Cadillac Escalade Review
Despite the Escalade’s epic dimensions— six feet high and 16.5 feet long— its protection against the slings and bumpers of outrageous driving has nothing to do with the acres of sheet metal adorning its body-on-frame chassis. Like all SUV’s, the Escalade is a truck. It’s exempt from US automotive safety legislation, which mandates life-saving technology like passenger safety cells. Bottom line: when push comes to crash, you’re at least as safe in a medium-sized German saloon. If not more. Lest we forget, the Escalade’s high and mighty stance gives Caddy’s big rig a genetic tendency to fall over when things go seriously sideways.
Anyway, as any good SUV salesman would tell you, passive safety is for negative thinkers, losers and wimps. Out there on the mean streets of America’s smallest state, the name of the game is accident avoidance. See and be seen. Intimidation. In a world where drivers size you up like a lion eyeing a gazelle, little things count for a lot. Little things like the Escalade’s massive prow. Quite simply, the Escalade has the most aggressive face in the business. The Caddy’s multi-louvered nose has all the fascistic scale and sullen symmetry of an 18th century English prison. It issues a stern warning to territorial interlopers to “back off” or be crushed. Attached to the Escalade’s sumo superstructure, the front end is effective, pro-active protection against unwanted aggression.
Good news sports fans: the Escalade’s handling is awesome. Porsche drivers would dismiss its whipped cream steering and remote control chassis as automotive Novocain, but I’d like to see them drive a 911 through a crowded supermarket parking lot with two fingers while sipping a large iced coffee. At low speeds, the Escalade is as nimble as one of Fantasia’s dancing hippos. Drive thru or drive-by, the big beast is a pussycat on the pavement. As for the Escalade’s road manners in more “challenging” situations, well… the official Cadillac brochure claims the Escalade’s electronic road sensing suspension system combines “road isolation” with “enhanced control during emergency maneuvers”. In practice, there’s so much mass and so little feel that very few drivers could get themselves out of any real trouble, or make the Escalade do what car drivers tend to call “corner”.
Curb Weight: 5850 lbs
Engine: 6 liter
Engine Type: V8
Horsepower: 345
Torque: n/a
Drive type: n/a
0 to 60: n/a
60 to 0: n/a
Quarter Mile: n/a
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