Mark your calendar for…tomorrow! The Cadillac Escalade V is almost here.
Cadillac may be moving toward an all-electric future, but that doesn’t mean GM will go quietly into that good night. Oh, no — we’re still getting a monstrous V-8 for the brand’s iconic Escalade SUV. Not only has it been a powerhouse for sales over the past two decades, but this all-new model is getting a high-performance variant.
Do we strictly need more super SUVs in the world? Absolutely not — the Escalade’s 420 horsepower 6.2-liter engine is enough for the vast majority of family haulers out there. That could be all the more reason for Cadillac to go berserk, and regardless of your opinion, that’s what they’re doing here. The full reveal is coming tomorrow (January 21), so we definitely don’t have much longer to wait to find out what the V Series treatment entails.
“Power has a sound — and it’s a roar”, says Cadillac. That’s where you’ll really experience the bulk of what makes the Escalade V. Even in spy shots, it’s clear that the big SUV won’t change too radically in the styling department. Under the hood, however…that’s where the magic’s happening here.
What could we see?
We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure, but the general consensus is toward GM’s supercharged LT4 V-8. Go big or go home, right? If Cadillac actually does go that route, we could see output similar to the CT5-V Blackwing: 668 horsepower and 659 lb-ft of torque. Perhaps it’ll be tuned a bit differently to handle the extra bulk, but I don’t think GM’s going to play around here. That sort of power would make it one of the most powerful SUVs around — especially now that the Dodge Durango Hellcat is no longer around for 2022.
Odds are, like the Hellcat, the Escalade V won’t be around long. If you want one, you should probably act fast — it may well be a single-year model.
