The Cadillac Escalade IQ is an exercise in scale. We’re talking 55 inches of screen across the dashboard, a 205 kWh battery pack, the mass of a mid-rise apartment building, and available 24-inch alloy wheels. However, perhaps the greatest single signifier of hugeness on the entire vehicle is a badge on the back that just reads “1000” and while that’s a tremendous number, exactly what are you getting 1,000 of?
Well, it’s torque, except not really. See, back in 2019, Cadillac unveiled a new engine denomination system of badging its cars in Newton Meters depending on their torque output, starting with a “400” badge on the back of the Cadillac XT6 that made 271 lb.-ft. of torque. If you’re an engineer, you’ve probably already worked out that 271 lb.-ft. works out to 367.4 Newton Meters of torque, quite the discrepancy from 400.
The idea of using torque as a badge makes sense considering that only lunatics like myself take their cars to redline on almost every drive involving an on-ramp, and torque is what drivers actually glide around town on. However, Cadillac’s decided to round up to the nearest 50, which seems a little more egregious than Ford badging a 4.9-liter V8 as a five-liter but not all that bad compared to Mercedes-AMG badging a two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder with plug-in hybrid assistance as a “63”, implying the presence of a 6.3-liter engine.
However, there’s an extra dimension to this craziness that makes it all make sense, and that would be the optional letter after the numbers. Back when you could order a three-liter Duramax diesel inline-six in an Escalade, the 6.2-liter V8 models wore “600” badging, while the diesels wore “600D” badging. In theory, this worked well because both engines produced 460 lb.-ft. of torque, and the “D” at the end of the diesel model’s badge theoretically let buyers know that the Duramax’s torque peak would arrive early.
It’s a similar story with the base Lyriq. While a “450E” badge implies slightly more torque than the “400” on the back of the XT6 suggests, the “E” tells you loud and clear that the Lyriq’s rounded-up 441 Nm of torque (325 lb.-ft.) comes from an electric motor, meaning it kicks in quickly. In contrast, you have to rev the XT6 up to 5,000 rpm to access its torque peak, so the experience will be quite different, and the badge lets you know. It’s a similar deal with the Cadillac CT4 sedan’s optional 2.7-liter turbocharged four-banger. It makes a strong 350 lb.-ft. of torque, or 474.5 Nm of torque, from 1,500 RPM to 4,000 RPM, so it gets the badge “500T” with the last letter indicating turbocharging.
Where I think Cadillac might’ve struck upon genius is the fact that this badging scheme is entirely powertrain-agnostic. No matter what’s in a car, be it electric motors or a gasoline engine or a diesel engine or even a steam engine, it’ll produce torque. Meanwhile, the Mercedes-Benz EQE 500 is bizarre because the numbers in a Mercedes-Benz model have historically indicated displacement, but an electric car has no combustion chambers. BMW is in a similar camp with models like the i4 xDrive40, although Audi takes a slightly different approach.
Over in Ingolstadt, the power denotation approach is another level of bizarre. Take the Audi Q4, available as a “45” or a “55” depending on how much power you want. Audi claims that the “45” badge is for cars making between 226 and 248 horsepower, while the 55 badge is for cars making between 328 horsepower and 368 horsepower. These numbers don’t correlate to displacement of combustion engines, real torque figures, or even real horsepower figures.
Maybe we were wrong to laugh at Cadillac for its rounded-up torque-based engine badging scheme in units few Americans use on an everyday basis, because from where I’m standing in the electrified automotive landscape of 2025, it makes the most sense out of almost any premium automaker out there. Why the qualifier? Well, in China, BYD has solved the issue entirely. The Han electric sedan displays its zero-to-62 mph times on its trunk lid with badges like “3.9S” for the performance model.
Top graphic credit: Cadillac
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I’ve been saying something similar for years. All the manufacturers using alphanumeric naming systems could do something similar to this, although I’d probably use power instead of torque.
For example, a BMW 3 series making 250hp from a gas engine would be something like a 325i, a 200hp diesel would be a 320d and a 400ho electric one would be a 340e.
A 300hp Mercedes E-class would be an E300.
It works so nicely that I can’t believe they haven’t done it yet.
In a strange turn of events, the only brand doing this logical choice is JLR, with names like P400 for a 400hp “petrol” engine.
