It was a Cadillac.
   
Specifically, a Cadillac CTS.
   
A two-door CTS.
   
That the CTS sedan would get a two-door companion has long been expected, along with rumors that there would be a wagon version akin to the “shooting brake” of English luxury cars and giving the CTS a competitor to the BMW and Mercedes-Benz wagons.  So, it wasn’t exactly a surprise that Cadillac would be showing a coupe CTS.
   
The surprise was in how beautiful this care has turned out to be.
   
When the car was driven across the stage, it was parked so that the rear end faced the audience.  Because it is from the cowl back that the appearance differs from the sedan CTS.  The rear has a V shape to the deck, one that is highly reminiscent to the first front wheel drive Eldorado in 1967.  The vertical taillights wrap up on top of the fender, where a small fin-like suggestion is cast in to the tail light lense. 
   
That mere suggestion of a fin is, of course, THE Cadillac trademark.  The origin of the Cadillac tail fin began with the 1949 Cadillac, and continued through to the more recent vertical tail light theme.  The CTS Coupe Concept combines them in one perfectly executed statement of family heritage.
   
TopSpeed spoke one-on-one with John Manoogian II, Director of Exterior Design for Cadillac, the man whose studio was directly responsible for the CTS Coupe Concept.  An hour earlier, he’d been on stage with Ed Wellburn, GM’s design boss, describing how the coupe had evolved.
   
There’s a story here.
   
It seems that the CTS was originally to be a sedan, and only a sedan.  Once they had finished it, however, the designers couldn’t resist the temptation to try a coupe.  They liked what they drew, so it advanced to clay, and to full-size.  One look at that clay buck sold management on building it.
   
It’s not the first time that’s happened at Cadillac.  Maybe their best cars are actually second thoughts.
   
Back when, it fell to Cadillac’s studio to redesign, again, the Eldorado, by now a personal luxury coupe with its own identity.  And, so they did. 
   
But, once done, some of the designers couldn’t resist.  What if we made a sedan out of it?  So, on their own, they did one in clay.  It got spotted, according to the story, by one of the GM brass on a late-night prowl through the design studio.  That car ended up being the next generation Seville and, after the Cadillac studio head had made a few modifications in its appearance for his own personal ride and those had caught attention, the first STS.
   
So, now they’ve come full circle.
   
Manoogian told us that Cadillac does “heritage” but “we don’t do retro.” 
   
I guess that’s true, because Cadillac is in the process of reinventing one of the most flamboyant and completely American elements of their heritage, the Eldorado.
   
Before that name became a cliché for something Elvis would drive, it was the pinnacle of GM’s styling and engineering abilities.
   
When Dwight D. Eisenhower had just taken his first Presidential oath of office and was parading from the Capitol to the White House, he was doing it in a white Cadillac Eldorado convertible.  Over the years, the Eldorado was always Cadillac’s most personal approach to luxury, and it’s most lavish.  When it came time for them to produce a “personal luxury car,” the division named it Eldorado.
   
The Eldorado name won’t be on this one when it reaches production – which it will, in time for next fall’s introduction of new models.  But, the spirit of the Eldorado is in every line of the car, inside and out.
   
As I stood next to the CTS Coupe Concept on the stage, comparing it with the new CTSv sedan parked next to it, I tried to figure out what made the concept look so sensuous, compared to the sedan.  Part of the answer is obvious: bigger wheels and lower profile tires.  Also, they’ve dropped the front of the concept and it has a hood bulge that’s missing from the sedan.  (That bulge, incidentally, is an intentional echo of Cadillac heritage, too.  It’s exactly the same spiritual line as that of the 1963-1970 deVille.)
   
The story that the CTS Coupe Concept is a happy melding of art and commerce is fine and romantic, but Manoogian gave off more than a few hints that the car is the calculated product of the design staff’s aspirations.  As he noted several times, the car’s development cost was paid when the company did the sedan.  All of the internal architecture, the drivetrain, the cowl, and most of the components, are those of the sedan and have, thereby, already been budgeted.  So, this car is pretty close to a freebie, as an investment by the company.
   
The head of Cadillac design, Clay Dean, however, threw cold water on the notion that there will be a wagon version of the CTS.  He said there are no plans for that.  Nobody at Cadillac would admit it, but Mark LaNeve, GM’s North American Vice President of Sales, bluntly told us that the Provoq, though with a conventional drivetrain, is the next SRX. 
   
So, there’s no chance of a CTS wagon.  That’s a pity because that would be a very neat car, a perfect car to park next to the convertible.
   
Yes.
   
That’s the good news.
   
Those same people who did the coupe have been drawing a convertible.
   
I’m hoping they do it, and that they do it as a soft-top.  Not one of those folding roof things.  A real convertible.
   
I want mine in Firemist Red.