After a decades-long absence, Cadillac is reentering the Australian market with the 2025 Cadillac Lyriq in late 2024, followed by other EV models thereafter. The luxury marque is committed to Australia and New Zealand, and expects its venture to be successful despite having had zero presence there for years, all the while rival luxury automakers have a stronghold.
“Australia is a very strategic market for us. We see a lot more opportunity there as we bring Cadillac and the direct to consumer model there,” Shilpan Amin, senior vice president and president of GM International, told Car Expert. “Design matters. Capability and technology matter. We’ve got a 122-year history around leading and technology and design, and that longevity will matter.”
Cadillac is building customer experience centers in Melbourne and Sydney, which are boutique storefronts that take the place of the traditional dealership experience. While these storefronts will provide a unique shopping experience for customers in the market for a Cadillac, they don’t come close to delivering the dealer and distribution networks that German brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi enjoy today. Indeed, dethroning these marques will be difficult for Cadillac, though that’s not necessarily the plan, as it plans to sell in “exclusive volumes in Australia.” Specific sales targets have yet to be disclosed.
“I think to have relevance around the world, being in markets like Australia, which value a lot of the technology that we develop for places like Europe and the US, it’s a close proximity to create value on the technology that you roll out,” Amin added. “And so that gives us the scale behind developing even more technology in the future. You need places that have common technology valued to be able to stay at the lead in natural technology.”
Additionally, all of Cadillac’s offerings in the market will be battery electric and right hand drive. In other words, no gasoline-powered vehicles will be marketed as Caddy returns to Australia. Cadillac will join two other marques – Chevrolet and GMC – from parent General Motors in AUS and NZ after mass-market Holden was killed off in 2020.
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