Yesterday news surfaced that General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre had essentially mandated that Cadillac develop a rear-wheel drive flagship sedan Prior to GM’s June 2009 bankruptcy filing a Zeta-based flagship sedan for Cadillac was well on its way to becoming a reality. Internally the program was referred to as “DT7.” Unfortunately GM’s financial crisis left the DT7 without funding and thus it was scrapped. Now that we have a new CEO- a CEO that recently became in charge of product planning, the potential for a Cadillac flagship is increasing.
To clarify yesterday’s report; this program has NOT been approved for production. According to GMI sources familiar with GM’s executive committee discussions, they have simply agreed to explore options for getting Cadillac a proper rear-wheel drive flagship. While Whitacre is an internal advocate for the program, we’re told that Mark Reuss has also been pushing for Cadillac to get a new flagship as well. That comes as no surprise given that Reuss is largely considered a “car guy” executive.
GMI sources did state that this program will not see full approval until after GM’s impending initial public stock offering. A proper Cadillac flagship sedan will be a costly program and GM wants to be under public ownership before the money is spent for such a program. With that said, our sources are fairly confident the program will see full approval at some point.
There is no word yet on which platform the car will use. GM’s Cadillac-exclusive platform, Sigma, is due to die off entirely by 2013. Considering GM is actively reducing the number of platforms housed under the GM umbrella, we don’t see it as a likely candidate for this car.
As GMI has reported, GM’s upcoming Alpha platform will house the ATS and next-generation CTS, but sources state that the CTS will be the size limit for Alpha+. To make Alpha significantly larger would require GM to basically engineer another platform.
Zeta is the wildcard here. The Holden-developed platform is a clear option for Cadillac; however it would likely be an expensive one. Holden’s variants of Zeta (VE and WM) cannot easily be manufactured outside of Australia and Camaro’s hacked up version of Zeta is obviously not large enough.
Insiders that participate here on GMI have stated that GM is currently working on a new platform called “Beta” internally. Beta is supposedly the successor to “Zeta II,” which was scrapped for unknown reasons. Sources state that Shanghai GM currently has the lead development role on Beta.
Product Planning – Whitacre
As numerous media outlets have reported, Whitacre is now “in charge” of product planning at General Motors. All final product planning falls on the GM executive committee. The committee is a 13-member board that is responsible for making a wide array of decisions, including approving all global products.
Prior to his April 2010 retirement, Bob Lutz was the chairman of the executive committee’s product board. Now that Lutz is out of the picture, Whitacre is the new chairman of the product committee. This does not mean that Whitacre himself will be making product decisions. The entire committee still has say in product decisions. The committee has product meetings every Friday.
In recent months GMI sources have mentioned several times that Whitacre is generally a “yes” vote to Zeta or rear-wheel drive products. Specifically we were told he was very eager to get the next-generation Buick Park Avenue to North America. Unfortunately, that has yet to be approved.
Now that GM is financially healthy and has entirely new management behind product planning, the chances of Cadillac getting a proper flagship sedan have just greatly increased. We expect to hear more on this in the coming months; hopefully with more details on this car’s platform use.
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