A STAR IS BORN

WE SURVEY DETROIT'S TRANSFORMATION FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT OF CADILLAC'S HEAVENLY NEW FLAGSHIP, THE $360,890 CELESTIQ.

-  EZRA DYER

AROUND THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM, I made my first trip to Detroit and told the local editor I met I was amazed there were so many parking spots available on the street. “There's a reason for that,” he replied ominously. About 10 years later, I was driving through Detroit in a Chrysler 300C and got the notion to investigate whether any houses were for sale for less than the price of the car.

The answer was yes, all of them. One five-bedroom was listed for $7000. My most recent trip to downtown Detroit before this one was in 2015, and even then, I took a photo of a broken trash can overflowing garbage onto the sidewalk with a boarded-up building across the street. I mention all of this not to denigrate Detroit but to underscore how dramatically it has transformed itself, how vastly the scope of its ambitions has shifted in the past 25 years. Detroit is charting a return to glory that, if not quite complete, is impressive as hell and closely parallels the upward trajectory of one of the city's most revered brands: Cadillac. So, what better place to take Cadillac's new $360,890 flagship, the Celestiq?

Well, Monaco, sure. You're far more likely to see a Celestiq, if you see one at all, in one of the more obvious bastions of wealth, like Malibu or Miami, than on Woodward Avenue. But Cadillac was named after the founder of Detroit, Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, and the company celebrates rather than downplays the Celestiq's domestic provenance. Each Celestiq is hand-built at General Motors' Artisan Center in Warren, Michigan, and if you want to spec yours in person, you'll go to the Cadillac House at Vanderbilt, also in Warren. (Or do it over Zoom from Mustique, or wherever you have a fifth home.)