• by Tanya Gazdik , April 2, 2023

General Motors plans to open a facility offering a bespoke customer experience to those ordering a limited edition Cadillac Celestiq electric ultra-luxury sedan.

The Cadillac House at Vanderbilt will be housed in an architecturally significant building at the modernist-style General Motors’ Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan

It will welcome clients to collaborate personally with designers and a concierge to create the custom-designed vehicles, which start at $300,000. Cadillac will start the process of selected client engagements in late spring, with the facility welcoming the first clients in late summer 2023.

From start to finish, the process will be meticulously curated, said Melissa Grady Dias, global chief marketing officer, Cadillac. Customers can also choose to design the vehicle remotely. 

 Each Celestiq is tailored to reflect its owner’s tastes, which are conveyed directly to the design team,” Grady Dias said in a release. “

The original Cadillac House was located at 330 Hudson Street in SoHo, on the ground floor of Cadillac’s former New York headquarters. The multipurpose brand experience center was open from June 2016 to April 2019. It closed when the automaker moved the Cadillac team back to Michigan.

Cadillac House at Vanderbilt is named after pioneering designer Suzanne Vanderbilt, who, in her day, was one of only a few women working in automotive design industrywide. She joined GM Design in 1955, shortly before the Global Technical Center was inaugurated, and worked in the Cadillac studio. 

Vanderbilt’s early work included the design of two unique vehicles: a 1958 Eldorado Seville Coupe called Baroness and the Cadillac Saxony convertible.

The midcentury modern-designed Global Technical Center was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014. It was the first major commission awarded to architect Eero Saarinen.

Cadillac House at Vanderbilt originally served as Central Restaurant and was an open space where creative and technical minds met to collaborate and design the future of transportation. In 1955, the design won an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

The most noteworthy feature of Cadillac House at Vanderbilt is a large-scale, sculptural screen of glimmering gold designed by Harry Bertoia.