Big $$$ Showdown: Cadillac Escalade vs Jeep Grand Wagoneer - Battle of the $100K Monster SUVs

Hey folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. Big American SUVs are nothing new but if you wanted ultra luxury in the past you had to go to Europe but I'm here to tell you that is no longer the case. Meet the 2022 Cadillac Escalade and the Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Both domestic SUVs with price tags north of a hundred thousand dollars and we're going to compare them. So in this video we will look at all the features, all the screens on the interiors and then we'll go for a drive and tell you which one of these two is nicer. Let's start by looking at the powertrains here. So over in the Jeep Grand Wagoneer this is the only engine you can get. It comes standard. That is a 6.4 liter Hemi V8 that is putting out 471 horsepower and 455 pound feet of torque and yes that is with premium fuel. Now that is all sent through an eight speed transmission. Move over to the Cadillac here and you can get a gas engine but today we have the diesel. That's a three liter Duramax diesel sending its power through a 10 speed automatic. It makes 277 horse and 460 pound feet of torque and I know of course it would have been nice to have the 6.2. It would have been more of an even comparison but this is going to bring up another interesting question. In an ultra luxury SUV would you rather have gas or diesel? Let's take a closer look at the Cadillac now. So this is an Escalade Sport Platinum and as you see it here the price tag is $128,000 Canadian. Now I mean just look at this thing. It has this really big kind of aggressive stance to it but then as you get to the front end it's nicely raked. I think it has sort of that futuristic techie styling. Now as we keep rolling back that is a set of 22 inch wheels and I was talking to dad off camera it makes me laugh because 22s on this vehicle they don't look that big and that's a crazy thing to say because 22s are massive but you tell me to my eye they look really nicely matched here. They don't look huge. Now as we come back down this model we have here today has this white and black theme very much kind of the stormtrooper look and I'll call special attention to this little Cadillac emblem. There's a number of these around the vehicle. I mean on the nose inside but what I want to ask you guys is how many times has this actually changed because this is not the original Cadillac emblem. So please go in the comments let me know do you know how many different Cadillac emblems there are? Getting to the back of the Escalade here there's a few things I have to show you. First of all you can open this glass independently of the hatch and that is something that you cannot do over there on the Grand Wagoneer. Although there's one thing back here that drives me kind of crazy. There is no handle or switch to open this hatch. The only way you can do it is by using the key fob or by kicking the touch sensor but the touch sensor doesn't always work and and this has been me in my driveway all week kicking the back of my Escalade trying to get the thing to work. Finally it went up. This is the decision that I just don't understand at all. I want a physical button to open this hatch. I don't want to be struggling with that kick sensor. So yeah that's one thing you got to watch out for here at the back of this Cadillac. Now we'll go over this Grand Wagoneer and the first thing we're looking at of course is styling. So Jeep has you know a history a heritage that it always tries to uphold and you can see it. That is technically a seven slot grill. Now in the grill wars here the Cadillac obviously wins. That thing is massive on the front end. Jeep didn't go for that huge grill. They made it much smaller and here's another thing on the Jeep I want to point out. Big old tow hooks here on the front end. I don't really think anyone is buying this SUV to go off-road but it is a Jeep and Jeep knows that so it puts those tow hooks on there. I appreciate that and now it is your turn to let us know straight up which one of these two looks better the Grand Wagoneer or the Escalade. Just like the Escalade this Grand Wagoneer also has a set of 22 inch wheels and just like the Escalade I think they look really nicely matched to this vehicle. Not you know massive they just look well matched. So moving back you know I've talked about styling a bunch now there's one thing I'm going to show you. Dad's getting there. This rear three-quarter angle on the Grand Wagoneer it's just a little funny. I guess it has something to do with the fact that this is so kind of squared off back here. Maybe you don't feel this way but I do. I just think the rear three-quarter has a bit of an awkward look to it. At the very back just a couple things I want to point out. First of all the Escalade has dual exhaust and they're very much brought to your attention. Here the exhaust is basically entirely hidden. Again just kind of a different philosophy. Jeep doesn't really want you to be looking at that exhaust. Cadillac does. Now I mentioned there's no button over there on the Cadillac. Well there is one here on the Grand Wagoneer. Of course this is a powered hatch and you know what this gives us a good excuse now to hop inside and see what the interior is like. And now it's time for does Steve fit? Of course in a Grand Wagoneer if he doesn't we got a problem. Yeah that's absolutely true. I'm going to jump into the second row here first but I have to show you this seat has a ton of adjustability. So you know it depends how tall you are you can really give that third row passenger a lot. For me it's going all the way back and I'm hopping in. Now I stand at six foot two and I am touching up here on the roof. These second row seats do sit a tick above those first row seats so I can feel my knees are a little bit taller and like I said I have just enough head room but it is pretty dang close. Knee room though is fine everything else is fine. This is awesome having your own console back here for the second row passengers. Sometimes we wonder if the second and third row passengers aren't forgotten about well in vehicles like this absolutely not. In fact they spend a ton of time making this a luxurious