I guess I’m glad it’s tied to something, but this all feels very forced.
Also, I’m slightly startled and ask why every time I see the back of the new Escalade.
Agreed, although to my eye, the front of the new Escalade is even uglier.
I’ve always thought they should use the average of HP and torque (ft-lbs), rounded up to the nearest multiple of 10, with a suffix to denote power source (G for naturally aspirated gas, D for diesel, T for turbocharger gas, S for supercharger gas, E for battery electric, H for hybrid, P for PHEV).
The Escalade with the 6.2L V8 would be badged “440G” and 3.0L diesel would be “370D”.
The Escalade V would keep the name but add a “670S” badge.
The Escalage IQ would be badged “770E”
The Lyric would be badged “480E”, while the new Lyric V would be badged “640E”
The Optic would be badged “330E”
And so on through the lineup.
Maybe it’s would require too much thinking by shoppers, but it’s much more clear. I never understood why the 6.2L V8 and 3.0L diesel had the same “600” badge. Sure the torque is the same, but one has way more horsepower than the other.
An American car company that sells almost exclusively to American buyers using torque instead of the horsepower that most buyers are at least somewhat familiar with, using the metric measurement of that figure, and then rounding it way up… It sounds like someone just wanted to put a bigger number on the trunk and this was the closest thing to an explanation for it that they could come up with.
Welcome to the state of Automotive Engineering circa 2020’s. The numbers are mostly made up, and to the customer none of it matters.
Well, Audi tried the bizarre naming scheme of assigning two-digit number badges that end in either 0 or 5 as to “denote” the engine output. People neither have eiditic memory to remember what 35 or 60 means nor have reference chart on hand. Thankfully, Audi wised up and ditched it for good.
I was all excited, I thought there were going to be ducks involved in this Cadillac badge story.
Torque is a great idea, but if I need a translation table to know that 600 is actually 400-something, and that 450 is 276 or whatever … it’s pretty damn worthless.
I can understand 276 becoming 275 or 280, and 450 becoming, well, 450. But rounding up, or WAY up is confusing and removing any meaningful meaning.
i’d thought the article would be about “600D” badge being read as “GOOD”.
neuro-divergence disappointed…
You’ve never seen the Pontiac GOOOSTE?
How about the Honda CBR600F “GOOF” motorcycle?
I too wished for a little more commentary on what wacky inadvertent interpretations of badging have been manifested.
I noticed a few years ago that a number of Chinese companies do this and was wondering when it would spread elsewhere.
because not a damn person cares if your vehicle is a 2.3L or a 6.7L, nor does that actually indicate available power.
Actually I care! Am I not a person?
Lots of people (Americans) most definitely care about the engine displacement, and number of cylinders. It’s the whole reason why Ford rounds up to 5.0L. Mustang fans lost their collective minds when Ford replaced the 5.0L with a 4.6L. It’s why Ford, Chevy/GM, and Ram HD trucks proudly advertise their engine displacements on their doors and/or hoods. Dodge takes a slightly different approach and goes with cubic inches when it comes to badging (ie: 392), but their Hemi engines are commonly known and spoken about in liters – 5.7L, 6.1L, 6.4L. Jeep people talk about their engines by displacement – 4.0L, 3.8L, 3.6L, 2.0L (and of course the 392).
folks, we’re not people. We’re car enthusiasts. Sick animals of the underworld. Joe, and Susie Anonymous, not only don’t care, but they also don’t even know what it means.
As much as I wish you were wrong, sadly you’re 100% correct.
me too
Cadillac should just keep cycling out their naming scheme every 5 years. It’s been working so well for them.
Sure, why not use torque? But it would make more sense to use the torque available at the wheels, because that’s the torque you feel, and then you could use gearing as a product differentiator for EVs.
However they lost me at rounding up to the nearest 50.
And using a unit that’s not the standard in its home market just to get an even bigger number also seems silly. At least as silly as just giving you a made up number.
Of course the number they should use as a badge is the one defining characteristic that is vital to your car buying selection process, and that’s the purchase price. In dollars.
you want them to use pounds-feet instead?
As someone who works in a metric manufacturing facility in the US, I have embraced the metric system wholly… except in this. The US is familiar with hp and lb-ft. If you define a car by how many Nm it makes, I’m gonna look at you dumbly until you tell me if that’s good or not. It’s not that we aren’t as familiar with it. It’s that the lack of familiarity ruins the comparison. Power numbers really are all relative, as none of us have a well-tuned butt dyno. So fast is fast, slow is slow, and I have no earthly idea if 400Nm is fast or slow.
