China-market 2010 Cadillac SLS
The 2014 Cadillac ZTS will compete with top-echelon premium-large sedans. The China-market 2010 Cadillac SLS is shown. See pictures of the 2011 Audi A8.

General Motors is making money again, so a “super Cadillac” sedan is back on the table. Possibly to be named ZTS, this long-rumored flagship aims to best premium-class import-brand favorites--provided events don’t put it back on the shelf.

What We Know About the 2014 Cadillac ZTS

A new Cadillac premium-large sedan has been on and off the table since 2003. Now it’s on again. Parent General Motors sees this flagship model as vital for lifting its luxury brand to the same status level as Audi, BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz. It would also be the capstone to Cadillac’s decade-long “renaissance” and a symbol of GM’s own recent resurgence.

But it’s not quite a done deal. Trade weekly Automotive News says the earliest the “super Caddy” could start sale is model-year 2014, and that assumes GM can devise suitable hardware in fairly short order. (More on that presently.) The project may also hinge on continuation of America’s nascent economy recovery. If the market should again turn south for some unforeseen reason, the flagship could be postponed again or even aborted.

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The name, of course, is far from being decided, but we think ZTS could be in the running. It’s consistent with current Cadillac nomenclature and would be a logical follow-on to the 2012 XTS, the upscale cousin of the Buick LaCrosse that will replace Cadillac’s premium-midsize STS and premium-large DTS sedans.

There are two reasons why GM has revived the flagship Caddy. First, the company can afford to do it after receiving $50 billion in taxpayer assistance since late 2008 and after going through a government-ordered 2009 bankruptcy that erased a mountain of debt and forced slashing organizational flab. Thanks to these measures, plus a bevy of well-received new models, today’s General Motors Company (carved from the bloated old Corporation) is making money on higher sales for each of its four remaining brands (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC). The automaker surprised many skeptics by earning $865 million in the first quarter of 2010, its first three-month upside since 2007, then ringing up a $1.3 billion Q2 net profit, its best quarterly performance since 2004. As a result, the firm’s cash-on-hand as of late August totaled a healthy $31.5 billion. The 2011 picture could be even rosier, with GM projecting full-year gross earnings of some $16 billion.

No less significant, the strong, early turnaround has allowed “New GM” to proceed with a planned stock offering that some say could be the second largest in U.S. history. If successful, the IPO is expected to raise at least $10 billion. That money would represent sale of government-owned common stock and would thus not go into GM’s coffers, but it would reduce the taxpayers’ stake in “Government Motors” from 61 percent to less than 50 percent, according to a recent New York Times article. The company also plans an issue of preferred shares to institutional investors, and those proceeds would be used to help finance operations and bolster the firm’s balance sheet.

The other reason for the super Caddy’s renewed lease on life involves timing and perception. As Motor Trend observes, “Obviously, a big, low-volume Cadillac flagship wasn’t the car to work on as GM was emerging from bankruptcy,” not with the U.S. government, representing taxpayers, a reluctant majority shareholder in the reorganized company. But GM has since shown good faith by repaying $6.7 billion of its public loans and by ushering in the more-fuel-efficient new products it promised in exchange for those loans--not least the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle. With that, GM apparently feels it can now offer a lavish king-size Cadillac with less fear of public pushback.

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