2004 Cadillac XLR

The first sign of Cadillac's bold new design direction appeared at Detroit's North American International Auto Show in January 1999 as the angular, edgy and aggressive-looking Evoq concept car—one of five GM concepts shown that year—and by far the best. The dramatically styled and techniclly advanced 2004 Cadillac XLR is the evolution of that concept.

A modern high-tech design with bold, edgy, aggressive lines distinguish the 2004 XLR.

Its genesis began just before Christmas 1997 when GM design studio chief Kip Wasenko was called in from vacation by GM design VP Wayne Cherry and asked to work through the holidays on a very special Cadillac show car intended for the August 1998 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in California. "It was to be an icon for Cadillac," Wasenko relates.


At the same time another team was working on the next Catera, the midsize Cadillac sedan originally based on a European Opel. Considering how Cadillac was then perceived—no longer a leader, left behind by the better European and Asian luxury brands—they decided to rethink their conservative evolutionary design and explore something completely new.


The two teams began to interact and blend, using the same design "vocabulary." Both wanted a modern high-tech design, a unique, bold, breakthrough look blending Cadillac heritage with the aggressiveness of modern technology. For inspiration they looked at military Stealth fighter aircraft, flat black, carbon fiber, triangulated shapes, as well as Bang and Olafson audio equipment and some modern architecture, according to Wasenko.


This evolving new look was dubbed "Art and Science" because great Cadillacs of the past had always been both "artistic" and technology leaders. Many also had angles and edges, like creases in the pants of a freshly pressed tuxedo, as former Design VP Bill Mitchell used to say. Think 1967 Eldorado, with its finely creased fenders and vertical taillamps, as an expression of both elegance and sportiness.