cabin for the people back here. I mean just look at all the screens screens everywhere. Now though let's climb into the very back. So on this Wagoneer Grand Wagoneer there's a button on the shoulder seat pushes forward this is a ton of space an absolute ton of space for me to climb into and now I'll pull this guy back and this seat's reclined a little bit more I almost have more headroom but what's really cool there is a sunroof back here just for the third row passengers plus look over here beside me I have power recline for my seat plus I have two usb ports and what I really think is cool is just this armrest it's a nice stitched leather armrest in the third row and yeah I could legitimately sit back here for a decent amount of time. I am not uncomfortable and I really think that is why you'd want to get one of these big three row monsters. If you want to move a lot of people in comfort these will do it. Now let's take a closer look at the back half of the Escalade and the first thing I want to talk about are baby seats because of course I have my forward facing seat installed over there. So here in the Escalade there are three lower latch anchor positions and they're right here on this bench seat but what you do have to know there's no top tether in the middle that means that this middle position on the bench you're not going to be able to use a forward facing seat and then back there in the third row there are no lower latch anchors but there are three top tethers. Now that compares to the Jeep very interestingly because in the Grand Wagoneer we have captain's chairs in the second row they both have lower latch anchors and a top tether but there is also lower latch anchors on the rear 40 part of that seat. It's a 60 40 split and the 40 seat has those. You don't often see lower latch anchors in the third row and the Grand Wagoneer does offer you one set of them. That is a little bit different. So now let me climb myself into this thing and see how I fit. Wow you know what I have basically the identical headroom problem. It's just enough but I could use a more and both of these vehicles do have huge panoramic sunroofs. I think that's one of the reasons for it. I want to show you now too this seat also has quite a bit of adjustability so you can move it forward and back a lot. Now I'll hop out and I'll climb into the third row. So for this Cadillac the seats tumble forward and give you quite a bit of space as well. At least as much as the Jeep if not a little bit more and then I jam myself back here. I know you can't see me too well but straight up this feels a little more claustrophobic than it did over there in the Jeep. Again I have just enough headroom but my knee room is a little bit lacking. This seat's further forward which is helping but yeah overall a little more cramped back here and there's just you know I don't have the nice leather armrest I have hard plastic. I do have one USB-C port and two cup holders but it just feels like I said smaller darker it feels like Cadillac spent a little bit less time on the third row than Jeep. Check this out here we are in the Escalade you can see all the features here and I want to show you guys the cameras because there's a ton of them so we're in the 3D overhead but you know we'll start up here first so the front camera I love that it names them too you can get front normal front wide front overhead and a side view and those are your steering tires so you can see exactly what's going on up there now next out of the rear you also get a normal a wide a rear overhead and then those are your rear tires now this has got to be the coolest one the 3D overhead camera and using the knob here you can change the angle that it shows your Escalade at which is pretty wild and then I'm going to quickly just put the vehicle into reverse here so I can show you what it looks like when I'm actually moving that's just crazy that little 3D outline really gives you a great sense for where your vehicle is in a certain position for parking in a tight parking slot I think this is a pretty great feature man it's also just cool to play around with now next we have your trailer hitch view always appreciate that and then those are your active guidelines so yes there are a pile of camera views here in this Cadillac all right now let's look at the cameras here in the Grand Wagoneer so this is your main view it's a rear in that top down you get that rear wide view front wide view the front and the top and then this is going to be your hitching view and there is a zoom in button there to get down to it so I would say this is enough views here in the Jeep but there is definitely more cameras and more crazy things going on with the camera system over in the Cadillac here we are driving now in the Escalade and the first thing I want to talk about actually is just overall size of these two vehicles because they are so similar now this Escalade for the latest generation it was made quite a bit longer just like the Tahoe and the Yukon and all of the other GM big SUVs and and so Jeep obviously saw the move that GM made and they said hey if we're jumping into this market we need to be exactly the same size as that bigger Escalade and that's what's going on here so I'll give you the numbers real quick overall length on the Grand Wagoneer here in the Escalade overall height 75 versus 76 inches wheelbase you are talking about the Grand Wagoneer 123 inches the Escalade 120 and I could go on but again my point is that they're basically the exact same size and these days you have to be this big to be able to compete in the market Jeep obviously knew that now before we talk about how each one of these drives we're going to spend some time on these interiors I mean this is I think truly where your money is going into and and dad the thing that jumps out at me right away you know what it's not the screens it's not the nice headliner it's not the materials it's the small details it's it's this piece of plastic up here on the dash that has these super cool lines in it which is a motif that's carried through throughout the vehicle it's this tiny little Cadillac emblem over here those are the things that I notice in this vehicle because for 130 grand those are the little things that I feel