It's difficult to say whether now is the absolute best time to buy a 2015 Cadillac ELR. At some dealerships pricing, is starting resemble a Dutch auction, with some dealers reportedly offering the ELR for just under $50,000, Bloomberg reports.
That's a serious discount off the official $75,995 MSRP for the 2015 model year, and in that regard holding out a little bit longer if you have your heart set on one and don't want to pay that much more than for a Chevrolet Volt may make sense. Cadillac has managed to sell just 1,835 examples of the Chevrolet Volt-based luxury coupe since it went on sale some 18 months ago. Our leading mathematicians tell us that that works out to just a little over a hundred cars per month, on average. As of May 2014, dealers had a two-year supply of the ELR on their lots, and the cars have only been piling up since.
Cadillac has been mum on the issue of sales, or lack thereof, until relatively recently, though it hasn't been lost on many buyers that the Volt offered an extra two doors and much of the same technology as the ELR for approximately half the price. So what went wrong?
"The MSRP was, indeed, a mouthful," Cadillac marketing chief Uwe Ellinghaus told Bloomberg. "We overestimated that customers would realize our competitors were naked at that price."
Cadillac pricing strategy with the ELR had been to feature as many luxury items as standard, an approach that inevitable led to an out-the-door price in the low $80,000 range before the application of state and federal tax credits, with the latter topping out at $7,500. While Tesla Model S buyers have been readily able to absorb the high price that comes with a luxury electric or PHEV vehicle, it appears that Cadillac buyers did not feel like they were getting the Cadillac performance along with Cadillac luxury. As a result, the "base" ELR was already fully loaded, with a starting price to match.
For the 2016 model year, Cadillac will slash $10,000 off the starting price, with the 2016 ELR starting at $65,995 before the application of state and federal tax rebates, though better deals may still be able to be found for leftover 2015 model year cars.
Jay Ramey grew up around very strange European cars, and instead of seeking out something reliable and comfortable for his own personal use he has been drawn to the more adventurous side of the dependability spectrum. Despite being followed around by French cars for the past decade, he has somehow been able to avoid Citroën ownership, judging them too commonplace, and is currently looking at cars from the former Czechoslovakia. Jay has been with Autoweek since 2013.
