2026 Cadillac Vistiq First Drive Review: Escalade Dreams on Midsize Means

The Drive

20-05-2025

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After years of fanfare and slow-drip rollout, GM's lineup of electric vehicles built on the platform formerly known as Ultium has finally come together. The three-row, seven-seat 2026 Cadillac Vistiq is the final piece of the puzzle, giving GM an electric luxury family hauler slotting beneath the uber-expensive Escalade IQ. And that's how Cadillac is pitching it—a scaled-down flagship, not just a three-row Lyriq.
So does it deliver, or is this yet another performative electric car engineered to appease regulators rather than attract buyers? Cadillac invited us to a quiet little corner of rural southeast Michigan to see for ourselves.
In a weird way, the Vistiq replaces the XT6. Remember that car? Cadillac only recently confirmed its discontinuation, but it was apparently discontinued in the hearts and minds of most buyers before it even hit showrooms. That's not entirely Cadillac's fault; the XT6 was a decent-enough crossover whose design aged commendably well. Its crime? Being launched at the same time as Lincoln's show-stealing 2020 Aviator. Tough break, Caddy.
While Cadillac clearly tried to Escalade-ify (Escalate?) the XT6's lines, the midsize crossover's front-wheel-drive platform gave them only so much leeway. The Vistiq's all-electric architecture imposes no such constraints. We saw it with the Escalade IQ, which looks every bit the part of its gas-burning namesake. Vistiq just scales that formula down.
Starting at $79,090, it will eventually come in four flavors: Luxury, Sport, Premium Luxury, and Platinum. I spent the entirety of my time with the Vistiq behind the wheel of a mid-tier Premium Luxury ($93,290 before options). It lacks the bells and whistles of the Platinum model (which is not yet in production), but it's hard to describe it as anything short of 'loaded.'
Every Vistiq gets Super Cruise standard, for example, and when you step up to the Premium Luxury, you get adaptive air suspension, rear-axle steering and a fancier head-up display with augmented reality features, among a smattering of other upgrades. The only individual options on our build sheet were the 23-inch wheels ($1,000) and the Opulent Blue Metallic paint ($625). All in? $94,915. Cadillac
If you're not a Cadillac fan, that may elicit a low whistle. But remember, the gasoline Escalade is the company's volume model, and it starts at nearly $95,000. Want another fun fact? The second best-selling Cadillac last year was the Lyriq, which rocketed past the XT5 in just its second year on the market. But that's where any notion of the Vistiq merely being a three-row Lyriq hits a brick wall. In reality, they look and feel like very different machines.
Next to the elephantine Escalade IQ, the midsize Vistiq is borderline sensible, and that's essentially how Cadillac is pitching it. It's an Escalade for people who lack either the space or necessity for something that large but still want the looks and the interior comforts—and the Vistiq has both in spades.
Where the XT6 was guilty of austerity, the Vistiq is anything but. While it's not as ostentatious inside as its larger and far more expensive sibling, it borrows a lot of stylistic elements. The Vistiq's ultra-wide 33-inch screen covers nearly as much real estate as the Escalade's primary displays, but lacks the passenger-side add-on. No big loss there, ultimately, but it's nonetheless a visual cue that you bought the 'baby' Escalade.
That's a line Cadillac went to some lengths to blur. After all, the Escalade is the upsell, and Cadillac benefits from some degree of FOMO. On the other hand, there's something to be said for getting eight or nine tenths of the experience for two thirds of the price. The catch, of course, is that it also feels like it's about two thirds the size. Escalade IQ on top, Vistiq on bottom. Scale is approximate! Cadillac | The Drive Chris Tsui
While it may share the Escalade IQ's proportions in photos, the illusion breaks immediately when you see the Vistiq in person. With the air suspension at ingress/egress height, the midsizer looks conspicuously wagon-like. Even at its listed spec, the Vistiq is only five feet, 11 inches tall. Meanwhile, at six foot four and change, even the Escalade IQ (the more hunkered-down of the two) towers over most of its potential mortal masters. It's also a foot and a half longer than the Vistiq, and that translates to a massive difference in cabin volumes.
But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture. With 30.6 inches of legroom, the Vistiq's third row is a bit tighter than that of its competitors' in the Rivian R1S, Tesla Model X, and Volvo EX90, but they all sacrifice second-row legroom for those third-row advantages. The Mercedes EQS SUV is the outlier of the bunch; its third row is tiny (and optional). This feels like a good opportunity to point out that, base vs base, the EQS costs $25,000 more than the Vistiq with essentially half the horsepower.
