After spending a weekend with the Mercedes S-Class I was telling a friend about my experience and how it made me want to listen to hip hip the whole time. Before realizing it we were discussing other cars that suited hip hop when the Escalade came up. My friend asked me why I don’t review the new Escalade as well so right away I got in touch with Cadillac. The next day picked up the Escalade for the weekend.
The car is HUGE! I was expecting it to be big obviously since I’ve driven the older Escalade before but it had been a long time since I had been any car that was this big. The model I picked up looked very pimp with a black exterior and a brown leather interior. First thing I did after adjusting the seating position was to connect my iPhone and start blasting hip hop. While looking for a USB port to plugin my phone I actually ended up finding five, so you could basically charge the whole families phones while driving. The car I drove could fit six adults very comfortably since it had two pilot seats in the second row instead of the usual bench seat.
Because I had the Cadillac for the weekend I decided to pick up a few friends and head into the desert for a fun outing. It was a Saturday and Qout Market was on so we decided to all meet up there first. Once we were done with the market all five of us got into the Escalade and took off towards the desert. The Escalade performs at its best when the car is packed with friends or kids. Since the car comfortably fits six and we were just five everyone was pretty relaxed on the long drive. One cool feature I enjoyed in the car on the long drive is the heads up display. Instead of having to look down at the speedometer all the time to see how fast I was going I could instead have my speed displayed on the windshield in front of me. But sadly that still wasn’t enough to stop me from getting a speeding ticket. The car is enormous so you expect it to drive like a tank but it doesn’t and I ended up getting caught doing 145 in a 120 zone. Once we got to desert, I shifted the car into four wheel drive and drove off road looking for camels.
For a car this huge though you’d expect a lot of room in the trunk but thats sadly lacking when the third row seats are up. It’s one of the few negatives I have about the car. With both rear seats down you get a ton of luggage space but the car then can only hold four passengers. On the positive side you could lower half the third row seats creating more luggage space while still leaving room for a fifth passenger. The second thing I disliked about the car is the touch interface. Cadillacs don’t use standard push buttons to control things like climate control or the volume but instead use a combination of touch buttons with physical feedback. It’s hard to explain but it’s basically a flat surface which you touch and the surface vibrates a little bit to let you know the button has been pressed. I found this interface very frustrating to use especially the volume control. You can’t increase or decrease the volume easily, if the music is too loud I need to tap the volume button over an over to get it to decrease but you can’t do it too quickly or else it won’t register your touch. I also thought the main interface screen was awkwardly positioned facing upwards towards the ceiling instead of pointing eye level or at least towards me the driver. Finally the media system interface looks like something from 2008. I didn’t think it matched the luxury feel of the Escalade and I’m surprised the background color of the interface was a vibrant blue which not only doesn’t match the fancy interior of the Escalade but doesn’t even blend with the digital speedometer display which has a black background.
I had a blast with the Escalade over the weekend. It’s such a ginormous car but it isn’t difficult to drive at all. Cadillac have really tried their best to make this car accessible to everyone especially mums. The gas and brake pedals are adjustable so if you’re short you can move them up closer to you, the seat obviously is very adjustable but other features like lane change warnings and surround vision all try to make this huge car feel unintimidating. Also for people who like to whatsapp and snapchat while driving, the lane change warning is something you’re going to appreciate. While driving if the car starts drifting towards the other lanes, the car warns you by vibrating your chair. That way you can look back up at the road and adjust your driving.
The Escalade starts at KD27,000 for the premium model which is the one I tested in this review. If you’d also like to test drive any of the Alghanim Automotive cars click [Here]
12 replies on “Review: Cadillac Escalade 2015”
Please, post a picture with led lights on, for full front-end
So I’ll know what to expect in my rear mirror, moments before changing my line
lol
KD27,000? Yikes. How would you compare the 2015 Cadillac Escalde to something like a 2015 Nissan Patrol or Toyota Land Cruiser? Similar to the Escalade, they offer luxury style driving, but with the Nissan and Toyota you get extensive off road capabilities, a much higher reliability record compared to Cadillacs[1], and they start at half the price of the Escalade. Even if you get the top trims, you won’t go much over KD20,000. Is the drastic price difference worth feeling hippity-hoppity?
[1]Consumer Reports 2014 Brand Report Cards: https://www.scribd.com/doc/209185987/Consumer-Reports-2014-Brand-Report-Cards
Cadillac is not in the same league as Nissan or Toyota but more like Lexus, BMW, Audi and Mercedes.
Would you go far enough to put Cadillac in this group?
