New Cars with New Names at Cadillac

After announcing plans to make Cadillac a separate business unit and move the brand’s headquarters to New York City, it’s no secret that General Motors’ (GM) is trying to overhaul its Cadillac brand in order to better compete with luxury brand rivals like BMW, Mercedes and Audi. As part of the brand overhaul, the automaker has also announced a new naming convention that will begin with the upcoming release of the Omega-based, full-size sedan, previously known as the LTS. The new top-of-the-line Cadillac sedan will be called the CT6, signaling the end of Cadillac’s use of three letter product names. Going forward, the ATS, CTS, XTS, ELR, and SRX names will be replaced with alpha-numeric combinations just like the new CT6 designation.

The brand’s new naming strategy will employ CT lettering for all car models and the subsequent trailing digit will serve to indicate where each model lines up in Cadillac’s model hierarchy. Apparently GM didn’t think the three letter Caddy names established a vehicle’s position clearly enough, as consumers had no simple way to know whether an ATS was above or below an XTS in the brand lineup. That the move to alpha-numeric name combinations mimics the naming strategies currently employed by other rival luxury brands is probably not a coincidence. Prospective car buyers can easily recognize that a BMW Series 1 car is lower on the food chain than a 7 Series car, and the same goes for an Audi A1 versus an Audi A8, the higher the number, the “better” the car. The new naming structure will give potential Cadillac purchasers an easier way to identify where each model resides within the brand’s hierarchy, as a CT6 will obviously be a step above a CT5.

As long as the numbers are uniform and easy to understand, the new naming system will allow more room to go up and down within the alpha-numeric lineup with new vehicles, as it is a good bet that Cadillac will probably want to introduce a sub-compact vehicle in the future in order to compete with entry-level rivals like the BMW 1 Series, Audi A3, Mercedes-Benz CLA Class, and the Volvo S40/V40. Under Cadillac’s previous naming system, the brand would have limited choices for an understandable three letter product name to apply to a new subcompact vehicle that would fit in the lineup under the current ATS. The new alpha-numeric system will much more clearly indicate the relative size and position of each car within the hierarchy of Cadillac models.

Based on Cadillac’s Omega platform, the new full-size CT6 will launch late next year and it appears to be aimed squarely at the large luxury sedans sold by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Lexus. Cadillac literature states that the new rear-wheel drive CT6 will enjoy reduced fuel consumption and enhanced “driving dynamics” thanks to the use of lighter materials and new body construction techniques. Cadillac claims that combination will make the CT6 the “lightest and most agile car in the class of top-level large luxury sedans.” Cadillac’s Executive Chief Engineer for the CT6, Travis Hester said “Using the lessons learned from our dynamic ATS and CTS product lines, we have developed an entirely new vehicle architecture for the CT6. It will employ a mixed material philosophy that combines the best and most efficient components optimized for each area of this new top-of-the-range car.” The CT6 is expected to enter production at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant facility in the fourth-quarter of 2015.