Have They Landed Yet?

As we have grown, we remember those teachers that inspired us, challenged us and encouraged us. They helped shape us into the person we are today. Without teachers, I’d venture to say we’d still be rubbing to rocks together in order to try and start a fire.

We probably also remember those teachers that were a little eccentric in their methods. One such teacher was my eighth grade science teacher whose name has long since been forgotten. The classroom was large with a huge cabinet/work station at the head of the class. Legend has it that one day during class while showing a science experiment he reached across the cabinet top to retrieve something. The Bunsen burner was lit and as he reached across, he lit his tie on fire. Smelling smoke he went over to the doorway and held up the tie and pounded out the flames with his fist.

One of his signature moves though was when he caught someone in the class looking out the window. He would call out the students name as he rapidly moved to the window and ask enthusiastically, “Have they landed yet”?

The Escalade Hybrid I am driving in a Platinum Edition which includes the LED headlight assembly. There is a vertical stack of five LED lights that are the headlights with two larger lights inboard that are the high beams. They produce a very white light and illuminate the road ahead better than HID lamps. The beam is well focus as no oncoming driver has flashed their lights at me to dim mine.

Last week I stopped for gas and coffee while it was still dark. After pumping the gas I backed the Hybrid away from the pumps. As I approached the vehicle and hit the unlock button the headlights came on. For the first time I saw how menacing this vehicle looks in the night. Can you image what other drivers see in their mirrors as you approach?


Escalade Hybrid Platinum – Yes it has landed!

Does Your Luxury SUV Handle Like This?

During the decades of the fifties, sixties and seventies large luxury cars would often be described as boats because of the way they floated down the highway. This could be said of cars like the one pictured along the side margin; a 1959 Cadillac I spotted at the Autofair in Charlotte this year. In order to drive one of these it seemed like you not only needed a driver's license, but also needed to get checked out by the Coast Guard.

Today, some luxury SUVs can leave you with this same feeling. The competition’s trucks provide little feedback to the driver and can dish out a harsh ride. The Cadillac Escalade Hybrid was developed with modern day technology that can also be found in today’s high performance sports cars.

First developed for the Chevrolet Corvette, the Escalade Hybrid comes standard with Magnetic Ride Control. Magnetic Ride Control uses small metal chips mixed in with the shock absorber fluid. The system is computer controlled to provide real-time suspension damping by magnetically charging the metal flakes. The front suspension uses coil over shocks while using a 5-link rear suspension. Also standard is StabiliTrak electronic stability control with rollover mitigation, all speed traction control and rack and pinion steering. All this sounds more like a sports car than a luxury sport utility vehicle.

The design of the rear suspension provides an excellent ride, but it does take up a bit of room under the rear of the vehicle. Because of this, the Escalade designers could not engineer in a fold flat third row seat system. The third row fold flat seats can be found on some of our competitors, but is done with the sacrifice of a smooth ride by using a solid rear axle and leaf springs.

The only way to travel down the highway and get the feeling you are numb, floating boat is to get the original luxury SUV the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid.

The ship at the top of the page is the battleship, USS North Carolina. The North Carolina is 728 feet long, weighs in at 44,840 tons and could carry her crew of 2300 up to 28 knots. She was commissioned in 1941 and saw action during World War II in the Pacific protecting shipping lanes. In 1961 BB55 came to Wilmington, NC where it is a museum and open to the public. The ship is open for self guided tours 8am – 8pm during the summer and until 5pm the rest of the year.

I'll Have a Small Helping of 87 Octane

Almost all of the driving I do is along our interstate highway system. It also is nice living in the south where you don’t have to dodge all of the pot-holes that you find in northern states. Although those evasive course challenges do provide addition skills that they don’t normally teach in your typical driver’s training course in high school.

The biggest savings in fuel efficiencies with the Escalade 2-Mode Hybrid is in stop and go city driving. Most think there is no measureable savings driving on the highway. On a recent trip to Raleigh, NC and back I averaged 21.9 miles per gallon.

This trip included rolling hills along I-85 between Charlotte and Greensboro. It also included traffic lights along US 421 and US 64. Before I encountered the rolling hills and the traffic lights, the Hybrid’s average fuel economy was over 24 miles per gallon.

Escalade Hybrid – it’s just not for city driving.

I Go Where I'm Towed

One of the benefits of living in the Carolinas is the diversity of locations to explore. You can enjoy the beauty of the mountains of western North Carolina one day then pack up and enjoy the charm of Charleston the next day. The best part of traveling with a Recreational Vehicle is you can travel at your own pace. When you’re ready to move on, you can simply pull up and go to another location. The best part is you travel with your own bathroom.

