MS: While you were with Infiniti, a naming change was put into effect all in one year. Cadillac has now introduced the CT6 along with a new naming scheme. Will we see all the model names at Cadillac change at the same time or was the range-wide name change at Infiniti a lesson learned?
JdN: No. The circumstances are rather different. In both cases, we needed to change the nomenclature of the cars because of expansion in the product portfolio. With Cadillac we are refining, particularly in our sedan lineup, how all the cars relate to each other. If you think about it for a moment, we today have CTS, XTS, and now CT6, all spread across one-and-a-half market segments. Then we have ATS which is a really compelling offering, but as a real-wheel drive sedan, in terms of its interior packaging, people are seeing it as less of a Audi A4 or Mercedes-Benz C-Class competitor and more as a Mercedes-Benz CLA and Audi A3 sedan competitor simply because of the interior size of the car. Those cars are front-wheel drive contenders which has better packaging advantages
MS: Is that comparison a disadvantage for Cadillac?
JdN: We get a handling advantage. But in terms of what people perceive when they see the car, particularly with regard to rear seat occupancy comfort, they say it has disadvantages. And that’s the reality. It’s part of what you’re getting when you select a rear-wheel drive architecture versus front-wheel drive. The packaging advantages are what they are.
Back to the point, as we move into refining our future sedan portfolio, there will be no direct successor to the CTS. There will be no direct successor to the ATS. There is no point in renaming those cars because in the future those cars will disappear. They will be replaced by cars which are either larger or smaller and those new cars will take on the new naming.
MS: So the renaming is not so much just a renaming but a realignment of the models that will be offered by Cadillac in the future?
JdN: It signals a realignment plus creates the room for us expand the number of entrants. So we will in the future have a proper contender to challenge the BMW 1-Series, Audi A3 sedan, and Mercedes-Benz CLA. We will have a proper contender to challenge the Audi A4 and BMW 3-Series. We will have a proper contender to challenge the BMW 5-Series, and the 7-Series, and something even above that. All of these cars need names. But CT6 is the first of this push into realigning the range and ultimately, in 2019, a car like XTS reaches the end of its lifecycle and won’t be replaced. So there’s no point in changing names to the existing lineup.