Cadillac helped bolster the Vistiq's perceived stature by giving it a nice, high seating position. This confers excellent visibility, which is more for confidence than anything else, since the Vistiq's sleek but sculpted body is also peppered with all of the necessary optics and sensors for the aforementioned Super Cruise and all the rest of its standard driver aids and safety features. Even if you're not paying attention, the Vistiq is.
If you're like me, you'll often find gadgetry of that caliber to be intrusive. I grew up believing in computers, but very few of them can drive well enough to impart the confidence I need to relax and let them do their thing. While Super Cruise may not be the most robust self-driving suite on the road, it's one of the few I trust to do the job with minimal intervention.
Several long stretches of both two-lane country roads and divided highways already been mapped out for Super Cruise allowed the Vistiq to show off its new party trick: automatic route-following lane changes. Super Cruise was already capable of automatically passing slower traffic for you; now it will automatically change lanes for you when your exit approaches if you're using the Google built-in navigation.
This feature only works if the next leg of your route is also mapped for Super Cruise; otherwise, the system can't automatically connect the dots. Early in the drive, we were presented with a left exit to continue onto another local highway. The Vistiq signaled correctly, changed into one of the exit lanes, and then proceeded to pass another vehicle going well under the limit on the flyover, happily rocketing back up to my cruise control preset midway through the onramp—precisely what I would have done had I been in control. Cadillac
And 'rocket' is an apt term. Cadillac isn't selling the Vistiq as a performance model, but its 615 hp is more than enough to get its considerable heft up to speed. Like the Chevy Blazer EV SS, the Vistiq has both standard and full-output throttle modes; Chevy calls it WOW, for 'Wide Open Watts;' Cadillac calls it V-Max. I kind of like that. With it, the Vistiq will hit 60 mph in 3.7 seconds—All. Day. Long.
Well, until you need to charge it, anyway. To give this big Caddy enough juice to cover 305 miles on a charge (or 300, if you opt for equipment that includes the upgraded 19.2-kW charger), it needed a massive, 102-kWh battery pack. It weighs 6,300 pounds altogether as a result—almost as much as the supercharged Escalade-V. And while at times the Vistiq seems to accelerate and turn like a car weighing half as much, there's no hiding that heft under braking. Cadillac
The Vistiq's grace can be attributed to the combination of solid chassis tuning, an excellent adaptive air suspension and the rear-axle steering. Dual motors spur you along with a gentle electronic thrum that comes and goes with throttle application. I have mixed feelings about synthetic throttle noises; this one's better than most.
The same is true of the Vistiq's throttle calibration. Press your foot down and the torque rolls on in perfect proportion to pedal travel. It feels substantial and linear, though I'm sure that the actual mapping has a steeper curve than my internal accelerometer suggests. Still, this is one of those little things the Vistiq does that make it feel like it's worthy of the price tag.
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But maybe what's most impressive about the Cadillac is what you don't hear. It's ridiculously quiet inside, partially due to another bit of electronic wizardry: active road noise cancellation. While digital sound erasers have been canceling out unwanted internal-combustion frequencies for years now, active cancellation of outside noise is still fairly fresh tech. And it's stunningly effective. Apart from just a whisper of wind noise, the cabin is dead quiet at 80 mph.
In virtually every way one could possibly measure it, the 2026 Cadillac Vistiq is a massive improvement over the XT6. It's more impressive to look at, more spacious inside, and offers a far more interesting powertrain. It can even tow more than that old gasoline-powered three-row.
This all comes at a price, of course, and a significant one: the cheapest Vistiq is $30,000 more expensive than a base XT6. But as the Escalade has proven, Cadillac can command big money when the product is up to snuff. And since Cadillac last overhauled the Escalade, we've seen the company put a larger priority on making its cabins feel genuinely special. That approach paid dividends with Lyriq, and the trend continues here. Cadillac 2025 Cadillac Vistiq Specs Base Price (Premium Luxury as tested) $79,090 ($94,915) Powertrain dual-motor all-wheel drive | 102-kWh battery Horsepower 615 Torque 650 lb-ft Seating Capacity 7 Cargo Volume 15.2 cubic feet behind third row | 43 cubic feet behind second row | 80.2 cubic feet behind first row Curb Weight 6,326 pounds 0-60 mph 3.7 seconds Max Towing 5,000 pounds EPA Range 305 miles Max DC Charging Speed 190 kW Score 9/10
Packing style, tech, and passing power galore, the 'baby Escalade' is expensive but feels like it.
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Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.