Cadillac ruled out for Oz this decade

General Motors luxury brand Cadillac has revealed right-hand drive production and therefore a return to Australia will be delayed into next decade.

At the same time it has detailed a dramatic $12 billion overhaul of its brand by 2020.

Speaking to analysts in New York this week, brand president John de Nysschen said the company’s focus was on developing left-hand drive markets. The news means that speculation a Cadillac is the basis of Holden’s future sports car looks off beam.

De Nysschen confirmed a plan to roll out five SUVs and crossovers before the end of the decade. A small car and three redesigned compact and mid-size passenger cars are also on the production schedule for the next few years.

Currently Cadillac offers only the SRX large crossover and the bling-laden Escalade heavy-duty body-on-frame SUV, alongside a line-up of luxury passenger sedans and coupes that starts with the ATS and climbs through the CTS to the newly-launched CT6.

While Cadillac's future model rollout sounds impressive, the mooted 2019 or 2020 Australian relaunch timetable that’s been talked about by de Nysschen and other Caddy execs is now clearly on the backburner.

That’s because the brand is delaying its attack on the Western European market, for which diesel engines and right-hand drive models for the United Kingdom are crucial.

Right-hand drive for the UK in turn leads to the opportunity to sell in Australia via Holden.

But de Nysschen told analysts that developing LHD markets such as China, the Middle East and Russia will get preference over Western Europe, which it won’t focus on until “beyond 2020”.

“We’ll go to that market (Western Europe) when we have the right powertrains and the right cars,” he was reported as saying this week by the Detroit News.

“We can only achieve so much at the same time; all of these things cost money.

“Let’s get strong in these other markets which naturally provide immediate volume opportunities before we tackle the Germans in their backyard, and we do so then with a position of strength.”

The Cadillac CTS-V had been suggested alongside the Chevrolet Camaro and Corvette and the possible Opel Monza as one possibility for the much mooted Holden V8 sports car that GM International Operations boss Stefan Jacoby committed to after the expiration of the locally-built Commodore in 2017.

But Cadillac’s decision to delay RHD means the CTS-V sports sedan -- powered by a supercharged 6.2-litre LT4 V8 that slams out an HSV GTS-mauling 477kW -- can almost certainly be eliminated from the possibles and probables list.

For the moment, Cadillac is a LHD-only proposition with its primary focus on North America and China. Its Western European presence is tiny at around 1000 sales per annum.

Cadillac was on the verge of being launched in Australia in 2009 when the GFC struck and the plug was pulled at the very last second. It is one of a string of GM brands that have stumbled in Australia including Opel, Saab and Hummer.

By the end of the decade De Nysschen said Cadillac plans to grow its sales from the 300,000 forecast for 2015 to 500,000.

But while its overall sales have grown 1.5 per cent this year to the end of July, it is down 2.4 per cent year-on-year in the USA, reflecting its paucity of crossovers and SUVs. In the same period Lexus sales rose 13.6 per cent and Audi 12.4 per cent. BMW and Mercedes-Benz were also up.

Meanwhile, De Nysschen provided guidance regarding Cadillac's new naming system. On the car side, each model will start with CT, followed by a number signifying the size of its body. For crossovers and SUVs, each model will start with XT, followed by a number based on its size.