The Cadillac LYRIQ: Malcolm Gladwell meets an Electric Icon – Part One

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by Cadillac.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Do you have any guesses about what we're going to show you? Yea, no guesses, No guesses. The only thing I'm going to say in preparation is well, I'm not even to say anything. I just want your I just want your reaction. I want to know whether you want one of these.

00:00:39
Speaker 2: You're ready.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: I'm walking down the streets of a small town in upstate New York with a five year old boy who is all the typical five year old boy's enthusiasm for things with wheels. He's wearing a blindfold. We stop and I can turn him around to face the street in front of a shiny, elegant, sleek SUV. What you're going to see is something that almost no one in America has seen. This is brand new. Okay, take my arm, lift off your blindfold. Let me just say he was a little bit shy and a little overwhelmed. He's blindfolded by some random guy who's friends with his parents. So he looks up and there's a pause as he contemplates the apparition in front of his eyes. What do you think brand like? The look on his face did not just say I like it. It said, Holy Toledo, No, no, Holy Detroit. What is this now? I know what you're thinking. What's going on here? Well, to answer that, we need to go back in time not long ago, we got to call a Pushkin headquarters from Cadillac. They knew that we take cars very seriously here. In fact, I think they knew that the car I drive to work every morning is a Cadillac. I tricked out twenty twenty one Cadillac CT five V a monster. So they say, have you heard of the all electric Cadillac Lyric?

00:02:14
Speaker 2: Oh?

00:02:15
Speaker 1: I had my friend Dan, the most serious gearhead I know, had driven one in Detroit and texted me immediately, this thing is the best car Cadillac ever made. My friend Eddie, second most serious gearhead I know, spotted one in his neighbor's driveway and said it looks like the Barcelona Chair of cars. I've no idea what that means. Anyway, Cadillac says, would you like to borrow a Lyric for a few days? We gave their request a great deal of thought, held a dozen meetings to discuss, made a spreadsheet to evaluate the pros and cons. No, are you kidding me? We said, bring it now. I'm Malcolm Glawell, and you're listening to the first of two very special episodes for revisionist history listeners. Come along on an all electric road trip with me and a few friends. So the lyrics shows up at Pushkin HQ, and let's just say we have plans for the next few days. Road tests, but not boring road tests, my kind of road tests. The things that matter to me. How much can I fit in this thing? Is it fast enough? Is it better than what I have in the garage already? And first and foremost, will it impress my friends? We started with the five year old down the street. Then we parked and waited for the general public to weigh in, which they did like flies on honey. First up, a dude in an escalade literally stops in the middle.

00:03:46
Speaker 2: Of the street. Yeah, sharp, right out right out from the factory.

00:03:56
Speaker 1: Look at that thing, man, I yes, I remember looking to it now, so.

00:04:04
Speaker 2: I won't work about it a little bit.

00:04:07
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, all right, All right, enough, we realized we had to drive it for ourselves. We piled in first thoughts. It is suv presence, but drives like a car, an electric car, which means that insanely smooth, uninterrupted instantaneous acceleration, and all in a kind of hushed splendor, powered by GM's brand new ultium battery system. We called our contact back a Cadillac. Melissa Grady, Cadillac's chief marketing officer, put her on speaker. Wait, we're gonna drive down the blog because I want you to explain this sound. This thing is so insanely quiet. So there's like this kind of quiet hum. Yes, I'm referring to this sound. What am I tell me about what I'm hearing? The future? Ah, you were trained to say that. Oh, yes, was It's actually the sound the sun emits has recorded by NASA. I'm not making that up.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: So what that noise is is, you know, with anyv there really isn't a lot of audible sound, and so we put that sound in so that pedestrians and others can hear that the that the vehicle is approaching.

00:05:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the noise machine I use for my baby. It's like this calming. Next, I got fixated on the dash, so just so to describe for so, I'm looking at this. We've got this console, this screen that stretches from the driver's side all the way almost to the edge of the passage. It's like a long how long is this It's like a do you know how long? This screen looks like it's like over two feet long. It is thirty three inches thirty three inches, so everything as I'm driving, everything is in front of me, and then I have we just open the map function. Oh my god, that's fantastic. And then we've got the rearview mirror is a is a continuous HD camera. So in case you're keeping count Test number one, the five year old boy test past Test number two, the eyeball first impression test passed. But now for the hardest test of all, we returned to Pushkin HQ and pick up my friend Michael, who for the past three and a half years has been the devoted owner of an electric vehicle made by a company whose name will not pass our lips.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: Michael, where do I get myself for coming for you?

00:06:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need to come downstairs and then we're going to put a blindfold on you and go for la ride, the same blindfold we use for the kid. Is this going to end our thirty five? It is absolutely not. This is gonna be an educational and enjoyable experience for you. Michael is a skeptical, perceptive, hard bitten professional journalist, a man of the world, and he loves his current ev He's an evangelist for the brand. And we told him nothing except that we've got something very new parked out front that he's never been in before. We put him in the passenger seat. Let me remind you, he's blindfolded. We want him to hear and feel the lyric without his judgmental vision getting in the way. He starts running his hands over the dash, the door, everything around him. How does that? How does that seat feeling?

00:07:56
Speaker 2: It's it's.

00:07:58
Speaker 1: It's very luxurious.

00:07:59
Speaker 2: I hate.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: This, can't be it. Now. We weren't trying to rag on the competition. I mean, I've driven into Michael's car. It's a fine bit of engineering, lots of great software, pioneer in the field, blah blah blah. But it's an appliance. And now his sense is heightened. Michael sits and touches and feels and realizes, Dorothy, You're not in an appliance anymore. Okay, Now, Michael, I want you to remove your blindfold. Really, yeah, I want you to observe the interior, Wow sleek. Yeah, I love the Yeah.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: This is very nice. It's very different than mine.

00:08:46
Speaker 1: My concern is that you're gonna go back, You're going to get into your.

00:08:49
Speaker 2: Your car seeing me is just drive into a leak. You'll just be so desponding that I'm gonna be like, I'm.

00:08:57
Speaker 1: Gonna be like, what did I know? Are you going to make I can't do it. I can't go back. You can't go back, Michael, don't do it. Don't go back next time. On our special series made in collaboration with Cadillac more road tests, Comparero with the German Classic and with Cadillacs of R A little bit of a road race and babies crying Speedy, Speedy, I Like Newer. Twenty twenty three lyric orders are full. Go to Cadillac dot com and complete a pre order from model year twenty four to be among the first to order a model year twenty four win available. This episode was produced by Jacob Smith and Joey Fishground. Our editor is Julia Barton, Engineering by Nina Lawrence and mastering by Sarah Buguier. Special thanks to Melissa Grady at Cadillac and Carly Megliori. I'm Malcolm Glappa.