Hot damn! There were quite a few who doubted Cadillac's ability to follow up its Ciel Concept from last year's Pebble Beach Concours, and yet look at this! This is the new Cadillac Elmiraj Concept the automaker just unveiled at this year's show. The Elmiraj, a two-door "grand" coupe named after California's El Mirage dry lake bed, follows the footsteps of big, bold, and beautiful Cadillac concepts such as the Ciel and 2003's Sixteen. Let's just hope that this time its name isn't foreshadowing anything.

Cadillac says the new Elmiraj was built to pay tribute to the past and look toward the future of Cadillac design. The Elmiraj's name and proportions are tributes to great Cadillacs of yesteryear -- Elmiraj recalls the storied Eldorado nameplate, while its generous proportions and "grand coupe" body style are a nod to the 1967 Eldorado. As for the future, Cadillac says the Elmiraj is its way of "projecting design forward," instead of "'teasing future models," though the Elmiraj, like last year's Ciel, most certainly hints at design cues we'll see on future Cadillacs -- especially its upcoming flagship.

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Speaking of design cues, the Elmiraj is stunning to behold. Designed by Cadillac's North Hollywood studio, the Elmiraj picks up right where the Ciel left off. It sports the classic American long-hood, short-rear-deck proportions with taut fender lines that flow from its vertically stacked LED headlights to its tailfin-inspired taillights.

The bulging CTS-V-like hood features a vertical line that flows over the car from bumper to bumper, and has two functional vents on either side, just forward of the rakish A-pillar. The Elmiraj's black grille features a new wreathless Cadillac Crest, and is trimmed in satin chrome that flows up alongside the hood, wrapping around the windows. Quite a few design traits from the Ciel have found their way onto the Elmiraj. The gills mirror those of the Ciel, as do the Elmiraj's stacked exhaust tips and the satin chrome line that runs from the foglights to just behind the rear wheels.

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Sitting on big 22x9 aluminum wheels, and riding on a platform built with "chassis and structural elements of an ongoing Cadillac vehicle development project slated for future production," (did someone say "flagship?"), the Vsport-badged Elmiraj is powered by an all-new 4.5-liter, twin-turbo V-8 that makes an estimated 500 hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. We've got no details on the Elmiraj's transmission or drivetrain, but its proportions certainly suggest rear-wheel drive, and given the Vsport badges, we suspect Cadillac's new eight-speed automatic is bolted to that new engine.

Stopping duties are handled by ceramic brakes with Cadillac calipers. Historically, big Caddys haven't been known to be featherweights, but Cadillac claims its 205-inch long coupe -- just an inch-and-a-half shorter than the long-wheelbase 2015 Mercedes-Benz S-Class -- only weighs around 4000 pounds, which Cadillac credits to lessons learned from the ATS development cycle.

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Parts of the Elmiraj's interior look much more conceptual than its exterior. The four rich camel-leather sport seats look like they've been taken straight from the Ciel, as does the center console, which flows through the car and separates the two back seats from each other. Otherwise the Elmiraj's interior looks to be much more grounded in reality. The single-piece dashboard helps form a cockpit-like cabin for the driver, and the black and tan leather dash and doors are trimmed in backlit titanium and fallen Brazilian rosewood. The Elmiraj's instrument panel features an analog tach and speedo, with a high-res driver information display behind it. The center stack features a pop-up 10-inch touch screen like that found in the outgoing Cadillac CTS, and -- most notably -- no CUE infotainment system, though some of its touch features appear to be retained in instruments next to the touch screen and along the transmission tunnel. Despite the fact that the rear seats of 2+2 coupes tend to be penalty boxes, the Elmiraj's promises to be more welcoming, with reclining seats and a valet feature that'll slide the back seat up to meet passengers as they get in.

Given Cadillac's history of not having the chutzpah to put its most daring concepts into production (Ciel, Cien, Sixteen, anyone?), the Elmiraj may very well be just that - a mirage. But with proportions like this, and a distinctly American design that no other automaker could pull off, let's hope that's not the case. After all, this could be the Cadillac that helps the brand once again become the Standard of the World.

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