Cadillac Sollei: Pretty in Pictures, Prettier in Person

•    Cadillac’s Sollei and Celestiq are for dreaming. That’s even more so when you see them up close.

Sterling Heights, MI – When is it easy to justify absconding from the office and jumping on a plane to see a car that might never see the light of production day? When it’s a snazzy, jazz convertible like Cadillac’s Sollei concept car, that’s when.

We’ve all seen the car, of course, but in images. And while a picture might be worth a thousand words, seeing the real thing up close is worth, well, a thousand pictures. Here thus was the occasion to see, touch (to an extent) and smell the Sollei, and it did not disappoint. This is a marvel of 60s-coastal-California-evoking styling and colours combined with modern tech and amenities. Like, for instance, real curved wood for the seatbacks (gorgeous), a foldout minibar with glasses at the ready, and a fantastic yellow finish that just whispers ‘summer’ in your ear.

The Celestiq: Heavens above
The irony is that the car we pretty much all rushed past at Cadillac’s design center to get up close to the Sollei was a car that actually is in production. That would be the Celestiq, and I should explain that “production” has a particular meaning in its case. This car is being built by hand and is as close to totally bespoke as you can possibly get with a “production” car. And yes, it has the price tag to match.

Cadillac gives the Celestiq a starting price of $340,000 in the U.S., but that’s almost a theoretical number since anyone purchasing one of these is going to indulge their inner fantasies in terms of extras and materials and such and drive the price up to stratospheric levels. As it happens, the very day of our visit marked the first sale of the model to a Canadian customer. Keep your eyes peeled everyone (actually don’t, you’ll tire your eyes in vain – that’s one unit, so far, for all of Canada, and it won’t be ready for a while. Hand-built, and all).

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