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The Escalade has been Cadillac‘s de facto flagship for the past two decades. And while it’s trying to change things up with the all-electric, deliciously extravagant Celestiq, Cadillac is also exploiting the Escalade’s status by letting prices creep up well into the territory of more traditional luxury flagships.
Cadillac recently launched the 2027 Escalade configurator, and as Autoblog pointed out, you can now spend nearly $200,000 on one of these full-size SUVs. That’s assuming you go for an Escalade V ESV, which costs $193,349 before options, but including a hefty $2,895 destination charge.
Cadilla
The bottom of the Escalade price ladder also gets pulled up for 2027. The elimination of last year’s 1SA base model means pricing now starts above $100,000—even for a standard-length, rear-wheel drive model. Those start at $105,595 with destination, which is $11,600 more than the 2026 base price (destination is unchanged). Granted, the 1SA spec was aimed more at livery services than retail buyers.
What do you get for that higher price? Nothing, it seems. At press time, Cadillac hadn’t announced any substantial changes for the 2027 model year. The current-generation Escalade was introduced for the 2021 model year, but received a major update for 2025 that’s kept it fresh as its closest rivals—the Lincoln Navigator and Infiniti QX80–emerged from redesigns. Lincoln also took the opportunity to raise the Navigator’s base price into six-figure territory with that model’s redesign, but for 2027 the QX80 starts at $87,865 with destination.
Cadillac
Of course, we’re only talking about the gasoline Escalade. Cadillac hasn’t yet released 2027 model-year pricing for the all-electric Escalade IQ and IQL, but the 2026 IQ already starts at $130,300 with destination, with the IQL costing an extra $3,000. Speaking of EVs, if all you want is a three-row Cadillac SUV, the Vistiq still offers plenty of space for $79,495, including a more reasonable $1,995 destination charge.
The Escalade easily outsold the Navigator in 2025, so Cadillac has the breathing room to play with pricing. And in the short term at least, price hikes for an already-expensive SUV won’t make a lot of difference at a time when the cost of everything is going up due to global conflicts. The war between Iran and the United States, as well as the war between Russia and Ukraine, is also raising gas prices, though, so even wealthy Escalade owners may start to reconsider their purchases eventually. The era of the $200,000 Escalade may be here, but how long will it last?
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Stephen has always been passionate about cars, and managed to turn that passion into a career as a freelance automotive journalist. When he’s not handling weekend coverage for The Drive, you can find him looking for a new book to read.
