Escalade EXT embarrasses

Fuel-guzzling pickup is a barrage of bad taste

BY LAWRENCE ULRICH
DETROIT FREE PRESS AUTO CRITIC

If you love the Cadillac Escalade, the darling of the streetwise sport-utility set, nothing I say is going to change your mind.

Buy it with my blessing. Because if I stretch my brain like gray taffy, I can almost understand the phenomenon of the Escalade and its new pickup offshoot, the Escalade EXT.

It's enormously flashy. It's flashily enormous. It goes really fast for a nearly 3-ton truck.

Either Escalade will get you noticed: I couldn't make 10 miles in the EXT without someone pulling alongside and having what appeared to be a seizure. Followed by a windows-down torrent of enthusiasm, something like, "Oh, my God, is that the EXT . . . and how much . . . and when can . . . man, I want and . . . ?"

Then that person would drive off Jefferson Avenue and into the Detroit River.

Good thing, because I could never bring myself to tell these folks, so clearly enamored of the Caddy, what I really thought.

The Escalade EXT is an embarrassment.

It's a barrage of bad taste. A gasoline glutton. And a huge waste of money, especially compared with the Chevy Avalanche that's essentially the same truck minus a few horsepower, the look-at-me Cadillac logo and a tarted-up interior.

Now, the Avalanche at least makes some sense: a sport-utility based on the Suburban (for my money, the best of the super-size utes) with a folding gate at the cab's rear that extends the pickup bed into the back seat.

But like the Lincoln Blackwood pickup, the EXT strikes me as completely superfluous. A Cadillac pickup? For what, hauling Fifi to the poodle salon? Worse, the EXT costs $15,000 more than the $33,965 all-wheel-drive Avalanche, and I honestly prefer the Chevy.

Cadillac itself betrays the true purpose of the Escalade twins. It's not about making sense. It's about making an entrance. A statement of conspicuous consumption. Caddy has been reminding us how professional athletes roll up to training camp in Escalades, how rappers are rhyming its praises in song and video.

Of course, pro athletes and rappers also wear fur coats and sunglasses indoors. If that's the fashion statement you care to make, your sport-ute is waiting.

Praise for engine, chassis
Now, by the standards of this class, I should say the Cadillac does some things quite well. Let me emphasize that the lowly one-star rating isn't a reflection of the EXT's engine, chassis and suspension, all praiseworthy.

The EXT shares its sturdy backbone with the rest of GM's full-size sport-utilities. Like the Suburban and Avalanche, the EXT has all the ingredients for a quiet interior, competent steering and impressive posterior protection on the highway. Ride and handling are abetted by Cadillac's road-sensing suspension, which adjusts shock absorbers as needed to limit body roll in corners, front-end dive under braking and the like.

You also get standard stability control, a welcome safety feature that's finally being adopted by heavy, tall-riding trucks that arguably need it the most. A self-leveling rear suspension does exactly that, keeping the back at the same height regardless of the load it's carrying.

With 345 horsepower from a 6.0-liter Vortec V8, the EXT and Escalade have more motivation than you have any right to expect from a heavyweight truck. The high-compression pushrod motor wails and whooshes the EXT from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in about 8.4 seconds. That's respectable for a family sedan, let alone a nearly 19-foot long, 5,800-pound machine.

By contrast, the Avalanche relies on a 5.3-liter, 285-horsepower Vortec. The Chevy isn't underpowered by any means, but the EXT does bring 60 more horsepower to the party.

Where the Escalade offers a 2-wheel-drive version, EXT models feature standard all-wheel-drive that splits power 38-62 percent between the front and rear wheels.

A generous 380 foot-pounds of torque, the self-leveling suspension and heavy-duty trailering package help deliver an 8,000-pound towing capacity.

Styling is where the EXT first begins to lose me. Where some people see big and brazen, I see bloated and vulgar.

Plastic-wrapped sail panels that buttress the cab look big enough to power an America's Cup entry. Proud of its latest wreath-and-crest logo, Cadillac decided to make the EXT's the circumference of a bowling ball.

Walking around our bright-white EXT -- planning ahead, I brought a lunch -- I decided the EXT looked not unlike a double-wide Frigidaire. For whatever reason, the white diamond paint added $995 to the freight. The EXT comes in just two other colors, black and pewter.

Inside, Cadillac lays on the gewgaws and gingerbread. But there's just no escaping the EXT's reliance on the GM parts bin, starting with the clunky column-mounted shifter.

Say anything in the EXT's defense, but no one will convince me this is what luxury is supposed to look and feel like. In fact, if there's a crummier cabin in a car or truck priced above $40,000, I haven't seen it. Compared with the Lexus-like lounge space in the new Lincoln Navigator, the Caddy's interior is a 24-carat cubic zirconia.

Fake-wood veneers look like something you'd line kitchen cupboards with. I've seen better synthetic wood, much better, in $15,000 Hyundais. And $20,000 VWs have genuine wood. Apparently GM can't manage it in a truck at nearly triple the price.

Plastic trim surrounding the audio unit was so indifferently mounted that I could slide one, two, and finally three fingertips under its edge and stretch the entire piece away from the dashboard. In short, a rattle waiting to happen.

The Caddy's microwave-oven digital displays went out of style with the '80s pop group A Flock of Seagulls. An analog clock is mimicked by the digital readout inches away, presumably for people who can't tell the big hand from the little.

A six-CD player is integrated into the dashboard, except "integrated" gives the engineers entirely too much credit. Seriously, it looks as if your Uncle Bud sawed a hole in the dash and crammed in a cheap aftermarket player. The unit protrudes from the dash, and doesn't resemble any other interior component.

Even the plastic latches that secure the midgate have a decidedly down-market feel.

In my week of driving, I managed about 11 m.p.g. in combined city and highway driving. Looked at another way, if gasoline climbs back to $2 a gallon, the Escalade would get about 6 miles to the dollar. (The EPA credits the EXT with 12 m.p.g. city and 16 on the highway, but I couldn't bump it up that high).

The EXT carries over a few more goodies from the Avalanche: First, the three-piece rigid cargo cover. It looks good, and it's easy to remove or install. You can even walk on top of the cover, at least if you weigh less than 250 pounds. Second, the top-box storage, lockable bins inside the rear fender wells that can hold gear or even double as ice chests thanks to drain plugs in the bottom.

Don't forget the Avalanche's midgate, which drops down to extend the bed from a little more than 5 feet in length to 8 feet, 1 inch. Although I can see what the Avalanche is getting at here, I'm exceedingly skeptical that EXT owners would use the midgate for much more than a conversation starter.

Remember, the al-fresco EXT puts the bed where the Escalade's third-row seat would normally go. The standard Escalade seats up to eight, but you're limited to five passengers in two rows with the EXT. That's a big sacrifice in versatility to get a longer bed whose necessity is dubious to begin with.

Again, maybe the EXT isn't about making practical sense. But even vehicles that cost more than $50,000 have to measure up. The EXT just doesn't stretch far enough into genuine luxury territory or past the Avalanche to justify the difference in price.

If your heart is set on boulevard cruising in the EXT, have at it. But I recommend the Chevy. Console your bruised ego with the stretched version: An Avalanche with a new $15,000 ski boat hooked to the back, yours free with the EXT-ra money you didn't fritter away.

Contact LAWRENCE ULRICH at 313-222-5394 or ulrich@freepress.com.

April 19, 2002

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