Up Close And Personal With Cadillac’s Stunning Sollei Concept Car

In late July of this year, Cadillac took the automotive internet by storm with the reveal of a new concept car dubbed the Sollei . Much more than a mere rendering, Sollei offered a look at Cadillac's potential future, with presence and panache, packed full of nifty features. But photography viewed online only goes so far, so when Cadillac brought the car to Hagerty's Garage + Social in Los Angeles, I swung by to take a closer look and learn more about where Sollei can take America's pre-eminent luxury brand.

In the cool concrete aesthetic of Garage + Social, Sollei sat next to another future-facing Cadillac, the Opulent Velocity concept that debuted at Monterey Car Week. Opulent Velocity's more striking, aggressive vision fits into a more performance-oriented mindset. Both the radical exterior and reductionist interior seem less closely tied to a potential production vehicle, though.

Cadillac's Interplay between Performance and Luxury

Meanwhile, sitting diagonally across from Opulent Velocity, Sollei looked much more compelling, at least to my eye. The yellow paint—technically Manila Cream in reference to Caddies of 1957 and 1958—actually pops less in person, nearer a subtle off-white than a bright and sunny tone. The overall profile also rides longer and lower in person than in photos or videos, perhaps thanks to the indoor setting or the model who starred in the original debut assets being on the shorter end of the spectrum.

Cadillac brought along the production Celestiq EV's design director, Erin Crossley, to chat with media about Sollei's process from sketch to real-world concept. I wanted to know how Sollei wound up as a car with the proportions of a classic internal-combustion land yacht, yet with all the stylistic details common to the current electric era.

"The different design challenges that we have with electrification are the different opportunities we have," Crossley told me. "So especially from a front-end design perspective, as you've probably noticed on all electric cars, you're now free of this very open-air grille design, which was a design element in and of itself. We had a lot of fun with those in the time, but one of the ways we amplify the electrification is by using a lot of lights and really highlighting the technology piece of it, making that a feature element."

Still, the shape of a long two-door convertible with a square hood and almost horizontal boattail-inspired rear end brought to my mind more of the heyday of internal-combustion. Not so, insisted Cadillac's executive chief engineer Brandon Vivian.

"Our future is all electric," he said, "And our philosophy of zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion, as a company, Cadillac is developing all of the technology and the innovation to enable that."

Plenty of smaller details show just how extensively the thought process behind Sollei progressed. The smallest details deserved second glances, including door cards finished in open-pore wood grain, luxury materials grown using mycelium (the root structure of mushrooms), and color-shifting metal tints inspired by the aurora borealis. A set of 3D-printed bird-call flutes and a beverage chiller round out the more obscure features that likely would not survive through to a production version. But that's not entirely the point, after all.

Leaning into Luxury as Lifestyle

"It's not just electrification," Vivian continued. "It's the integration of technology that improves luxury. And so we have the philosophy that we're trying to enable someone's life, no matter what they want to do with it."

Aside from the more whimsical details, Sollei's lines present a cleaner aesthetic than any of Cadillac's current EVs, especially the weighty angularity, black plastics, and peculiar rear quarter panels of the Lyriq and Celestiq. Hints of Rolls-Royce and Bentley definitely shine through—much more so than the past decade-plus which was largely defined by V-Series and Blackwing models.

I'd argue that Cadillac's historical identity hews nearer to American ultraluxe than the performance enthusiast. Perhaps using Sollei as less of a fleeting solar flare and more of a north star will help Cadillac progress away from this era of dueling personalities. Yet in that regard, the instantaneous torque of electric propulsion could still provide enough thrust to satisfy speed freaks driving a production Sollei. After such positive response since July, I prodded Crossley for the chances that Cadillac might actually build it—or something like it. Of course, she remained purposefully vague.

"From our perspective, we look at the data in terms of the reach, who is engaging with it, there's a number of factors from a communications perspective, as well as interest of the media that attended the actual reveal... But at this point, it's too early for us to actually confirm anything."