The 2021 Cadillac Escalade will break cover on February 4
Cadillac has announced plans to unveil the 2021 Escalade in Hollywood on February 4, with the help of Oscar-winning film director Spike Lee. Lee directed a short film, titled Anthem, to help unveil the top-dog SUV from the GM’s top-dog luxury brand.
The Escalade is the final salvo in the three-tiered roll-out of General Motors’ new full-size SUV architecture. We know that the Escalade’s platform-mates (The Chevy Suburban/Tahoe and the GMC Yukon) have championed huge gains in interior space and legroom thanks to the switch from a truck-like live axle setup to independent rear suspension. We expect the Escalade to utilize that same architecture to its advantage.
Shared corporate architecture aside, the Escalade will aim to capitalize on its position as GM’s luxury leader with 38 inches of curved OLED display plunked in front of the driver and atop the center stack. Cadillac says that the massive screen will offer “bold imagery, perfect blacks, and the largest color range of any automotive display in production today.”
The image accompanying the announcement about Lee’s involvement with the Escalade teases the front end of the vehicle, previewing for us a few things of interest.
First, it appears that the Escalade will wear a face similar to that of the XT6, with horizontal daytime-running-lights adoring the top corners of the grille. These lateral lighting elements are a departure from the outgoing Escalade’s styling, but consistent with the styling cues on the rest of the new models in Cadillac’s lineup, like the CT4 and CT5 sedans.
The similarities continue along the lower sides of the front end, where additional vertical DRLs equally mimic those of the slightly lesser XT6.
We’ll have to wait a few more days to see the rest of the Escalade, but with everything that we’ve seen on its platform siblings, we expect the Escalade to once again seek to dominate the full-size body-on-frame luxury SUV segment. The big family machine has always stood apart in a class of its own within the Cadillac lineup, and soon, the Escalade might not even be the only Cadillac with a non-alphanumeric name—real model names are coming back to the brand.
