A great vehicle can change how people see a brand.

That, in a sentence, is the reason Cadillac created the extraordinary Celestiq, a show car GM Design unveiled on Instagram Friday morning.

Built by hand and tailored like an exquisite suit, the electric Celestiq will be more like a Rolls-Royce than anything Cadillac’s sold since 1957, when the brand really was considered “the standard of the world” that its motto declared it to be.

Cadillac hopes to return to that status with the family of electric vehicles it’s launching now. The long, low Lyriq SUV that just went on sale is first. Priced starting at $62,990, the Lyriq aspires to beat Audi, Lexus, Mercedes and Tesla in the class of popular midsize luxury SUVs.

The Celestiq has grander ambitions.

It exists to be a car people dream about, the screen saver on a generation’s smartphones. Ordering a Celestiq will be like having an architect design your home. The owner will specify every fitting and material. Like with Rolls-Royce, no two Celestiqs will be alike.

Remove the words “Off the rack” from your vocabulary.

The last car Cadillac built this way was the 1957 Eldorado Brougham. Just 400 were built, and prices started at $13,074 — at a time when a hand-built Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith cost about $9,000, according to Hagerty. The Eldorado Brougham had a stainless steel roof – brushed and polished to gleam in the sun, not painted, of course — suicide doors, quad headlights, 44 combinations of trim and leather and the era’s latest technology: automatic high beams, cruise control, memory seats, and the latest thing in connectivity, a transistor radio.

It was the standard of the world.

Cadillac’s come a long way since then, mostly downhill. The Celestiq was conceived to reverse that slide.

I got my first look at a Celestiq a couple of years ago, in a secret room at GM Design at the company’s tech center in Warren. I circled the big car, wide-eyed. It wasn’t just better than anything Cadillac had made in my lifetime, it was better than anything Cadillac had been allowed to think about making, a modern version of the cars in midcentury photos of royalty and legendary movie stars.

The Celestiq "show car" revealed Friday is a near double for what I saw that day.

It’s also very much like the production Celestiq expected to go on sale in late 2023, rolling out of a new hand-assembly shop a few hundred yards from the room where I got my preview.

Prices will start around $300,000 and go as high as the buyer’s imagination. Cadillac will build maybe one car a day, each made to order.

The Celestiq is intended to be a unique combination of technology and craftsmanship. It will use GM’s Ultium battery and electric motor system. Performance figures to come, but luxury startup Lucid put a stake in the ground with the beautiful Air EV sedan, which can go 512 miles on a charge, hits 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds and costs $169,000.

Here’s what we know or expect about the Celestiq’s features and technology:

Not all those features are expected to be available when Celestiq sales begin.

The Celestiq bears a strong resemblance to the Lyriq SUV, particularly its elaborately lit grille panel. The interior also shares design touches with the Lyriq, including ambient light that shines through wood trim on the doors and its high-resolution LED instruments and controls.

The Celestiq’s long nose and short rear end are reminiscent of Cadillac’s massively powerful custom-made 1930s V16 sedans. All-wheel drive will be available.

In addition to evoking the Eldorado Brougham’s exclusivity and V16 power, the Celestiq’s design was influenced by midcentury modern architecture, including buildings Eero Saarinen created at the tech center in Warren, where the car was designed, engineered and will be built in a new $81 million facility.

Assuming Cadillac nails the Celestiq’s drivetrain and advanced features, big questions include: