Cadillac OPTIQ Review: Bigger, And Better, Than Most Competitors In Market

There’s a moment on the road out of the city, windows up, Phil Collins climbing toward that drum fill in “In The Air Tonight,” where the Cadillac OPTIQ stops being a press car and becomes a problem. The problem being that I didn’t want to give it back.

We had it for a week. By Sunday night I’d emailed Cadillac asking for a few more days, which is not a thing I normally do. Press loans are like footballers’ wives. They come, they go, you learn not to get attached. I wanted to keep driving this one, and that’s always the tell.

I’ll get the bad news out of the way, because there is some, and pretending otherwise would make me one of those reviewers who took the canapés.

But first, the size. Because the size is the whole thing.

The size is deceptive – not big, not small

The OPTIQ is Cadillac’s smallest and “cheapest” model, which in American terms means it’s still 4,823mm long and nearly two metres wide. In Australian terms, that makes it almost bang on wagon size, and I mean that as the highest compliment I can pay a car.

It’s the footprint everyone says they want and nobody actually builds anymore. Long, low-ish, planted. It sits in a parking spot like it belongs in the world rather than looming over it. Cadillac’s own engineers call it the “baby Caddy,” which is a bit rich for something this big, but the proportions are right in a way that the giant three-row stuff never quite is around here.

The boot runs from 744 litres up to 1,603 with the seats folded. I tested that the way I test everything, which is to say I went for a surf. A six-foot board slides in flat with the rear seats down, and the tailgate shuts without any negotiation. Misha, my bordoodle, took the back seat for the dog beach run and had room to do laps.

Both boxes ticked before I’d even properly driven it.

This is luxury done properly, not that fake Chinese luxury

Here’s where I’ll annoy some people. There’s a lot of “luxury” being sold in this country right now that is luxury in the same way a servo sandwich is cuisine.

A few of the Chinese brands, BYD chief among them, will tell you their cabins are luxurious. They are not. They are busy. There’s a difference between a nice place to sit and a showroom that exploded, and the OPTIQ understands it.

The interior genuinely goes hard. We had red on the outside, which I came round to, though for the record I’d take black on black every day of the week and twice on Sunday. The cabin spec is where it gets interesting.

The Phantom Blue is an unlikely choice on paper, and it looks fantastic in the metal, the kind of colour you’d never tick on the configurator and then never stop being glad you did.

There’s a 33-inch diagonal display running the dash, dual-zone ambient lighting with something absurd like 126 colours, and material choices that feel chosen rather than ordered by the kilo. It feels more expensive than anything else at this price point.

The massive 21-inch wheels help. They fill the arches the way wheels are supposed to and so rarely do, wrapped in 275-section rubber. Most cars at this end of the market run a wheel that looks like it shrank in the wash.

The black roofline options on the silver, white and red exterior colours would also be my pick if you’re not choosing black.

Spec yours here.

The AKG sound system is reason enough to buy it

The 19-speaker AKG Studio system, tuned with Dolby Atmos, is freaking elite.

AKG is the microphone company. The actual one. Their gear recorded The Beatles at Shea Stadium and sat in the room for “We Are The World.” So when Cadillac partnered with them, it wasn’t just a badge on a parcel shelf; it was the real music-engineering studio.

OPTIQ chief engineer John Cockburn, the bloke who oversaw the whole thing, talks about the cabin like a recording studio rather than a car, and after a weekend, I’m not going to argue with him. It’s true.

The 7.1.4 channel layout means seven speakers near your ears, one for bass, four firing down from overhead. It’s the same format records are mixed in.

So when that “In The Air Tonight” break lands finally, it lands around you. I sat in a parked car in the office car park listening to a 1981 Phil Collins track twice in a row because I could not believe how good it sounded.

This alone would get the OPTIQ onto many shortlists. It nearly got it on mine permanently.

The bit where I’m honest

A weekend of falling for a car doesn’t make me forget how to read a spec sheet.

The OPTIQ runs a 75kWh battery for around 425km of WLTP range, which is plenty for the way most of us actually use a car. The dual-motor setup makes 224kW and 480Nm and gets to 100 in 6.3 seconds, so it’s properly quick when you want it to be, and never the weak link.

Charging is where the OPTIQ plays it steady rather than flashy. It tops out at 110kW on DC, good for around 94km of range in 10 minutes, which does the job on a road trip without breaking any records. The real win is at home, where the 22kW AC rate is genuinely one of the best in the business. Plug in overnight and you’ll almost never think about public chargers again.

There’s no head-up display, which a few people will miss, but it’s hardly a deal-breaker.

What $80,000 plus on roads actually gets you

Let’s talk about the number, because the number is doing a lot of work.

Eighty grand before on-roads is a real chunk of money, and it’s also exactly the bracket where buyers stop shopping on price and start shopping on feel. At this end of the market nobody is scraping their last dollar together. They’ve decided roughly what they want to spend, and now they’re deciding what they want to be.

That’s the bracket where the OPTIQ becomes a genuine contender rather than a curiosity.

For your eighty you’re getting a cabin that feels like it cost more, a sound system that has no business being this good, wheels that fill the arches, and a footprint that’s the right size for an actual Australian life.

You’re getting something that walks into a school pickup line or the MCC members’ car park and reads as money well spent, not money saved.

And here’s the part that matters at this price.

Plenty of cars in this bracket feel like they were built down to a target. They hit the number and you can feel where the number went. The OPTIQ feels like the opposite. It feels like someone spent the budget on the things you touch and hear and sit in every single day, and then trusted you to notice.

Eighty grand buys a lot of competence. What it rarely buys is character, and that’s the whole reason the OPTIQ earns a spot on the list. You’re not stretching for it and you’re not settling with it. For a car at this price, that balance is rarer than it should be.

That’s why I’d have happily handed over the money. The only reason I didn’t is that I’d already pulled the trigger on something a few weeks earlier.

DMARGE’s Two Cents on the OPTIQ

The OPTIQ doesn’t chase the spec war, and it doesn’t need to. The charging and range are merely fine, but those are the only notes on an otherwise very long list of things this car gets right.

It does luxury properly. It’s the right size. It feels more expensive than its price tag and it has the AKG sound system I’m still thinking about. For a lot of buyers, that’ll be the easiest $80,000 they ever spend.

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Cadillac OPTIQ Specifications

Spec	Cadillac OPTIQ (Australia)
Price	$80,000 before on-road costs
Variant	Single Sport AWD grade
Powertrain	Dual-motor, all-wheel drive
Power	224kW
Torque	480Nm
0–100km/h	6.3 seconds
Top speed	210km/h
Battery	75kWh lithium-ion (NMC)
Range	425km (WLTP)
Energy use	19.9kWh/100km (WLTP)
DC charging	Up to 110kW (approx 94km in 10 min)
AC charging	Up to 22.1kW (approx 100km per hour)
Tare weight	2,379kg
Length	4,823mm
Width	1,912mm
Height	1,644mm
Boot space	744L / 1,603L seats folded
Seats	5
Wheels	21-inch alloys, 275/40R21 self-sealing tyres
Display	33-inch diagonal 9K LED
Sound system	19-speaker AKG Studio with Dolby Atmos
Warranty	5 years / unlimited km
Battery warranty	8 years / 160,000km
First deliveries	Q3 2026