Did Cadillac Finally Get Its Mojo Back With the 2017 Cadillac CT6?

Cadillac’s decades-long effort to restore its former luster has produced many quality vehicles of late, including compact and mid-sized sedans that drive like sports cars, a popular SRX crossover and that three-ton, trailer-tugging guilty pleasure known as Escalade. But success—as defined by either higher sales or increased prestige—has eluded Cadillac in the one segment that arguably gives any luxury-car brand its bona fides: the full-size sedan.

This is ironic, of course, since huge, glitzy luxury saloons were precisely the kind of cars that earned Cadillac its “Standard of the World” reputation back in the day. Cadillac’s recent plus-size sedans, the DTS and XTS, were affable but hardly aspirational. Cadillac needed a traditional luxury sedan with swagger; enter the 2017 Cadillac CT6.

Cadillac tiptoes away from calling the CT6 a “flagship,” even though that’s the role it plays, for now. That designation lays in wait for one, or possibly two, additional models that will slide in above CT6 in the future. Flagship or not, the 2017 CT6 can claim another title: the most luxurious Cadillac in history. It’s the quietest, too. And as we found during our press drive in Los Angeles, the CT6 also comes off as shockingly enjoyable to drive.

In photos, the CT6 looks a lot like the mid-size CTS—a car we really like around here—but in person, it’s one class up in size, just a touch smaller than the biggest luxury haulers. Its confident stance comes from GM’s brand-new “Omega” architecture that’s destined to shore up several other large, rear-drive-based GM products in years to come. The wheelbase spans a huge 122.4 inches, 7.8 inches more than the CTS, and at 202 inches and 74 inches wide, the CT6 is 8.5 inches longer and two inches wider than its little brother. With its long hood, short, chamfered front overhang, long dash-to-axle relationship and rear-set cabin, the CT6 conveys presence without resorting to gimmicky styling like fender vents or spoilers. Other than its big grille and signature headlamp assemblies—whose bright, vertical daytime running lights make the CT6 unmistakable as a Cadillac from blocks away—the styling seems downright stoic, making even the Audi A8 appear overdressed.

To counteract that new size, Cadillac engineers embarked upon what president Johan de Nysschen describes as a “massive lightweighting” program to ensure that the car would be as light as possible. Their fastidious efforts paid off: the base CT6 weighs 3,657 pounds, roughly the same as a CTS with the same powertrain. Put another way, Cadillac claims that the CT6 undercuts the lightest of Mercedes-Benz S-Class models by nearly 1,000 pounds.