Enormous and enormously uneconomical, the Cadillac Escalade deserves only novelty status away from its indulgent native North American market.
Compared with the modern and sophisticated European luxury SUVs with which it’s cracked up to compete, it’s oversized and poorly packaged.
It drives very much like ‘truck’ 4x4s made elsewhere in the world used to, before monocoque construction and advanced chassis technology made them so much better behaved. And yet, even with an American truck this old-school, petrol-electric propulsion is now part of the mix.
The notion of hybridising a V8-engined behemoth like this in the name of eco-worthiness seems a rather incongruous one to put it politely.
Still, Porsche has done very much the same thing with the equally ostentatious automotive statement that is the Porsche Cayenne, and Lexus has quietly been getting on with selling useful numbers of its appealing RX SUV hybrid for some time now.
Both of those manufacturers, however, chose to mate their fuel-saving electric tech to an efficient V6 engine (we’re talking relatively here). Not so Cadillac. Instead, it has kept a mighty V8 under the Escalade’s bonnet, albeit one reduced in capacity from the non-hybrid version’s 6162cc to a marginally more parsimonious 5967cc.
