Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by Cadillac.
Speaker 1: Do you have any guesses about what we're going to
Speaker 1: show you? Yea, no guesses, No guesses. The only thing
Speaker 1: I'm going to say in preparation is well, I'm not
Speaker 1: even to say anything. I just want your I just
Speaker 1: want your reaction. I want to know whether you want
Speaker 1: one of these.
Speaker 2: You're ready.
Speaker 1: I'm walking down the streets of a small town in
Speaker 1: upstate New York with a five year old boy who
Speaker 1: is all the typical five year old boy's enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: things with wheels. He's wearing a blindfold. We stop and
Speaker 1: I can turn him around to face the street in
Speaker 1: front of a shiny, elegant, sleek SUV. What you're going
Speaker 1: to see is something that almost no one in America
Speaker 1: has seen. This is brand new. Okay, take my arm,
Speaker 1: lift off your blindfold. Let me just say he was
Speaker 1: a little bit shy and a little overwhelmed. He's blindfolded
Speaker 1: by some random guy who's friends with his parents. So
Speaker 1: he looks up and there's a pause as he contemplates
Speaker 1: the apparition in front of his eyes. What do you
Speaker 1: think brand like? The look on his face did not
Speaker 1: just say I like it. It said, Holy Toledo, No, no,
Speaker 1: Holy Detroit. What is this now? I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Well, to answer that, we need
Speaker 1: to go back in time not long ago, we got
Speaker 1: to call a Pushkin headquarters from Cadillac. They knew that
Speaker 1: we take cars very seriously here. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: they knew that the car I drive to work every
Speaker 1: morning is a Cadillac. I tricked out twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: Cadillac CT five V a monster. So they say, have
Speaker 1: you heard of the all electric Cadillac Lyric?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I had my friend Dan, the most serious gearhead I know,
Speaker 1: had driven one in Detroit and texted me immediately, this
Speaker 1: thing is the best car Cadillac ever made. My friend Eddie,
Speaker 1: second most serious gearhead I know, spotted one in his
Speaker 1: neighbor's driveway and said it looks like the Barcelona Chair
Speaker 1: of cars. I've no idea what that means. Anyway, Cadillac says,
Speaker 1: would you like to borrow a Lyric for a few days?
Speaker 1: We gave their request a great deal of thought, held
Speaker 1: a dozen meetings to discuss, made a spreadsheet to evaluate
Speaker 1: the pros and cons. No, are you kidding me? We said,
Speaker 1: bring it now. I'm Malcolm Glawell, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: the first of two very special episodes for revisionist history listeners.
Speaker 1: Come along on an all electric road trip with me
Speaker 1: and a few friends. So the lyrics shows up at
Speaker 1: Pushkin HQ, and let's just say we have plans for
Speaker 1: the next few days. Road tests, but not boring road tests,
Speaker 1: my kind of road tests. The things that matter to me.
Speaker 1: How much can I fit in this thing? Is it
Speaker 1: fast enough? Is it better than what I have in
Speaker 1: the garage already? And first and foremost, will it impress
Speaker 1: my friends? We started with the five year old down
Speaker 1: the street. Then we parked and waited for the general
Speaker 1: public to weigh in, which they did like flies on honey.
Speaker 1: First up, a dude in an escalade literally stops in
Speaker 1: the middle.
Speaker 2: Of the street. Yeah, sharp, right out right out from
Speaker 2: the factory.
Speaker 1: Look at that thing, man, I yes, I remember looking
Speaker 1: to it now, so.
Speaker 2: I won't work about it a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, all right, All right, enough, we realized we
Speaker 1: had to drive it for ourselves. We piled in first thoughts.
Speaker 1: It is suv presence, but drives like a car, an
Speaker 1: electric car, which means that insanely smooth, uninterrupted instantaneous acceleration,
Speaker 1: and all in a kind of hushed splendor, powered by
Speaker 1: GM's brand new ultium battery system. We called our contact
Speaker 1: back a Cadillac. Melissa Grady, Cadillac's chief marketing officer, put
Speaker 1: her on speaker. Wait, we're gonna drive down the blog
Speaker 1: because I want you to explain this sound. This thing
Speaker 1: is so insanely quiet. So there's like this kind of
Speaker 1: quiet hum. Yes, I'm referring to this sound. What am
Speaker 1: I tell me about what I'm hearing? The future? Ah,
Speaker 1: you were trained to say that. Oh, yes, was It's
Speaker 1: actually the sound the sun emits has recorded by NASA.
