Trump says WH ordered 250 new Cadillac Escalades for presidential motorcade: 'Our guys are spoiled'

WASHINGTON, DC: President Trump announced during a speech in Michigan that the White House has ordered 250 Cadillac Escalades, Cadillac's flagship SUV, to join the presidential motorcade.

Trump added that the vehicles have long been a favorite among his security detail. The 2026 Escalade has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price starting in the low $90,000’s, though upgrades take it well north of six figures. Its high-performance V-series runs about $170,000.

Praise for GM amid a broader Michigan pitch

"The one and only Escalade," Trump said early in his roughly hour-long address at a General Motors testing facility in Milford, a Detroit suburb.

"You know we ordered, I think, 250 Escalades, right? We ordered 250 Escalades…. We look sharp in those Escalades."

"Our guys are very spoiled. They like the Escalade. So do I," he said, calling it "about time" the fleet got the upgrade. It was not immediately clear how much the government is paying for the purchase or when the vehicles will begin joining the motorcade.

Trump praised General Motors as "great to deal with" during the visit, part of a broader push to spotlight American manufacturing and court autoworkers roughly 100 days before the midterms.

GM has supplied vehicles for the presidential fleet for decades, including the armored "Beast" limousine, and the relationship has grown closer under Trump: the Secret Service confirmed in January it had begun transporting Trump in newly delivered Cadillac SUVs, following a meeting between Trump and GM CEO Mary Barra in which he raised the idea of expanding the fleet with Cadillac Escalades.

During the speech, Trump also told the Michigan crowd, "I've done more for you than your parents, OK? Your parents are good. I'm not going to knock your parents, but I have been better to you than your parents. That I can tell you, and they would agree with me."

He used the moment to criticize United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain over the union's past endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates, saying, "You wouldn't have an auto industry right now if they got elected."

Endorsement started in 1990s

Al Ghandi Auto says in a historical account that the launch of the Escalade in 1998 and its adoption by hip-hop artists and appearance in pop culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s helped to transform the perception of the vehicle into a status symbol and change the image of Cadillac from a car for an older demographic.

It was in a Jay-Z music video, in a freeway chase sequence in ‘The Matrix Reloaded.’

In his speech, the president praised the Chevrolet Silverado, GMC Sierra and “the world-famous Hummer” as “some of America’s most iconic vehicles.”

“Thank you to the auto workers, the technicians, the mechanics, the welders, the engineers at General Motors,” he said.

“There’s no finer group of people. It was workers like you who built this country, and now it’s the men and women like you who are making it bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.”

General Motors, based in Detroit, recently reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results despite a 31% net drop in income, citing strong American support for the company's pickups and SUVs.