This Sunday brings word in the Detroit Free Press that Cadillac is inching closer every day to a decision to build a big, powerful and expensive luxury sedan similar to the XTS Platinum vehicle seen last year at the Detroit Auto Show. The new luxury sedan would compete with icons like the BMW 7-series and Mercedes-Benz S-class.The car would be Cadillac’s flagship, larger, faster, more powerful and luxurious than the elegant XTS sedan that goes on sale next year.This new top-of-the-line Cadillac will not, however, be the fanciful 1,000-horsepower V16-engined Cadillac Sixteen concept car that wowed auto show audiences in 2003. The Sixteen was a vision of a $300,000-plus Rolls-Royce competitor. The new car could share some of the Sixteen’s styling and features, but prices should top out at less than half that. The flagship, whose name remains shrouded in mystery, is unlikely to go on sale before 2015. r. The project could still die, but well-informed insiders are said to expect GM’s top brass to green-light it shortly. The flagship is the next step toward Cadillac’s goal of competing in every volume segment in the global luxury-car business.