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up.
Speaker 2: So what that noise is is, you know, with anyv
Speaker 2: there really isn't a lot of audible sound, and so
Speaker 2: we put that sound in so that pedestrians and others
Speaker 2: can hear that the that the vehicle is approaching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the noise machine I use for my baby.
Speaker 1: It's like this calming. Next, I got fixated on the dash,
Speaker 1: so just so to describe for so, I'm looking at this.
Speaker 1: We've got this console, this screen that stretches from the
Speaker 1: driver's side all the way almost to the edge of
Speaker 1: the passage. It's like a long how long is this
Speaker 1: It's like a do you know how long? This screen
Speaker 1: looks like it's like over two feet long. It is
Speaker 1: thirty three inches thirty three inches, so everything as I'm driving,
Speaker 1: everything is in front of me, and then I have
Speaker 1: we just open the map function. Oh my god, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: And then we've got the rearview mirror is a is
Speaker 1: a continuous HD camera. So in case you're keeping count
Speaker 1: Test number one, the five year old boy test past
Speaker 1: Test number two, the eyeball first impression test passed. But
Speaker 1: now for the hardest test of all, we returned to
Speaker 1: Pushkin HQ and pick up my friend Michael, who for
Speaker 1: the past three and a half years has been the
Speaker 1: devoted owner of an electric vehicle made by a company
Speaker 1: whose name will not pass our lips.
Speaker 2: Michael, where do I get myself for coming for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need to come downstairs and then we're going
Speaker 1: to put a blindfold on you and go for la ride,
Speaker 1: the same blindfold we use for the kid. Is this
Speaker 1: going to end our thirty five? It is absolutely not.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be an educational and enjoyable experience for you.
Speaker 1: Michael is a skeptical, perceptive, hard bitten professional journalist, a
Speaker 1: man of the world, and he loves his current ev
Speaker 1: He's an evangelist for the brand. And we told him
Speaker 1: nothing except that we've got something very new parked out
Speaker 1: front that he's never been in before. We put him
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat. Let me remind you, he's blindfolded.
Speaker 1: We want him to hear and feel the lyric without
Speaker 1: his judgmental vision getting in the way. He starts running
Speaker 1: his hands over the dash, the door, everything around him.
Speaker 1: How does that? How does that seat feeling?
Speaker 2: It's it's.
Speaker 1: It's very luxurious.
Speaker 2: I hate.
Speaker 1: This, can't be it. Now. We weren't trying to rag
Speaker 1: on the competition. I mean, I've driven into Michael's car.
Speaker 1: It's a fine bit of engineering, lots of great software,
Speaker 1: pioneer in the field, blah blah blah. But it's an appliance.
Speaker 1: And now his sense is heightened. Michael sits and touches
Speaker 1: and feels and realizes, Dorothy, You're not in an appliance anymore. Okay, Now, Michael,
Speaker 1: I want you to remove your blindfold. Really, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want you to observe the interior, Wow sleek. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is very nice. It's very different than mine.
Speaker 1: My concern is that you're gonna go back, You're going
Speaker 1: to get into your.
Speaker 2: Your car seeing me is just drive into a leak.
Speaker 2: You'll just be so desponding that I'm gonna be like, I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna be like, what did I know? Are you going
Speaker 1: to make I can't do it. I can't go back.
Speaker 1: You can't go back, Michael, don't do it. Don't go
Speaker 1: back next time. On our special series made in collaboration
Speaker 1: with Cadillac more road tests, Comparero with the German Classic
Speaker 1: and with Cadillacs of R A little bit of a
Speaker 1: road race and babies crying Speedy, Speedy, I Like Newer.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty three lyric orders are full. Go to Cadillac
Speaker 1: dot com and complete a pre order from model year
Speaker 1: twenty four to be among the first to order a
Speaker 1: model year twenty four win available. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Jacob Smith and Joey Fishground. Our editor is Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Engineering by Nina Lawrence and mastering by Sarah Buguier. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Melissa Grady at Cadillac and Carly Megliori. I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glappa.