like make a huge difference so yeah in terms of that now overall I think this is I would describe this interior as executive feels very professional well put together yeah that's what I'm feeling what do you feel it's definitely luxury but over and above luxury it's uh I'd equate it with a first class cabin uh I've been lucky enough in my life to fly business and first class quite a bit enough so that every once in a while when I had to go somewhere on an economy ticket it hurt literally hurt so when you get into this thing and you put your family in here you can undertake a thousand mile road trip like nothing it's it's comfortable it's beautiful it's quiet it's it's everything you want is in here except maybe the people you're riding with however it's that level you've when you're driving this thing man you've arrived there and there are just a ton of features here we won't touch on them all some of the coolest ones night vision augmented reality which will actually put direction air directional arrows right on to an image of the road in front of you so you know exactly where to turn that's also pretty neat and then just this big beautiful screen here and you know every automaker has a different take once we get in the grand wagon here you'll see jeeps take on it cadillac went for one massive screen i really like it and what dad mentioned too is that a lot of times lately you get this kind of tablet that feels like it's just smacked onto the front of a dashboard that's not this this beautiful curved screen feels very well integrated i do have to speak to the fact that this is the three liter inline diesel that's powering this escalate and couple of couple of points there first of all if you're going to move a massive metal i don't think you can be any more efficient than with a diesel engine so that's a that's a win in my book second thing though is just how quiet not just the interior of this cabin is but that engine generally is quiet but in this unit it's so much so that i dare you to to to identify it as a diesel right off the bat if you didn't know any better as far as drive feel here in the escalate it may say cadillac on the side however it shares that same familiarity with any of the large gm suvs and to that point it's a luxury vehicle however it is still capable and it's capable simply by the fact that you do have a four wheel high you have an automatic setting one of the things i do like here is that you do have two wheel drive so you do have that option of spinning a few less shafts it'll save you a little bit of fuel you get to decide what you want to do but you've also got drive modes so you have an off-road mode you also have tow haul mode so they're speaking to the fact that yeah you can a substantial load with this unit so it may be ultra luxury but if things get gnarly outside you're not going to be left sitting in a mud puddle absolutely and and you know what just building on that we have air suspension here too that's controllable you can lower and raise the vehicle as you want to so if you are off-road you can get a little bit more clearance also magnetic ride control and yeah dad from the passenger seat over here the ride is just unbelievably smooth i like to call it magic carpet ride because it just feels so smooth regardless of what's going on underneath you and i gotta tell you i'm super curious to jump in the jeep now and see if it rides as nice as this cadillac does and now here we are in the grand wagoneer and we'll start off talking about this interior and i mentioned the cadillac feels executive i would almost say understated the grand wagoneer is not that this kind of slaps you in the face with luxury and mostly with screens there's just screens everywhere you look including what is totally unique a screen right here in front of me in front of the passenger i can do all kinds of things i can pick music i can watch videos i can find directions in the navigation and then send them over here to the main screen so the driver can you know start driving to where i want them to yeah it's definitely it's a different idea that the passenger needs their own screen but honestly dad i can see this becoming more common i really think they've they're onto something here well particularly because they've figured out how to project it in a way that if i look over at that screen i can't see anything that's cool yes you can only really see it clearly from a straight on view you can't see it at an angle so we definitely appreciate that nod to safety so you're not watching my movie well let's let's go one step further they had to do that because you just can't have you know blockbuster movies running up front here i'm i'm gonna be watching it sure and i'm supposed to be watching the road so but that that is definitely a very unique feature yeah now there's also a screen in the back for the second row passengers not just the entertainment screens but a screen to control the hvac and the other cool one is this screen down here for our massaging seats it gives you all kinds of settings the seats are really nice and comfortable but maybe what's cooler is you touch this little touch button and this screen actually opens up to reveal hey a little storage space wireless charging for your phone plus all your power hookups your usbs and your 12 volt power yeah i'll say it again the jeep is almost overwhelming feeling with all of the screens and information coming at you where the cadillac goes more understated with its luxury from a drive perspective one of the key differences between the jeep and the cadillac is that there is no too high in this setup it's always all-wheel drive or automatic depends on how you want to look at it and in typical jeep style it does give you a number of drive modes so rock sand snow mud and ruts in addition to sport also height adjustable so we've got the airbags we can get that off-road height which is the same as in the cadillac the other thing that jumps out at me that i kind of liked was just small thing the the convex spot mirrors are built right into these these side mirrors which are also a little bit more elongated so from a towing perspective i think they're going to be slightly better so now on to how it drives and they're very similar vehicles