A little over a year ago General Motors took 65 journalists from eleven markets around the world, including Australia and New Zealand, to Detroit to take a look behind the scenes at its push into electrification. I know this because I was one of them.
Why, you may well be asking, would GM take journalists from right-hand drive markets to look at such things when the company had recently pulled out of all RHD manufacturing? It had sold off Opel and Vauxhall in Europe and killed Holden in this part of the world, so it was obviously focused on LHD markets for production, leaving smaller right-hook markets to subsidiaries like General Motors Specialty Vehicles which 'remanufactured' LHD vehicles into RHD on a far smaller scale for our comparatively tiny markets.
I mean, I know that's what all of us Antipodean journos were thinking - and constantly asking - while we were there. But it soon became quite clear what we were there for, even if no one from GM would admit it; the Cadillac Lyriq EV was heading down under.
While the Lyriq certainly wasn't the only thing we experienced while there (an off-road drive in the massive Hummer EV was a highlight, as was a blast around the legendary Milford Proving Grounds in a Brightdrop EV delivery van), but it was undoubtedly the centrepiece, having just gone on sale in the USA.
When pressed about the possibility of a factory-produced RHD Lyriq, GM Senior Vice President and President of GM International, Shilpan Amin, refused to confirm any plans, but said that the production shift between left-hand drive and right-hand drive is far simpler with an EV.
"It's still something we have to design and develop up front into the architecture, but it is much simpler when you don’t have an engine sitting in front of you that limits your ability to provide these products in right-hand drive," he said.
"We can efficiently scale these products and make them available around the world."
This was echoed by Christian Soemmer, President and Managing Director of Strategic Markets, Alliances and Distributors for Cadillac, who said he definitely saw opportunities in the UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, saying "we have built our future EVs with the maximum most flexibility in mind in order to be able to potentially go into these markets."
The clincher, however, is the fact that shortly after these not-at-all-a-denial explanations we were ushered away to drive a number of GM vehicles around the test track, including the Cadillac Lyriq.
So consider this a first drive article if you will, albeit one from more than a year ago when everyone was still pretending that the Lyriq wasn't coming here.
GM says that the Lyriq is the first "mainstream" vehicle to use its Ultium EV architecture and, while you may not consider a large luxury SUV to necessarily be "mainstream" it is certainly more mainstream than the other two that used the platform before it: the extremely silly Hummer and the extremely utilitarian Brightdrop delivery van. Neither of which we will ever see here, by the way.
While the Lyriq will come to New Zealand with a 102kWh battery and a pair of electric motors producing 388kW/610Nm, the version I drove at Milford hasn't been confirmed for our market; the RWD single motor variant that uses the same battery, but only gets 254kW and 441Nm.
The first thing you notice climbing into the Lyriq is the exceptional material and build quality throughout the cabin, with an intriguing blend of old-school elegance and modern tech. It works well and everything feels spectacular, as well as hugely satisfying to touch and operate.
The RWD model is brisk, but not exactly electrifying (sorry) off the line, sprinting to 100km/h in around 6 seconds, so the AWD model with considerably more power and torque should prove to be quite satisfying indeed.
While it is hard to glean too much from a couple of laps of a proving ground, the most obvious thing that struck me was the utter silence. GM has gone to great lengths to ensure the Lyriq is properly silent, using all sorts of very clever noise cancelling technology to deal with any kind noise generated by wind or a coarse road surface.
And before you say that driving a car in America won't give you much idea about how silent it will be on our gnarly chip-sealed roads, this was on GM's legendary Milford Proving Grounds test track, with several sections that were very much indeed like Kiwi roads. And it was impressively silent over all of them.
Likewise, the Lyriq's handling was impressively responsive and utterly confident over the often rough surfaces, with a surprisingly firm and slightly sporty ride that seemed a tad at odds with the luxurious interior and serene silence, but certainly didn't shatter the illusion.
At more than 5 metres long the Lyriq certainly isn't a small vehicle, but it never felt bulky or unwieldy on the often challenging roads of the Milford handling track, with one particularly hairy section that featured a gentle but off camber bend over a rise with a set of railway tracks at the top proving it to be particularly composed and unflustered by unexpected weight transfer... I mean, I knew it was there, but I had to try it out, and I did come away impressed by how the Lyriq handled it.
Adding more power, the surety of AWD and potentially an even more coarse road-friendly bit of suspension localisation (Maybe? We don't know that yet...) will only serve to make the Lyriq an even more impressive combination of composure and comfort, worthy of taking on the European luxury sector.
But, of course, the ultimate verdict will come when we get it on local roads. But so far everything certainly looks promising.
