillac User Experience. That in other Cadillacs is just this whole mess of kind of touch sensitive buttons along the center part of the dashboard, they've all been replaced by real buttons and real knobs here. That's very nice to see, and we hope Cadillac spreads this across the rest of its lineup pronto. You've got actual controls here for the climate, for the heated and ventilated seats. There's this knob down here now, which controls all the action on an eight-inch screen up here. There's a physical volume dial ahead of it. And Cadillac says you can either use the touch screen, or you can use this knob, which will also double as a tuning knob. So basically, all the functionality here, kind of back with CUE, nice to see overall, and it doesn't come at the expense of utility either. There's plenty of spaces here to kind of tuck things like sunglasses or a phone or something. Speaking of phones, there's now a 15 Watt wireless phone charging here. Your device may charge at a slower sort of device-limited pace, but that should actually support faster device charging in years to come. Now, the XT4 will come standard with a two liter turbocharged four cylinder, good for 237 horsepower, 258 pounds-feet of torque. Pre-ordering starts by the end of March, Cadillac says, and the XT4 goes on sale sometime thereafter in the 2018 calendar year. It will also have a value price tag, starting price, including destination, just under $36,000. That's a few thousand dollars less than many major competitors. And so that value proposition alone certainly buys Cadillac a seat at the table, and it's a very popular table indeed. So stay tuned for a lot more.
