Yahoo Autos 2023 Cadillac Lyriq First Drive Review: The Cadillac of Cadillacs
PARK CITY, Utah — This drive of the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq has been a long time coming. We got our first glimpse of the car at GM’s Warren Design Center as part of the automaker’s 2020 EV Day in March 2020, just days before the world shut down and time began moving like molasses. While a number of planned Chevy and Buick SUVs were there along with a concept for an Escalade-like EV and Cadillac’s aspirational, hand-built Celestiq, it was the Lyriq that would arrive first. Little did we know how long the wait time would feel.
Well, it’s finally here, and the production Lyriq shows an admirable faithfulness to that concept car shown in The Before Times. The 33-inch display remains, extending across the entire driver’s side and well past the midpoint of the dash. So too remain things like the light-up emblem and grille, jeweled rotary shifter and extensive wood interior trim. The sharp silhouette and eye-catching exterior lighting are also still part of the mix. It’s a rare, pleasant surprise when concept car eye candy makes it to production.
Here in Park City, the Lyriq fits right in. It’s easy to envision ski equipment being unloaded at a five-star mountain resort or ferrying important Hollywood types to and from events at the Sundance Film Festival. It seems just as likely to get a prime valet spot once back in Los Angeles, and it’s all because of the looks. Its 22-inch wheels give it a strong foundation. The nose is distinctive, with a light-up emblem on a glossy black background that’s streaked with white lines. The hood terminates in a horizontal line above the thin headlights, and jeweled vertical LEDs stand at the front corners. From the side, a high beltline rises toward the rear, while the glass roof tapers gradually into a flow-through spoiler. Flush door handles mark the way inside. The rear glass rakes sharply but doesn’t extend so far down the liftgate as to completely hamper the usefulness of the cargo area. A pipe of red lighting starts where the sides of that glass meet the roof, and follows the bottom of the glass in a horizontal line across the liftgate. There’s no rear wiper; Cadillac says the aerodynamics of the roof spoiler help to push water off the rear window. The look is cohesive and sleek, without being dramatic or weird. There’s nothing about the look — apart from the closed grille — that screams, “Hey, I’m an EV!”
Pressing the flush door handles pops the doors ajar enough to manually open them the rest of the way. What’s beyond is striking: the technology, materials, use of space and, most of all, the attention to detail. The showpiece is obviously the 33-inch curved LED display, which serves as both an infotainment screen on the right, and an instrument panel in front of the driver. Unlike the Escalade’s curved OLED curved display cluster, the Lyriq’s is one contiguous piece. Yet, as easy as it might be to focus on that bright, shiny object, the seats deserve just as much attention. They’re wrapped in white synthetic leather with blue accent piping down the centerline, and a perforation pattern in the headrests that indicate the speakers nestled within. The material is smooth and supple, and the seats themselves are lusciously comfortable.
The cabin feels like a truly special space, which is something that’s been missing from so many Cadillacs of recent memory. Everything you touch feels sturdy and high quality. The cantilevered center console doesn’t quite extend to the dash, leaving room for a standalone storage compartment opposite it, lined with blue leather like the drawer of a jewelry chest. Below the floating console is an open storage bin — prefect for stashing a purse or similarly sized item — with stitched blue leather on the bottom.
To achieve such a unique, high-quality interior, Lyriq’s designers were given license to use all-new pieces throughout. You’d be hard-pressed to find many off-the-shelf GM parts here. Pretty much anything you touch, from the switchgear to the interior lights, to the vents, to the speaker covers, all sees its first light of day in the Lyriq. The designers aren’t sharing these new pieces with other GM brands, either, which should ensure that the Lyriq continues to look and feel distinctly Cadillac. Scratch that. New Cadillac. There were significant tooling costs to create all these new items, and you will see them in future Cadillacs.
As for that curved OLED display, its interface is powered by Google’s Android Automotive operating system, but with a different “skin” than you’ll find in a Hummer EV or 2022 Chevy Silverado. It’s a big unit, but is more easily navigable and not as overwhelming as something like the Mercedes EQS Hyperscreen. While still a bit dense in its content, it only took about five minutes of exploring to sort the ins and outs of the Lyriq’s menus. Still, functions as simple as drive mode selection require some familiarization with the infotainment interface as opposed to just pressing a button.
Lighting, both inside and out, is a big part of the Lyriq’s personality. Up front, the car’s solid, glossy black grille is adorned with a light-up crest and a number of patterned white streaks, some of which illuminate to greet you with what almost looks like a smile as you approach and unlock the vehicle. Inside, laser-cut wood trim pieces backed with metal thin enough to let light shine through provide a unique ambiance. The interior storage bins even have proximity lighting to help you place or pluck items. You can also dial in the exact ambience by adjusting the lighting color from within the infotainment system.
