The Cadillac XLR Had The Coolest Trunk Of All Time





One of the many strange and obscure automotive tidbits that lives in my mind rent-free is the totally bonkers trunk mechanism on the Cadillac XLR. I love the XLR, always have and always will. I know it’s not as good as a Corvette, and I know it’s saddled with the ticking timebomb that is the Northstar V8, and I don’t care. I’ve always admired its bold exterior design, with sleek long-and-low proportions that gently rake upward toward the rear. The seamless integration of the folding hardtop is excellent, and I love the sharp creases in the bodywork and right angles on the light clusters front and rear.

Whenever I see an XLR in a parking lot I stop and stare for a moment, praying that the blue-haired owner needs to get into the trunk, since it has the coolest trunk operation of all time. Is the mechanism reliable? No. Is it logical? Not even a little bit. When the electronically operated trunk lid is opened, it rises up on hydraulically powered scissor hinges and looks like someone said, “go-go-gadget: extendo-trunk.” (I’m dating myself with that reference.) Screw the Volkswagen Phaeton’s elaborate trunk hinge mechanism, the XLR puts it to shame. It looks like the car is actively disassembling itself. What’s cooler than that?

The XLR’s design is the picture of restraint, except for the trunk

I think the original XLR with its three-blade grille is the best-looking Cadillac of the past 50 years, closely followed by the CTS coupe that echoed many of the same design elements as the XLR. Why does it work so well? Its exterior design is not fussy or overcomplicated. There’s a concise crease spanning the length of the lower-quarter and one at the shoulder. The hood and trunk lid have a faint spine that runs down the centerline of the car, complemented by a gentle upward angle as the eye moves to the crisp, almost right angle that separates the top of the car from the sides, but it all just harmonizes better than The Bee Gees. It’s simply brilliant.

The trunk operation is the opposite of that design ethos. It’s more overcomplicated and ostentatious than any other trunk I know of. Folding hardtops were all the rage in the early 2000s, but they require extensive engineering magic to work right, and they often forced designers to sacrifice a clean silhouette and settle for a bulbous or elongated trunk like that of the Volkswagen Eos or Pontiac G6 Convertible. Cadillac avoided compromising the XLR’s sharp sleek lines just to fit it with a power folding hardtop, but the design necessitated some serious engineering.

Here’s how it works

The XLR was only offered with a power-operated trunk lid that could be opened remotely using the key fob, by pushing the dash-mounted button, or by a button on the trunk itself. The trunk lid actually starts where the side quarter-window ends in order to provide the necessary clearance for the folding roof and glass panels to tuck away into the trunk. Given the XLR’s short rear deck, the trunk hinges had to be engineered to lift the trunk lid up and out of the way so the flat portion of the folding metal roof that actually sits above the occupants can clear the trunk lid and fold away. The XLR’s top operation is another picture of engineering magic; the side quarter windows don’t even retract into the body of the car, they are integrated into the folding roof mechanism and end up laying flat under the roof when it is retracted.

The mechanism, including accessing the trunk in an XLR, is primarily powered by hydraulic pumps, but there are some gas struts that also aid in the complicated process. As you might expect, there are a lot of potential failure points that are commonly discussed on Cadillac forums. It appears that having a trunk that’s only accessible by a system of complicated hydraulics that seem to be a common failure point is a bad idea, but thankfully it seems like the internet has a lot of answers regarding its operation.

That’s part of the allure of the XLR’s wacky trunk mechanism — it’s a totally over-engineered, absurdly complicated, and unique way to accomplish a boring task that most people do hundreds of times without a second thought. Things like the Cadillac XLR’s over-engineered trunk lid are like catnip to us car nerds, so indulge and watch the mechanism function a couple hundred times.



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