Start with what the Cadillac Elmiraj is: a 2-door, 4-seat hardtop coupe with 4.5 L twin-turbocharged V8, built from 2013, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Niki Smart.
The story
The Cadillac Elmiraj is a concept car created by Cadillac and presented at the 2013 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance on August 15, 2013. It continues the development begun by the Cadillac Ciel concept car. The concept was reportedly named after El Mirage, a dry lake bed in California that was used for high speed runs, as well as recalling Cadillac's historic Eldorado nameplate.
What is underneath
The engine is 4.5 L twin-turbocharged V8. On the scales it comes to approx. 4000 lb. Drive goes through a 8-speed automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
In the Cadillac line-up the Cadillac Elmiraj has a clear place: it replaced the Cadillac Ciel; it handed the line to the Cadillac Escala. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Infiniti Q50, the Tesla Model X, the Peugeot 208. Nearby in the Cadillac catalogue sit the Cadillac 353 and the Cadillac ATS.