How Cadillac is remaking itself in the Motor City
DETROIT — Cadillac’s New York offices are on the road — literally.
The brand emptied the final contents of its Cadillac House in the upscale SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan for good and is shipping them to Michigan now, Cadillac President Steve Carlisle said this week.
“We moved out of New York last week and everything is on the road and the people are in transition too,” Carlisle said. “Some of the people are here and some are working out of our remote offices in New York.”
The gallery in Cadillac House, a showroom that touts the brand and its cars while also serving as a public space for events, concerts and collaborative partnerships, will remain open until the end of May, Carlisle said. Then it
also will be vacated.
“We just have so much product on the way,” said Carlisle, explaining the rationale for the return to Michigan. “We want to be closer to our designers and engineers.
“Also, with Cadillac taking the lead in electric vehicles, a lot of that was hard to do from long distance.”
Separately, Cadillac said that as it rolls out the new XT6 midsized SUV to dealerships later this year, it will be the first Cadillac to debut a new torque-based badging system that will distinguish for customers the power differences across the lineup.
New digs
Cadillac will be launching a new or redesigned vehicle every six months through 2021, so it had to be closer to the engineers and designers in Warren, Mich.
Carlisle said about 50 Cadillac employees from New York are moving to Michigan and that move will be complete by April 1, when the luxury brand will hold a ribbon-cutting at its facility in Warren.
General Motors’ luxury brand announced it would move back to Michigan in September 2018. In addition to the 50 people moving, 60 more who are part of Cadillac didn’t go to New York when brand headquarters moved in the fall of 2015.