no doubt about that i feel as though the jeep here is a little stiffer the cadillac was just a hair smoother but i am getting into semantics there they're they're quite similar i'll tell you one of the differences though dad is this big 6.4 liter hemi so how are you feeling about the powertrain and the drive overall one of the things with any luxury vehicle i think a hallmark of it is how quiet it is so once again very quiet cabin uh lots of sound deadening this this this engine is not roaring uh it's not jumping it modulates gently easily on the other hand if you put your foot into it it's like yeah baby wow it's right so yeah you know if that matters then you've got it and frankly at that price point i guess you want everything so you can be ultra smooth or you can uh as my wife likes to say scoot around okay so now we'll talk about some of the active driving features so dad has the active driving assist turned on here in the grand wagoneer and how's it doing it's staying in the lines well with this one you got to keep your hand on the wheel otherwise it gets upset however it's uh it is staying between the lines even on the curves which is nice now my question always is if you were to be driving um does it feel like it's kind of fighting with you like pulling the wheel out of your hands or does it feel smooth because some of these systems in my opinion are just too aggressive and they really want to steer when you're doing something else yeah it's it's i don't know either either i'm steering or i'm not and with this thing here it's like i got to let the wheel continually slip through my hand yeah so so then i guess my greater point is that would you use that on a day-to-day basis probably not probably not and i agree with you there because it's just like i don't want the car to be fighting with me i want to do it however we have to talk about the escalator now dad because it does have cadillacs super cruise system now that actual hands-free driving whereas here in the jeep it will do it for you but if you take your hands off that wheel it gets upset not in the escalade and i did a bunch of it but you can only use that system when you're on certain highways so let's cut now and you can watch me using super cruise in the escalator and now here comes a demonstration of cadillac super cruise so i just merged onto the 400 north here in barry and i'm going to go ahead and set my cruise control at 110 kilometers per hour right now it's just regular adaptive cruise when super cruise is not turned on now to turn it on there is a little steering wheel button here on the steering wheel i press it the light in front of me goes green and that tells me that i am clear to remove my hands from the wheel and here we go hands on the knees let's watch it drive now one of the cool things about super cruise and it's something that other automakers are doing as well there is actually a camera right down here just above the steering wheel that's watching me and it is making sure that i'm paying attention so i have to keep my eyes on the road that's sort of how gm went about keeping the system safe because i am still at fault right now oh it just said super cruise disengaging please take control up here the highway splits 400 and highway 11 and for some of these moments in these splits i've noticed super cruise doesn't work so you have to take back control from it and see here it says super cruise unavailable no road information so if there's certain on rams like i said the highway up here just splits off to the right hand to the left so i'm assuming that after i choose my own split i'm going to go right and stay on the 400 once i get on the next section i should be able to continue to use super cruise we will find that out soon and this is just to drive home the point that right now the system doesn't work everywhere it only works on certain pre-mapped sections of highway so you're not going to use it around town and you're not going to use it on off ramps or on ramps only on certain sections and stretches so here we go i'm back on the 400 now past the split yep so i hit the button the line went blue which means it's looking making sure it can engage now it's green so once again hands off the wheel and once again we can watch it drive for me i've been using it now for a my experiences have all been positive does a great job keeping you in the lane it's even raining right now a little bit of light rain and that's certainly not slowing it down whatsoever okay so now i have a nice gap next to me so again let me just demonstrate this for you guys it's very simple you make sure no one's next to you turn the signal on looking for an opening and changing lanes and turn your signal off it's smooth it's not jerky it's got me centered in the lane nicely um yeah i i you know i don't see any real issues it's working incredibly well and i would love to try out supercruise while towing because that is a feature that is available on gm's new half ton pickup trucks so that's something we'll have to test in the future but for now uh based on my experience supercruise is an excellent system and yeah i gotta tell you if i was driving up to Sudbury or North Bay right now you know four hour drive this would make it a lot nicer just to be able to watch the road hands on the knees and just listen to the radio well folks we have come to the end of this video and let me tell you it's tough to pick a winner because these two are so similar and just so nice now if you're asking me to put down my money on a table to buy one of these i would lean towards this jeep grand wagoneer you get inside and you're just honestly blown away by that interior and for that price point that's what i expect but listen there is one big question i have cadillac has been doing luxury like this for a long time no one is going to think twice about spending over a hundred grand on a caddy but a jeep with $130,000 price tag that might be hard for people to swallow and i'm very curious to see how sales of this grand wagoneer stack up to the cadillac well folks that is the end of this one like i mentioned now please go below hit like hit subscribe hit join to become a member of the truck king channel and then come right back here to see what we're testing next