Mike Simcoe on reinventing Cadillac for an Aussie audience

“Sedans aren't dead,” says Mike Simcoe, General Motors' senior VP of Global Design. On the face of it, that might seem a bit of an odd comment given that Cadillac's set to launch in Australia next year with a range of electric SUVs, but the transplanted Melburnite is clearly in no mood to mince his words.

“SUVs are a necessary evil,” he admits, before describing them as a “comfortable, rational purchase.” He's clearly one of us, somebody who recognises that customer tastes are something that he can influence but, ultimately, not control.

With factory right-hook Lyriq crossovers confirmed for a 2025 launch over here and the Optiq compact(ish) SUV and Vistiq Seven seater likely to follow on their heels in '26, Simcoe clearly faces a challenge in getting Cadillac, a brand which doesn't have much in the way of lived equity Down Under, onto the shortlists of buyers who might otherwise choose an Audi, a BMW, a Lexus or a Mercedes-Benz.

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Cadillac Lyriq

“I don't think Australian customers are terribly brand loyal,” he ventures. “That's not putting them down, it's just saying that they're canny customers who, in most cases, will try something new when it comes.”

The brand's been on a bit of a rollercoaster journey in the last few years, but the drive now is to clearly cement this new notion of American luxury. Simcoe stresses Cadillac's “stronger execution of proportion and more allowance for feature and the ability to build something in a very special way.”

Time and again he refers back to Celestiq, Cadillac's hand-built flagship electric sedan, which was unveiled in 2024 and which lends its design cues to the forthcoming range of Cadillac SUVs and crossovers.

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Cadillac Celestiq

If you do the right thing, people tend to forget what you've done in the past. It's not something that happens overnight.

“A hand-built car in this day and age is a rarity and demonstrates that we had a moral compass and to tell customers that we were committed. The Celestiq represented a North Star. It's not about selling lots of lots of product. It's about saying something about the brand... It was a little piece of Celestiq in everything that we did. You can't pull off something like Celestiq without having a rock-solid opinion about what the brand represents and how you would execute the design of the brand.”

“It is a rebirth. If you do the right thing, people tend to forget what you've done in the past. It's not something that happens overnight.”

“There's no mystery about where we are in battery development globally. The wheelbases are long and the tracks are wide in every segment because of battery chemistry. Everyone's trying to get cost and mass down and that's only going to happen when you pull the battery size. That's coming.

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Cadillac Celestiq

“The current generation of products though, a C-segment is where D used to be. SUVs are a boon to mankind. It's what we all want,” he chuckles sardonically. “If everyone's sitting higher in vehicles, you've got to do it too. For those that can afford it though, there's always a second car that isn't an SUV.”

Simcoe explains how there could well be a return to more traditional bodies, largely brought about by the push for efficiency.

“Everybody is trying to do sedans or low vehicles. Part of that is obviously because they're way better to look at and people enjoy driving them also but right now, think about 40 to 45 percent of a the efficiency of a battery powered vehicle is the aerodynamics. So if you're pushing a brick through the air, it's using up energy. Take a low vehicle, whether it's a sedan or a low CUV, it's a lot easier.”

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On sedans, Simcoe notes that “we will certainly have a sedan in the portfolio at some point in the future.”

“Aero is a very understood black science. We have a lot of people who are very intelligent in that space. So we know what we have to do to make a vehicle perform. The Cd number, the mass, the total size of a vehicle, they're all balanced against an outcome. For every vehicle we do in the EV space, we have an internal efficiency number which we apply and you dial up and down all the things that play into that to get the balance.”

This explains why the current Cadillac line-up retains what Simcoe describes as a “crease in the pants in places”, avoiding the amorphous blob shapes that afflict some competitors.

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“You don't have to have the most aero efficient vehicle in the market if you can dance against some other factors: a more efficient battery, lower mass , all that sort of things. Gas vehicles you can power through it [but with EVs] any drag is pushing back on range and efficiency.”

“Next time you're passing an EV, lay on the ground and have a look underneath,” he says. “You'll see what the commitment to aero efficiency is. Where companies would never have spent a lot of money in the past, there's panelling, close-out panels, proper ducting of breathing in the front end, close-outs on suspension, a level of detail right throughout the car.”

When asked whether he feels that some of Cadillac's premium rivals have dropped the ball when it comes to EV design, he chooses his words carefully.

“I think it's clear that a lot of people have struggled with the notion of 'do we design EVs or just design vehicles that are appropriate to the brand?' I think you'll also see that given the core cost of battery, some of the content, the features, the execution quality, it's not been backed away from, but it's not the same as it was, without naming a brand,” he explains.

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“If you have a hard look at these vehicles, you'll see that they're not focusing on the same thing they used to.”

Simcoe touches on future projects for Cadillac, explaining that Celestiq is not in the plans for Australia (“social [media] has taken care of Celestiq. You don't need that word of mouth any more”). A pickup draws a hard no: “that would be a waste of an entry [into market]” and laughs when asked about the V Series Opulent Velocity.

“It's a secret, isn't it?”, despite Cadillac having put out a teaser about the vehicle. “It would be silly of us to ignore that part of Cadillac's brand value at the moment is performance,” he admits, citing the company's motorsport ambitions.

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He refuses to be drawn on whether the company is building a hypercar to tie in with its Andretti F1 and Le Mans Hypercar ventures.

“Could we build one? Yes. Would we like to? Yes. Are we building one? That'd be giving too much away.” He notes that “whether it's ICE or EV, Cadillac is committed to performance. Otherwise we wouldn't be having the conversation around Formula 1 and we wouldn't have branded it in the way that we have.”

Would they bring the hypercar to Australia?
His eyes crease. He's clearly enjoying the game.

“If there was a hypercar, we would.”