I’m sure you’ve seen motorhomes traveling down the highway often pulling another vehicle behind. These cars or trucks are known as a Dingy or a Toad. One of the more popular dingy has been a Saturn since it was one of the first vehicles with an automatic transmission that could be towed with all four wheels down.

Occasionally you may see a luxury motorhome traveling down the road pulling a large pick-up or sport utility. Until now there hasn’t been a Cadillac model that could be dingy towed without additional modification to the drive line. By simply placing the transfer case in neutral of the Hybrid’s drivetrain, you can take your luxury with you.

Now you can take it with you. Because not only is the Escalade Hybrid the only luxury Hybrid SUV on the market, it’s the only true luxury SUV that can be dingy “toad” without major modifications.

The Coolest Thing Ever

One of the coolest standard features on all new Cadillac models has to be OnStar’s turn by turn navigation. If you have a new Escalade, CTS or the all new 2010 SRX eNav takes the driving experience way beyond what you can’t get on any other brand.

You can have your destination downloaded to your navigation system in two different ways. Using Mapquest from any computer, just click on the “Send to OnStar” link once it has found your address, give it a name tag and save the location. Once you are inside the car, push the blue OnStar button and say “Virtual Advisor” when the OnStar system says – Ready. You tell the system the name of the location you want and it downloads it to the car.

Another way is to push the blue button and speak to an advisor. Tell them the address or the place you are trying to find and they will send the directions to the vehicle. With XM Navtraffic service, the navigation system will alert you to trouble ahead in over 80 major markets.

If your car is stolen, OnStar will disable the ignition so it can’t be started. If your car becomes the breaking news story of a police chase on the six o’clock news, OnStar can help with Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. This feature keeps the engine running at an idle allowing the driver to maintain control of the steering and brakes.

So beyond Sparky’s Hybrid technology it also has the conveience and safety of OnStar with eNav, Navtraffic, Stolen Vehicle Recovery, Remote Ignition Block, Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. Then there is Automatic Crash Response which allows an OnStar advisor to send critical crash data to emergency room doctors if you are involved in a crash. The list of OnStar features just goes on and on and on. Visit OnStar’s website at www.onstar.com for complete details of what this system offers.

The only place to see, test drive and buy a full size, eight passenger, luxury sport utility Hybrid with all that OnStar offers is your nearest Cadillac dealer. You won’t find it at BMW, Lexus, Mercedes or that other German car - Audi.

M-m-m-m-m. Doughnuts

When you live in the south, you learn that the two main culinary staples in life are the Waffle House and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Not to mention Barney Fife’s favorite snack of a Moon Pie and RC Cola. I visited our Cadillac dealer in Winston-Salem, NC today, which is just down the street from the world headquarters for Krispy Kreme.

There is something mesmerizing about watching those light, airy, pastry delights drifting along in a sea of hot grease as they move onto a moving rack to deliver this sweet treat to its shower of liquid sugar icing that makes your mouth water. Nothing tastes better than a classic Krispy Kreme or French cruller that is freshly picked off the conveyer belt.

As I drive this new Escalade Hybrid I find it requires less fuel than any other large sport utility. With a new lower octane consumption diet for my driving, I guess I should put myself on a similar calorie intake as well.

Well, maybe just one doughnut. It’s all about moderation, right?

The Sounds of Silence

The two biggest improvements to the automobile since the electric starter has to be power steering and air conditioning. One of the features of the Escalade Hybrid is the Auto Stop feature, allowing the engine to shut down in order to save gasoline when the vehicle is stopped. This can create a bit of a problem if temperatures outside are high, since the air conditioner compressor normally operate from a drive belt as the engine runs. To be able to supply cool air to the passengers when the engine is not running or if you’re trying to navigate a parking lot when the Hybrid is running from the electric motor, this can be a problem.

To overcome this, the Cadillac engineers created a power steering pump and an air conditioning compressor that operate electrically. I was reminded of how they work earlier this week. We had a bit of a cold snap and day time temperatures barely climbed into the seventies. This may sound a little silly combining cold snap and seventy degrees in the same sentence, but in August in South Carolina it has been the topic of many conversations.

While sitting at a traffic light I noticed something I hadn’t heard before, silence. I had just finished a phone call and had not turned the radio back up. The only sound you could hear was the blower fan from the climate control. The silence was very noticeable. No engine noise, no outside noise, just the blower fan. As the light turned green and as I pulled away the sound of the electric motor could be heard before the engine started back up again.

It’s astonishing to watch all of these systems all working in harmony is that it goes unnoticed. If you don’t look at the display screen that shows the interaction between the engine and the electric motor, you’d never notice one shutting down or powering up.