Cadillac was formerly a well-respected luxury marque with a tagline of “the standard of the world” but it’s been slipping into mediocrity lately. Their ATS and CTS sedans are flopping in the US, with the CTS is being offered with discounts of up to 17500 USD. 17500 dollars! On a car costing 45000! They’re also struggling with a few months worth of inventory that nobody really sees the point in when positioned against established German rivals like BMW and Audi.
I think the brand is suffering from an identity problem and an unhealthy amount of ambition. They want to be one of the world’s top luxury brands once again but they’ve only set themselves a short-term period to get there and truth be told, aside from the Escalade, their lineup is very lackluster and their cars looks like smaller or bigger versions of one another with very little to visually identify them. Their driving dynamics get high reviews but their engines are often criticized as anemic and thirsty by experts and customers. The SUV market is exploding – that explains why the Escalade is doing so well worldwide with the factory in Texas running three shifts at full capacity – but Cadillac only offers the Escalade and the aging SRX. Rumors are that the SRX is getting a replacement called the XT5 along with a new, flagship sedan called the CT6 at the New York Auto Show in April – maybe that’ll help speed the brand rejuvenation up.
They have a lot of work to do and I wish them the best, but we’ll have to see what happens over the next few years… Especially with their new CEO, Johan de Nysschen, the same clown who screwed Infiniti’s naming scheme up and is off to do the same with Cadillac [all Caddy sedans will be renamed CT[number] and the SUVs XT[number], but the Escalade won’t be touched as it’s too iconic].
Time will tell.
I know it’s not in the same league in terms of superficial brand names, I was asking what’s compelling about the Cadillac to make it worth almost double the price compared to the Nissan Patrol or Toyota Land Cruiser. Is the name alone the difference?
My friend’s 2015 Nissan Patrol Platinum has luxurious leather, wood trim all around, screens in every seat and is super quiet on the road, not to mention he can climb mountains with it and is beastly in the desert, and its much more reliable compared to the Cadillac, all for a lower price of KD19,000.
What does the Cadillac have that the Nissan doesn’t, besides the brand name and feeling hippity hoppity because Cadillac paid rappers in the early 2000s for product placement? According to an article on Jalpink, the Escalade hasn’t been mentioned by any rappers for years now: https://jalopnik.com/guys-escalades-arent-really-popular-with-the-rappers-1442474573
But then you could apply the same logic with BMW, Mercedes and Audi. The Land Cruiser is cheaper than all their offerings. You might as well compare it to the Range Rover Vogue while you’re at it, you could buy three Land Cruisers for the price of one Range Rover.
Cadillac vs. BMW, Mercedes, Audi. The Germans have it beat when it comes to luxury and prestige. Cadillacs were cool in the 70’s, maybe even the 80’s, but from the mid-80’s to the early 2000’s they were well known as being extremely heavy, expensive and unreliable vehicles. You couldn’t say the same with the Germans who have kept the honor of their brands from the 70’s to today. Even today Cadillacs score lower than German cars in reliability tests.
Now let’s examine prices. Some german brands beat the Cadillac. The Audi Q7 starts at KD17,000[1]. The Mercedes-Benz M Class starts at KD20,000[2], although other models that are more comparable in size can be in the Escalade price range or more, and the BMW X5[3] starts at KD25,000, which can balloon up more than KD30,000 because we all know BMW and their options prices.
What about the Japanese? A Lexus GX starts at KD17,000[4], but the LX starts at KD27,000[5]. The Infiniti QX70 starts at KD22,000[6].
I’m glad you brought up Land Rovers, because what Land Rovers have that Cadillac certainly does not is that they are beasts when it comes to off-roading. Top gear has proven (take it with a grain of salt) that Land Rovers can climb rocky mountains and glide over rough terrain like Kuwait’s desert. The Range Rover Sport starts at KD27,000[7], while the Land Rover Range Rover starts at KD31,000[8]
So in the end, I don’t feel there’s a good reason to choose a Cadillac over any of the other aforementioned brands, unless there’s some killer feature that the Cadillac has, or some really unique attribute that makes it stand out somehow, which is what I’ve been asking. The only thing I can see is that it has hip-hop appeal, but that notion is honestly outdated.
[1]https://www.audi-kuwait.com/me_partner/p_aeau000007/en/models/q7/q7.html
[2]https://kuwait.mercedesbenzme.com/en/suvs/m-class
[3]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/bmw
[4]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/lexus/gx/2015
[5]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/lexus/lx/2015
[6]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/infiniti/qx80/2015
[7]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/land-rover/range-rover-sport/2015
[8]https://kuwait.yallamotor.com/new-cars/land-rover/range-rover/2015
How was the off-road ability of the car?
Dude don’t you have any male friends?
lol 🙂
wow, those kicks are fucking dopeeee!
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