Las Vegas – Winter skipped the New York City region throughout 2006 and waited until Valentines Day 2007 for the first Nor’easter to dump its frigid load across the lower Hudson River Valley.

The temperature was in the teens, the wind speed was nearly twice that,  and the region was coated with ice and snow, turning level streets into hazardous passages and hills into slip-n-slides accessible to a very limited list of vehicles. Bus drivers on the western side of the river at Englewood Cliffs, on top of the Palisades escarpment some 400 feet above the river, detoured around the straight, four-mile long road which dropped steeply into the New Jersey suburbs, and police at the bottom of the hill cautioned motorists to find other ways back up to the summit.

Unless, of course, they were in an Escalade, the luxury headliner of the Cadillac fleet whose 22-inch chrome aluminum wheels easily roll over just about any surface.  The three-and-a-half ton SUV is not intended to be a luxury off-road player like GM’s Hummer or the Land Rover, and vehicles this heavy are not usually expected to glide up ice slopes.

But the Escalade’s all wheel drive system lets the torque vary from the front to rear axels as needed for power, and this combines with a traction control system which instantly adjusts the spin or brakes at each wheel to eliminate skids. The result was a smooth ride up a deserted roadway, listening to Miles blowing softly on the Bose system while the wind howled uselessly outside.

The Escalade is a luxury craft designed for cruising, either through city streets or on the open road. When first introduced, the Escalade was, essentially, a huge, motorized, comfortable box marked chiefly by an oversized, imposing grill. The latest incarnation of the Escalade has a more refined look, with its boxy edges morphed into a smoother, curved shape flowing from a grill that is appropriately large without being its dominant feature.

This edition has three rows of seats, but they are all wide, padded buckets rather than benches. The first two rows are designed to be comfortable for any sized motorist, and a fleet of Escalades was provided to the players for use during NBA All-Star weekend in Las Vegas – which was a good place to go to get away from the northeastern snow.

The third row of seats is located in the cargo area, but can be folded down to accommodate luggage, or removed entirely. While the first two rows provide enough leg room for the average seven-footer, the third row has limited leg room and is best suited for kids. The first and second row of seats can be heated, and there is a wide path between the second row of bucket seats, providing easy access to the two third row seats.

Many of the professional basketball players, who tend to dwell in the land of the giants, pushed a button on the dash to keep the automatic step in its locked position. For those of us who live closer to the ground, however, it is convenient to have a step which automatically slides out when the door opens. The Escalade also has separate climate control zones for the three rows, a feature you don’t often find in the larger SUVs.

Inside, the Escalade has other amenities. The leather motif is offset by burnished wood paneling on the doors, dash and center console, which gives the interior the feel of a living room.

There is a DVD player, which can show movies on a pull down screen for the rear seats, as well as the eight-inch screen on the dash for viewing by the driver and front passenger. The front screen, which also serves as the hub of the car’s information center, will not show movies while you are driving.  But there are wireless headsets for the rear passengers to enjoy the show, while the driver and front passenger continue listening to the XM radio or six-disc, in-dash CD or MP3 player.
All of this makes for a car that is comfortable for cruising, in any city – even if it does get only nine miles per premium gallon of gas. But one can get tired of cruising through the wall to wall light show that is the nation’s gambling capitol, a citadel of gaudiness where the lights in the three block Fremont arcade uses more electricity than New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

The first few trips down the strip can be exhilarating, particularly if you are cruising in a Cadillac Escalade which is, essentially, a comfortable living room on wheels with a wide expanse of glass around and over you. This lets you take in the opulence of Las Vegas’ mega hotels where every street corner has a giant HD-TV screen pushing everything from Toni Braxton and Cirque de Soleil to Bedmates to Go.

But eventually, you want to get away. If you head north on Highway 15 past the Moapa River Indian Reservation, where the jagged, 11,000-foot Spring Mountain Range and multi-colored, 150-million-year-old escarpments block out the Las Vegas light pollution. In the stillness, the sunlight reveals rolling desert countryside covered with sage and juniper bush in a dusty land populated mainly by slow desert turtles and swift road runners.
 
And through it all are the rails of the Santa Fe, its yellow diesel engines glinting in the clear sunlight as it rolls along the base of the mountain parallel to the highway, a moving punctuation between the desert dunes and the mountains. There was no traffic and I began to pace the Santa Fe, nudging the 403-horsepower V-8 to 100 miles and hour as we ran in tandem across the bleak landscape. I rarely take trucks at that speed, but the Escalade, for all its bulk, still handles like a sedan and holds the road on curves nearly as well as its smaller racing cousin the Cadillac XLR.

I left the Santa Fe to take an unnamed dirt road into the hills, winding through the red rock Valley of Fire and ending in a deserted canyon near a tributary to Lake Mead as the sun dropped behind the mountains. There, we laid the seats back and watched a movie under a canopy of stars.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

2007 Cadillac Escalade AWD

MSRP:       $66,380
EPA Mileage:   13 MPG City   19 MPG Highway
As Tested Mileage:  9.4 MPG City   14 MPG Highway
Towing Capacity:  7,700 Pounds

Performance/ Safety:

6.2-Liter aluminum Vortec V-8 engine producing 403 horsepower and 417 pound-feet of torque; 6-speed automatic transmission; all-wheel drive; road sensing suspension; automatic rear leveling control; traction and stability control; antilock brake system; 4-wheel disc brakes; 22-inch chrome aluminum wheels and tire pressure monitor; rear view camera; high density headlamps; fog lights; dual frontal air bags; head, curtain and side airbags for all rows.

Interior/ Comfort:

AM/FM/XM satellite radio; Bose speaker system with digital surround sound system and rear entertainment system controls; MP3 and 6-disc in-dash CD and DVD player with rear, hand held, and fingertip steering wheel controls; sun roof; power lift gate; remote starting and entry; 3-zone climate control; leather seats and steering wheel; power retractable step; satellite navigation system. 

To read more about Rolling Through Snow and Racing the Santa Fe see Rolling Through Snow and Racing the Santa Fe in the USBE News archive.