Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode is sponsored by Cadillac. Do you many
Speaker 1: guesses about what we're going to show you? Yeah? No guesses,
Speaker 1: no guesses. The only thing I'm gonna say in preparation
Speaker 1: is well, I do not even say anything. I just
Speaker 1: want your I just want your reaction. I want to
Speaker 1: know whether you want one of these. You're ready. I'm
Speaker 1: walking down the streets of a small town and upstate
Speaker 1: New York with a five year old boy who was
Speaker 1: all the typical five year old boys enthusiasm for things
Speaker 1: with wheels. He's wearing a blindfold. We stop and turn
Speaker 1: him around to face the street in front of a shiny,
Speaker 1: elegant and sleek What you're going to see is something
Speaker 1: that almost no one in America has seen. This is
Speaker 1: brand new. Okay, take my arm, lift off your blindfold.
Speaker 1: Let me just say he was a little bit shy
Speaker 1: and a little overwhelmed. He's blindfolded by some random guy
Speaker 1: who's friends with his parents. So he looks up and
Speaker 1: there's a pause as he contemplates the apparition in front
Speaker 1: of his eyes. What do you think? The look on
Speaker 1: his face did not just say I like it. It said,
Speaker 1: holy taledou, No, no, holy Detroit. What is this now?
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking. What's going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: to answer that, we need to go back in time,
Speaker 1: not long ago. We've got to call a Pushkin headquarters
Speaker 1: from Cadillac. They knew that we take cars very seriously here.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think they knew that the car I
Speaker 1: drive to work every morning is a Cadillac. I tricked
Speaker 1: out twenty twenty one Cadillac CT five, a monster. So
Speaker 1: they say, have you heard of the all electric Cadillac Lyric? Oh?
Speaker 1: I had my friend Dan, the most serious gearhead I know,
Speaker 1: had driven one in Detroit and texted me immediately, this
Speaker 1: thing is the best card Cadillac ever made. My friend Eddie,
Speaker 1: second most serious gearhead I know, spotted one in his
Speaker 1: neighbor's driveway and said it looks like the Barcelona Chair
Speaker 1: of cars. I've no idea what that means. Anyway, Cadillac says,
Speaker 1: would you like to borrow a lyric for a few days?
Speaker 1: We gave their request a great deal of thought, held
Speaker 1: a dozen meetings to discuss, made a spreadsheet to evaluate
Speaker 1: the pros and cons. No, are you kidding me? We said,
Speaker 1: bring it now. I'm Malcolm Babo and you're listening to
Speaker 1: the first of two very special episodes for revisionist history listeners.
Speaker 1: Come along on an all electric road trip with me
Speaker 1: and a few friends. So the lyrics shows up at
Speaker 1: pushkin HQ unless just say we have plans for the
Speaker 1: next few days road tests, but not boring road tests,
Speaker 1: my kind of road tests. The things that matter to me.
Speaker 1: How much can I fit in this thing? Is it
Speaker 1: fast enough? Is it better than what I have in
Speaker 1: the garage already? And first and foremost will it impress
Speaker 1: my friends? We started with the five year old down
Speaker 1: the street. Then we parked and waited for the general
Speaker 1: public to weigh in, which they did like flies on honey.
Speaker 1: First up, a dude in an escalate literally stops in
Speaker 1: the middle of the street. Yeah, sharp out, brought out
Speaker 1: from the factory. Look at that thing, man, Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: looking to it now, so work about it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But that's beautiful, all right, all right enough, we realized
Speaker 1: we had to drive it for ourselves. We piled in
Speaker 1: first thoughts. It is scuv presence, but drives like a car,
Speaker 1: an electric car, which means that insanely smooth, uninterrupted instantaneous
Speaker 1: acceleration and all in a kind of hushed splendor, powered
Speaker 1: by GM's brand new Ultium battery system. We called our
Speaker 1: contact back at Cadillac, Melissa Grady, Cadillac's chief marketing officer,
Speaker 1: put her on speaker. Wait, we're gonna drive down the
Speaker 1: blog because I want you to explain this sound. This
Speaker 1: thing is so insanely quiet. So there's like this kind
Speaker 1: of quiet hump. Yes, I'm referring to this sound. What
Speaker 1: am I tell me about what I'm hearing? The future?
