2010 Cadillac Escalade Premium on 2040-cars

Auto blog

GM lays off 450 at Lansing Grand River Assembly

General Motors will lay off 450 employees at its Lansing Grand River factory, The Detroit News reports, which is 100 more than the company said it'd be letting go last month. Lansing Grand River Assembly currently builds the Cadillac ATS and CTS, both of which have suffered sluggish sales, with the smaller sedan down 20 percent through last month and the larger model down 2.3 percent, The Detroit News reports. "We are adjusting plant production capacity to better align with market demand. Beginning in January 2015, the plant will operate on a single shift," a GM statement read, before explaining that not all the laid off Grand River employees will be jobless. Of the employees that have been laid off to make room for the single work shift, around 200 will transfer to the Lansing Delta Township factory, home of the Lambda-platform crossovers, GM's statement confirmed. The News expects this one-shift arrangement to continue until at least late next year, when the Alpha-platform Chevy Camaro transitions from General Motors' Oshawa, Ontario factory to Lansing. Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen said at last month's LA Auto Show, "It may not necessarily be permanent, a time may come when we've gained momentum and we can reinstate it. But for now, the adjustment to production capacity is in alignment with our plans for 2015."

2014 Cadillac ELR whirs into Jay Leno's Garage

While Jerry Seinfeld was gallivanting around LA with Sarah Silverman in a Jaguar XKE, our favorite car-loving comedian, Jay Leno, was checking out the all-new 2014 Cadillac ELR. Set to go on sale later this year, Cadillac brought its ELR to Jay Leno's Garage to show off some of its styling and technology as well as give Leno some seat time in the range-extended EV. Leno owns both a Volt and a CTS-V, and the ELR is a kind combination of the two (sort of).
In this episode, Leno spends some time talking to Frank Saucedo, GM director of advanced design, and ELR chief engineer Chris Thomason before logging a few miles on the sleek coupe. Interestingly, it seems that GM has definitely changed its tune a little since the introduction of the Volt a couple years ago; Saucedo and Leno both refer to the ELR as a hybrid, and Thomason says that it gets the "bulk of its propulsion" from the electric motors. Whatever you want to call it, scroll down to watch the latest episode of JLG with some great information and driving shots of the plug-in Cadillac.

Cadillac previews upcoming new XT5 crossover [UPDATE]

UPDATE: Cadillac has released another three images, which we've added to the gallery above. Cadillac is gearing up to unveil its new XT5 crossover at the Dubai Motor Show in November. We've already seen what it'll look like - from a couple of angles, anyway - but the all-American luxury automaker has given us another taste of what's to come with a quartet of images released on its official Facebook page. Set to replace the SRX that's now six years old, the all-new XT5 adopts the new design language we've seen on newer Cadillacs of late. That's most particularly emphasized with those vertically integrated LED headlights. The sharply creased styling is also signature Cadillac, as is the egg-crate grille capped by the brand's wreath-less new emblem. The dark brown paint job also looks like it has a deep metallic flake to it, offset by satin brightwork where you might have once expected to see glinting chrome. (Then again, it could just be reflecting a uniform backdrop.) The XT5 is expected to be the first of several new Caddy crossovers to wear the letters XT. A smaller model (likely to be dubbed XT3) is tipped to slot in below, with a larger XT7 to slot in above – but still below the defiantly truck-based Escalade that's not about to go anywhere anytime soon. Sedans will continue to start their nameplates with the letters CT. But after a dozen years, the letters SRX will be retired from the Cadillac lexicon. Related Video: