A few days before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Cadillac of Novi’s General Manager Ed Pobur got a surprise phone call.
It was his Cadillac representative, who told him, “You’re getting delivered the first Lyriq in the world.”
Pobur said he was supposed to get it before July 4, but because of the holiday, it was delayed a few days. A Cadillac spokesman confirmed a hauler truck delivered the Lyriq to Cadillac of Novi before taking the second production Lyriq to LaFontaine Cadillac in Highland.
To be first is big, but it’s especially noteworthy in this case. The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq all-electric SUV is the cornerstone of Cadillac’s future.
The Lyriq is the first EV to enter Cadillac’s lineup, which General Motors vows will be entirely electric by the end of the decade. As a company, GM has said all its brands will be all-electric by 2035.
The car is so important to Cadillac that the person who bought it cannot take delivery of it for seven to 10 days so that Cadillac engineers and a team of specialists can inspect it and teach Cadillac of Novi’s service technicians how to service it.
Pobur said he had strict instructions from his brand rep: “Don’t touch it.”
The ‘white glove treatment’
Cadillac spokesman Michael Albano told the Free Press that GM started shipping 2023 Lyriqs last week to the highest demand markets: New York, Los Angeles and Detroit.
Of Pobur’s dealership, he said, “they’re pretty fortunate,” Albano said.
Cadillac started building the Lyriq in late March at its Spring Hill Assembly plant in Tennessee.
Just days before opening the order banks for the rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive models in May, GM said the 2023 rear-wheel drive model will top 300 miles in range and offer two new colors.
The rear-wheel drive Lyriq will start at $62,990, a $3,000 price bump from the Lyriq Debut edition. The all-wheel drive model starts at $64,990. Initial deliveries of the all-wheel drive model will start early next year and the EPA-estimated range for that model will be announced closer to the start of production.
GM opened the order banks on May 19, but stopped taking orders for the 2023 Lyriq in two hours, saying it sold out. GM will not say how many Lyriqs constitute “sold out,” but earlier this year GM told suppliers to prepare to produce 25,000 Lyriqs this year.
As for the delivery of the SUVs to customers, Albano said all cars go through a dealer inspection no matter what the make and model, but there is “an added element on this car.”
“We’re doing a white glove treatment,” Albano said. “These first early cars, we’re going to make sure everything is perfect. I don’t know if we’ll do that at every dealership. But with Lyriq we’re doing everything we can to assure this launch is perfect.”
Four minutes on the floor
About 1 p.m. Thursday, an open-air hauler truck rolled up to the store on Grand River Avenue in Novi. On it was the Satin Steel-colored Lyriq.
Pobur and his staff were anxiously waiting and ready to greet it.
“We took pictures and videos. It was very exciting,” Pobur said. “No one’s seen the car. Usually, people, the engineers, are running around town with them. But this one’s been kind of a secret. When you see it in person, it’s spectacular.”
GM did bring a few pre-production Lyriqs to metro Detroit in February to test.
Pobur’s crew got it off the truck, inspected it, wiped it down and put it on the showroom floor, he said.
“Then Cadillac’s team showed up to inspect it, so we had to move it and up it went on the hoist,” Pobur said. Cadillac has to teach his technicians about the EV because “we’ve never had it before,” he said.
As a result, the first Lyriq in the world was only on the showroom floor for four minutes, Pobur said.
That was long enough for another customer to see it and tell a sales associate that if the customer who bought it has a change of heart, “tell him I’ll give him $30,000 over sticker for it.”
A near $1 million investment
Once Cadillac gives the dealership the OK, Pobur will put it in the showroom until the customer can take delivery.
“We can’t let anyone drive it because it’s somebody’s car,” Pobur said.
Albano can’t say why Cadillac of Novi was the first to get a production Lyriq, but Pobur believes it’s because he has been the top-selling Cadillac dealer in the country for eight of the last 12 years, including last year.
“I do the most business in Detroit and I do the most business in the country, so I get preferential treatment on some of this stuff,” Pobur said. “That’s the way it should be when you sell the most cars.”
Albano said Cadillac concentrated its first Lyriq deliveries on the markets that have the highest volume of orders which are Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, and “geographically the trucks got here from Tennessee first before they got to LA and New York.”
Cadillac of Novi has 13 orders for the rear-wheel drive 2023 Lyriq and 130 more orders sitting in the order bank for either 2023 or 2024 models when GM switches to the new model year.
Cadillac of Novi, meanwhile, spent $900,000 to make the dealership EV-ready, Pobur said. He had to get new electric wiring throughout the buildings to support the chargers, new electrical lines and various chargers in place.
“I didn’t want to do it half-ass,” Pobur said. “I wanted to do it right. So we spent a little more than we probably wanted to, but we’re ready now.”
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.