I attended the Inaugural Detroit Concours d’Elegance this past weekend and attended the toney "Motor City Party" (Gala) the night before.
Initially we were treated to a one on one interview with Ed Wellburn and then later a panel discussion where senior automobile company officials from the Detroit three told us all how great EV's were. The response from the roughly 200 assembled guests in attendance was polite but tepid at best.
No questions were permitted from guests during the panel.
There were two cars on display at the party, the first the Cadiliac Cyclone (on the design turntable in the panel discussion room) which was very well received - and later at dinner (in a separate room) the brand new Cadillac LYRIQ.
Here is where it got interesting because the LYRIQ is a literal behemoth in person. I am talking like Hummer H2 proportions - and I observed correctly that while in the "strolling dinner" room we were participants in a grand marketing experiment (the psychological kind) - all put on by GM of course.
So we were the mice and the LYRIQ was the cheese.
Well,- we were all just assured how "great EV's were" minutes before, however interest in looking at the LYRIQ was just as restrained and tepid as the applause minutes earlier.
Very few people I observed showed any interest in the LYRIQ at all, and finally at the end of the evening one tipsy lady decided to actually sit in it and predictably two photographers appeared out of the corners of the room to take her picture (multiple times and literally from all angles) when she was sitting in it -treating her like she was a movie star.
The $300 dollar per ticket Motor City guests there were all older and certainly well qualified to buy the LYRIQ and therefore presumably this event would be sure to represent the EXACT buyer segment for the LYRIQ- yet these people showed little to no interest in it at all which I found fascinating to observe.
The next day at the Concours d’Elegance field the gM EV display contained the Hummer EV, the LYRIQ again and the the soon to be released Traverse, and the Blazer EV's.
Just like the LYRIQ these vehicles are simply HUGE and the styling looks forced as the dimensional stretch required to fit the look of the vehicle on to the center battery bay distorts the vehicle proportions to an extent to where the styling takes on a cartoonish appearance. Very few people at all at the gM EV display. By contrast the ICE Z06 and legacy GM vehicle display over on the museum side was MOBBED all day.
There is a lesson here: MARY are you listening??
REVERSE COURSE NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE and maintain your ICE production capability and offerings because you are going to have to - in order to stay in business.
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