Cadillac Design to Add Dose of Old-Fashioned American Swagger

DETROIT – If consumers find the latest television commercial from Cadillac for the ELR electric coupe unsettling, they’ll need to get used to the tenor because the rejuvenated General Motors luxury brand intends to go all-American at full throttle.

Andrew Smith, who is seven months in as executive director-design, Global Cadillac and brand champion, says the brand’s unique roots are its greatest differentiator in the U.S. and internationally.

“I’m very passionate about playing up the fact Cadillac is not European, Cadillac is American,” Smith tells WardsAuto in an interview.

Winter Olympics viewers got a taste of just how American the brand’s caretakers consider Cadillac with the commercial, “Poolside.” A successful, middle-aged family man espouses on the superiority of the nation’s hard-working, trailblazing spirit before unplugging his ELR and dashing off on the morning commute.

The spot has drawn cheers and jeers. It’s patriotic to some and ethnocentric to others.

For Cadillac it stakes out the brand’s future direction, from how it markets its current vehicles to how future ones will look and feel. The latter falls under Smith’s purview.

“Philosophically for me, I want to go with cars that are very memorable, that you could look at and do two or three lines on a napkin sketch and say, ‘This is the car I saw,’” he says. “But then when you see it in real life, there’s so much more to it. That’s what I really want to start getting to, the beauty of surface and the beauty of detail.”

Cadillac set its design philosophy of Art & Science in motion more than a decade ago with the introduction of the Evoq and Imaj concept cars, although Smith would argue the idea dates back to the beginning of the brand in 1902. Three successive generations of the CTS production sedan between 2002 and 2013 refined the approach.

Elmiraj Concept Future of Art & Science

The first CTS was a bit angular, full of busy lines and somewhat inert in its stance. “It relied more on the graphics than the surface,” offers Smith, a regular visitor to the GM Heritage Center just up the road from Cadillac’s Warren, MI, studio.

The second-generation CTS gained form and found its stance, while the latest edition drawing raves from critics adds more sculpture to the sheetmetal, grows longer and leaner and boasts the most power-dense engine in its segment. Interior luxuriousness leaps forward, too.

“You spend time looking at it,” he says of the ’14 CTS, “particularly through the hood or the rear quarter or the detailing in the lamps. That’s where Cadillac is headed. The challenge is to do that without making the car look fussy.”

The Elmiraj concept, a big 2-door touring car in the spirit of classic Cadillacs, signals the future of Art & Science. Like the CTS, Smith says, it is a simple design that under closer inspection reveals details such as bodyside creases running underneath the side mirrors and through the rear of the doors before washing out.

“The more you look at the Elmiraj, the more you see in it, and I think that’s where we really want to take Cadillac,” he says. “Driving uniqueness into our entries is something I’d like to do, creating more of a bespoke experience.”

He’s on the record favoring a production version of the Elmiraj, but warns build numbers would be low to preserve its exclusivity.

“It would be fantastic as a production car,” he says.

Smith also wants the Cadillac brand synonymous with craftsmanship. Last year, Cadillac teamed with pop-culture photographer Autumn de Wilde to create behind-the-scenes portraits of the design process of the ’15 Cadillac Escalade. De Wilde highlighted the craftsmen and the tools used to create the luxury SUV’s interior, which features real wood, cut-and-sewn materials and suede accents.

“I really want to push the craftsmanship story,” Smith says. “People think of Cadillac as a technology brand and that’s one side of the coin, but it’s (also) about warmth of craftsmanship. Sometimes we shy away from talking about Cadillac as a warm brand, but I think it’s an emotional brand.”

Emotion is another advantage Smith thinks Cadillac has over its rivals.

“If you think about how expressive Cadillacs have been through the generations, many other luxury car brands are trying to get back to that emotion,” he says. “They’ve proved they can do performance, but what’s missing is the emotion and that’s a piece of real estate I think we can own.”

That’s one reason Smith says he encourages his design team to study classic Cadillacs as he does, but not necessarily to recycle those styling cues into future vehicles.

“It’s more like a designer’s toolbox,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be literal. That’s the best thing we’re working on, inspiration.”

Smith, a graduate of the Sydney College of the Arts and University of Technology who joined GM Holden in 1992, comes to Cadillac after leading the Australian unit’s design team since 2012. He’s no stranger to the U.S., though, working at the automaker’s Warren design headquarters between 2005 and 2010, rising to director of design for GM North America, small trucks and midsize trucks. He also served as director of advanced design and helped create the GM Global Architecture Studio, which brought together design, planning and advanced engineering organizations to gather input from markets worldwide and managed all future global vehicle platform development.

Smith’s new duties in the U.S. also include leading Buick design and the color and trim studio at GM. Smith replaces Mark Adams, who was reassigned as head of design at GM Europe.

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