2026 Cadillac Vistiq: It’s the $100,000 question
Never before has Mr. Driver’s Seat spent so much time lying on his stomach in the front seat trying to find various features.
2026 BMW iX xDrive45 vs. 2026 Cadillac Vistiq Platinum: A lot for a lot?
This week: 2026 Cadillac Vistiq
Price: $99,915 as tested. Red paint was the only upgrade.
What others are saying: “Highs: Cabin teeming with luxury details, smooth ride, nimbler than its size suggests. Lows: Uncommunicative steering, pricey top trims, shoddy main display control dial,” says Car and Driver.
What Cadillac is saying: “Luxury for your life.”
Reality: I guess if I had $100K I could pay someone lie on the front seat trying to find the features I need.
What’s new: The whole thing. Here’s a three-row Cadillac SUV powered by the plug.
Competition: In addition to the iX, there are the Genesis Electrified GV70, Lexus RZ, Mercedes-Benz EQE, Tesla Model X, and Volvo EX90.
Up to speed: The Vistiq is in the class of premium EVs that really roars ahead when you press the accelerator.
The dual-motor SUV creates 615 horsepower, and gets to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds, according to Car and Driver.
You will have no issues pulling into traffic or passing in this SUV.
You’ll also save a lot over the iX, which requires an upgrade to match that acceleration. The price-matched iX took a full second more to get to 60.
Shiftless: The shift lever is on the steering column, where General Motors is putting most of them these days. Pull and lift to back up and pull and lower to move ahead.
On the road: The all-wheel-drive Vistiq handles quite well for a large SUV. It’s wide and it took me a minute to get used to that but once I did, I could tell where the vehicle was in the lane, or in the parking space — which I find is often the hardest piece to figure out.
The vehicle modes are handled through the touchscreen; swipe to the right, choose drive modes, and pick what you like. Sport mode is best for performance, and Snow and Ice did a nice job during a heavy snowstorm and subsequent frigid days.
One big complaint — if you’re not going to put the controls on an easily grabbed dial, have them keep the previous setting, rather than default to Touring (which I never wanted). So many times I was tooling along on questionable road surfaces and then realized “Dang! I’m not in snow mode.”
Driver’s Seat: The command center is comfortable and Cadillacky. The seats are a little on the firm side and I can’t say I spent enough time to see how long trips go, but they weren’t bad. (Some seats can be so firm as to make me angry in an instant.)
Friends and stuff: Sadly, the seats offer noticeably diminishing returns as you head farther back. The middle row is smallish and awkward and feels like some minivan seats from 1998. The rear row offers scant legroom, although there is some room for feet under the seats and good headroom. But the vehicle is kind of short for three rows, especially for a Cadillac.
Cargo space is 15.2 cubic feet in the back; 43 with the third row folded; and 80.2 cubic feet with both rows folded.
Play some tunes: Cadillac wants to dazzle with its 33-inch screen, but it appears the company has become hyperfocused on it, to the detriment of other features.
It took a couple searches and finally lying on the Driver’s Seat and peering into the recesses behind the console to find the USB-c outlets. I know I should be cool and get a phone I can lay on a charger, but why put these in here at all? This just seems snotty. Like they’re saying, “Haha, loser! Get a real phone!”
The connection ports never seemed to want to turn on the music system, either. Bluetooth is usually fine, except that the connection just randomly cut out on about half my trips. The only way to restore it was to shut down the Vistiq and restart it.
Sound from the 23-speaker AKG system with Dolby is less than you’d expect, about an A-.
General Motors would have done well to keep Apple CarPlay access. There’s no dedicated map program, just Google Maps and Waze, and neither looks as refined as a Cadillac screen should.
There’s a dial control with buttons as well but the system is so barebones that I don’t see how that would help.
Night shift: The first time I drove the Vistiq I had to keep the maps turned off. Both programs feature bright white backgrounds, and they did not automatically adjust for the darkness outside and prevented me from seeing the road.
After another few minutes spent on my stomach trying to find controls, I noticed the old-fashioned light dimmer roller switch to the left of the steering wheel. That dimmed the whole dashboard, but not so badly that I couldn’t see. Still, you’d think this would adjust without me having to do anything, like it does in the Lovely Mrs. Passenger Seat’s Kia Soul, for about one-fourth the price.
Keeping warm and cool: HVAC controls get a separate touchscreen. They’re pretty but a little fussy and hard to adjust at a glance.
Range: The Vistiq advertises a 300-mile range, a match for most of the iX models available. It charges up to 80 miles in 20 minutes, which is no match for some of the best out there (Genesis, Hyundai, and Kia.)
Where it’s built: Spring Hill, Tenn. 43% of parts come from the U.S. and Canada; 18% from China; and 17% South Korea.
How it’s built: Consumer Reports predicts the Vistiq reliability to be a 2 out of 5.
In the end: It feels like Cadillac is giving up. No snazzy map program — when they used to have one of the most attractive options. No CarPlay. No drive mode switch, just use the touchscreen, which has a home screen that looks nice in photos but in person screams Windows 95. Critical items hidden like Easter eggs in a Jeep. It’s a shame, because there’s a nice vehicle here.
The iX is far from perfect, but I’d pick it over this. But among all the competitors, it’s GV70 all the way, even despite 10% less range.