400Nm is neither fast nor slow, but it is pretty strong.
That’s 400 sticks of butter on the end of a 39 inch stick?
I always remember that a kilo is two pounds, two ounces, and a couple of loose joints, because I had a highschool teacher with a knack for making things easy to remember.
400 Nm is about as fast as 90lbs on the end of a three foot stick.
I want them to us Nm and convert to metric immediately, but this isn’t about me. It would make more sense to use lbft.
This quasi-euro-type badging theme was done under the reign of charlatan du jour Johan de Nysschen, President of Cadillac from 2014-2018. Among other delusions of grandeur, he spent millions of $$ moving Cadillac’s HQ from Detroit to New York to get away from the unsophisticated Midwest. Thankfully for Cadillac, although it took four years, he was unceremoniously fired, like Carlos (Not Pictured Above) Tavares.
Johan (pictured somewhere) de Nysschen
I might be the only one left who’s old enough to remember when the Eldorado had a badge proudly screaming “8.2 LITRE”.
Nope, not the only one, I actually owned one for a while.
That’s 442 levels of dumb badging.
The engine in my 65 Buick Skylark GranSport is called the Wildcat 455, which refers to the 455 lb-ft of torque the engine puts out. It is a 401 cubic inch engine. So, GM has been doing this for quite a while!!
I think you mean Wildcat 445. The later 455 was named that because it was 455 cubic inches. The earlier “445” was the 401 cubic inch engine that supposedly made 445 lb-ft.
You are correct…..darned fat fingers strike again……. 🙂
Well, the problem with Cadillac badging is that while the Euros have been using numbers for decades to designate models, Cadillac’s is but a temporary whim.
Considering the Blackwing doesn’t actually use a Blackwing engine, maybe they should have just called it “900” or “900S”.
I came here to yell about alphanumeric car naming, as it is one of my most passionate hobbies, but you know what?
You’re right, and there’s a single factor. These aren’t the model names, they’re trim defining badges that tell you more about the model.
Do I like some of Cadillacs model names? No, they still annoyed me with those, but this, this just makes sense, and you’re entirely right that using torque as the basis may be the single best option in the modern era where displacements means almost nothing.
Torque is fine, and Buick classically did it on their Wildcat motors in the 60s, but the choice of nM to give the impression of the 25% more torque (or power) as it’s likely to be perceived, is still a weaksauce move.
The Chinese brands might run into a problem, given that I most often see 2.5S on ten-year-old fourpot Altimas, and not big-battery 4WD sedans or Ferraris.
I recall reading they went with NM because most of the world uses the metric system, which makes sense. They sell more cars in China than the US.
Do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?
Royale with cheese. You know why they call it that?
Didn’t JLR do this too?
The number alone is somewhat silly, but the letter at end saying what flavor of power you’re getting is very clever. Plus it still lets people not into cars see “bigger number is better”
Just give them names. Truck de Ville, that sort of thing.
They have names, this is just the power badging. Similar to “454” on old muscle cars
Escalaad Concours d’Elegance Biarritz
Cadillac BiarritzIQ.
Escaliq Fleetwiq Brougham
Disgusting. I’d buy one.
Ville means City.
So a Truck de Ville should be the small truck. Then for a bigger truck, Truck de Région. And for something bigger than that, Truck de Pays. And moving up from there, Truck de Continent. And for the biggest, either Truck de Planète or Truck de étoile de la mort.
EDIT: But in Cadillac’s new naming scheme, we have to add an ‘IQ’. So then it’s Truck de VilliQ, Truck de de RégionIQ, Truck de PaysIQ, Truck de ContinentIQ and Truck de PlanetIQ
“Camion de Ville” would be more appropriate.
Then Lincoln would come out with their competitor a year or so later – calling it “Town Truck”
Well then it’s “CadillaQ” now. Lovely.
OR… CadillaQ-aQ-aQ-aQ…
That’s it, I’m movin’ out.
Are you moving to a house out in Hackensack?
I’d trade in my Chevy for that!
And if you can’t drive with a broken back, at least you can polish the fenders!
Or Duck de Ville