Speaker 1: You were trained to say that, Oh, yes, he was.
Speaker 1: It's actually the sounds the sun emits, as recorded by NASA.
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up. So what that noise is is,
Speaker 1: you know, with any v there really isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of audible sound, and so um we put that sound
Speaker 1: in so that pedestrians and others can hear that the
Speaker 1: that the vehicle is approaching. Yeah, it's like the noise
Speaker 1: machine I use for my baby. It's like this calming. Next,
Speaker 1: I got fixated on the dash, so just so to
Speaker 1: describe for so I'm looking at this. We've got this console,
Speaker 1: the screen that stretches from the driver's side all the
Speaker 1: way almost to the edge of the passage. It's like
Speaker 1: a long How long is this It's like a do
Speaker 1: you know how long? The screen looks like it's like
Speaker 1: over two feet long. It is thirty three inches thirty
Speaker 1: three inches, So everything is I'm driving, everything is in
Speaker 1: front of me, and then I have we just opened
Speaker 1: the map function. Oh my god, that's fantastic. And then
Speaker 1: we've got the rear view mirror is a is a
Speaker 1: continuous HD camera. So in case you're keeping count, test
Speaker 1: number one, the five year old boy test past Test
Speaker 1: number two, the eyeball first impression test passed. But now
Speaker 1: for the hardest test of all, we returned to pushkin
Speaker 1: HQ and pick up my friend Michael, who for the
Speaker 1: past three and a half years has been the devoted
Speaker 1: owner of an electric vehicle made by a company whose
Speaker 1: name will not pass our lips. Michael, where do I
Speaker 1: get myself? We're coming for you. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 1: come downstairs and then we're going to put a blindfold
Speaker 1: on you. I'll go for a rye, the same blindfold
Speaker 1: we use for the kid. Is this going to end
Speaker 1: our thirty five It is absolutely not. This is going
Speaker 1: to be an educational and enjoyable experience for you. Michael,
Speaker 1: is a skeptical, perceptive, hardbitten professional journalist, a man of
Speaker 1: the world, and he loves his current ev He's an
Speaker 1: evangelist for the brand. And we've told him nothing except
Speaker 1: that we've got something very new parked out front that
Speaker 1: he's never been in before. We put him in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat. Let me remind you, he's blindfolded. We want
Speaker 1: him to hear and feel the lyric without his judgmental
Speaker 1: vision getting in the way. He starts running his hands
Speaker 1: over the dash, the door, everything around him. How does that?
Speaker 1: How does that seat feel? It's it's it's very luxurious.
Speaker 1: I hate to just can't be it. Now. We weren't
Speaker 1: trying to rag on the competition. I mean, I've driven
Speaker 1: into Michael's car. It's a fine bit of engineering, lots
Speaker 1: of great software, pioneer in the field, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But it's an appliance. And now his sense is heightened.
Speaker 1: Michael sits and touches and feels and realizes, Dorothy, You're
Speaker 1: not in an appliance anymore, Okay, know, Michael, I want
Speaker 1: you to remove your blindfold, Yeah, and I want you
Speaker 1: to observe the interior. Wow sleek, Yeah, yeah, This is
Speaker 1: very nice. It's very different than mine. My concern is
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go back, You're gonna get into your
Speaker 1: your car see to me and just drive into a leak.
Speaker 1: You just be so desponding that I'm gonna be like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be like, what did I know You're gonna be?
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I can't go back. You can't
Speaker 1: go back, Michael, don't do it. Don't go back next time.
Speaker 1: On our special series made in collaboration with Cadillac more
Speaker 1: road tests compare with the German Classic and with Cadillacs
Speaker 1: of yore, A little bit of a road Race and
Speaker 1: Babies No Crying, Speed Speedy twenty twenty three lyric orders
Speaker 1: are full. Go to Cadillac dot com and complete a
Speaker 1: pre order from model year twenty four to be among
Speaker 1: the first to order a Model year twenty four when
Speaker 1: a dail. This episode was produced by Jacob Smith and
Speaker 1: Joey fish Ground. Our editor is Julia Barton. Engineering by
Speaker 1: Nina Lawrence and mastering by Sarah Bugare Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Melissa Grady at Cadillac and Carly Megliari on Malcolm Glacko