In the chronology box of Wikipedia’s heretofore stub placeholder entry for the long-anticipated 2024 Cadillac Celestiq battery-electric flagship sedan, under “Predecessor,” it erroneously lists the Cadillac CT6. It should read: “Series 70 Eldorado Brougham.” That pillarless coach-door marvel built in 1957 and 1958 was a technological and luxury-amenities moonshot. It was hand built and cost more than $13,000—almost triple the entry Cadillac price. Production was limited to 400 units in 1957 and 304 in 1958. The Celestiq aims to follow closely in those footsteps.

The show car depicted here represents the fourth iteration of a design originally inspired by the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show’s Escala concept. Cadillac prioritized finalizing the flagship Celestiq’s design early so it could inspire mainstream cars that would precede it to market, like the Lyriq electric crossover.

The proportions were set by specifying the largest Escalade wheels on a vehicle with a roofline lower than the CT6’s along with the wheelbase and width necessary to package enough Ultium battery modules down a wide center console to provide 300-ish miles of range. (Chief engineer Tony Roma notes, “If it were about 8mm [0.3 inch] wider, we’d have to add clearance lights. “)

The design is meant to look simple from afar, and then reveal exquisite details upon closer examination. Examples: To eliminate the clutter of a distinct charging door, the entire panel spanning from the front wheel arch to the driver’s door and from the belt line down to the rocker trim conceals the port. Minimalist front and rear styling comes alive with animated LED welcome lighting that culminates in filling the vertical signature lamps like “digital rain. “

General Motors is reaching way beyond its CT6 customers or the Audi/BMW/Mercedes crowds. It’s swinging for the Aston/Bentley/Rolls-Royce fences with the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq. The marque can only do this by offering a similar level of bespoke craftsmanship and exclusivity. GM is spending $81 million to build a boutique manufacturing facility on its Eero Saarinen-designed Tech Center campus in Warren, Michigan—and sprinkling more than a little of the Tech Center’s mid-century modern design magic into the Celestiq.

This will be the first vehicle ever built here, and a production target of just 400 copies per year (as in 1957) virtually guarantees exclusivity, and additive manufacturing makes sense. So the Cadillac Celestiq will feature some 100 parts, both cosmetic and structural, produced on 3-D printers using polymers and metals.

To achieve ultra-crisp body character lines that might prove problematic with metal stampings, the body panels will be made of composite and mounted by hand to the Celestiq’s aluminum spaceframe. And to celebrate this construction method, the aluminum spaceframe will be left unpainted with horizontal brushing also applied by hand, visible around each door opening.

The interior panels are also manually aligned and affixed, which makes it feasible to feature several continuous horizontal features wrapping around the entire interior. For example: the wood-over-metal strips along the door uppers, which are precision-drilled to allow accent lighting and audio to pass through, as well as the aluminum lower-door speaker housings that span each door’s entire width. Few mainstream mass-produced vehicles dare tackle such alignment challenges.

Thanks to the Cadillac Celestiq’s low roof, it would be impossible to seat passengers comfortably atop a skateboard battery like the one in the Lyriq, Hummer, or Silverado EV. So here the footwells are all “hollowed out,” with most of the battery modules residing in a high, wide center console that runs about 8 feet down the entire center of the car. We’re guessing additional modules reside beneath the high cargo floor. But many other chassis and powertrain components will likely be shared with other Ultium vehicles.

“We wanted to treat the occupant of each seat like they were the owner,” Roma said, noting how each is fitted with precisely the same caliber of heating, ventilation, neck-warming, recline, and massage. The shape and “standard trim order” is the same for all four seats, which are designed to look a bit like a classic mid-century Eames chair. The rears recline 35 degrees (the final 25 of which require the bottom cushion to move forward).

Lead color and trim designer Laetitia Lopez explained the Celestiq’s bright red interior as harkening to the bold colors of Cadillac’s past and invoking the red curtains of an opera or music theater.

And to pay further homage to the many musical lyrics that mention Cadillac, that long center console features black trim and silver lines evocative of guitar strings on a fingerboard. Echoing the minimalist exterior ornamentation, the seat upholstery features what looks like a simple chevron pattern; only upon closer examination does it reveal alternating lines of perforation and quilting via both stitching and embroidery.

And the upper portions of the rear-seat backrests boast a hand-sprayed ombre-shading effect that helps emphasize the interior’s length.

The 2024 Cadillac Celestiq will feature actual meat-eater cowhides, but they’ll be tanned sustainably, using 40 percent less water and a hair-removal tanning process that leverages coffee-bean shells. The show car’s seats, door panels, and even the floors are wrapped in leather, which gets covered by carpeted floormats made of eucalyptus fibers. They feel even more sumptuous than the bamboo-fiber ones found in the Mercedes EQXX concept.

A continuous, curved 55-inch diagonal LED-illuminated screen uses advanced LCD technology and a “digital blind.” The latter allows drivers to see static content on the passenger’s screen, which can obscure movies or internet browsing to avoid distracting the driver.

Vents are aimed electrically, controlled by the smaller screen just ahead of the glass controller knob, which also can be used to open and close doors, adjust seats, and control the variable tinting level of the four individual transparent roof panels (these panels’ Suspended Particle Device tech is a claimed industry first). A similar screen and knob in back provide access to these functions for the rear occupants. There are five high-definition touchscreens in total.

Various production Cadillacs used a goddess hood mascot between 1930 and 1956, with the last one adorning the Pininfarina-built 1959 Eldorado Brougham. The Celestiq will feature a two-dimensional goddess on each front fender and in each glass rotary-control knob. We’re assured goddess iconography will be reserved for very special Cadillacs like the Celestiq.

The Mondrian Cadillac-crest-inspired tinting gradations on the rear side glass are disallowed by safety standards, but they’re legal on the roof panels and likely to make production there. We’ll be surprised if the camera mirrors and capacitive-touch exterior door releases make production. Other than that, we’re assured the production Cadillac Celestiq will look very similar to this concept, and that cool features not yet revealed will outnumber those shown on this version.

The Series 70 Eldorado Brougham featured a cigarette case, lady’s compact, perfume atomizer, and magnetized cocktail tumblers, so there’s no telling what surprise-and-delight features Cadillac has planned for the modern era.

Production of the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq is supposed to start in late 2023 for global distribution. The ordering process has yet to be determined, but every Celestiq built will be a sold order—there will be no demonstrators or dealer-stock models. Expect Cadillac to court tastemakers, style leaders, and extremely well-heeled influencers to virally promote the new Celestiq to the squillionaire set.

As for price, the last Eldorado Brougham’s asking price converts to roughly $136,500 in 2022 dollars, and concours-worthy examples now sell for $160,000-plus. Cadillac reportedly lost $10,000 on each Eldorado Brougham back in the day, so to avoid riling the shareholders again, we expect the 2024 Celestiq to be priced at—or well above—$300,000.