My Current Dailies: 2024 Cadillac Lyriq and 2025 VW Atlas

This installment will bring us almost to the end of my COAL series, and today I’ll cover two of the three vehicles we currently have in the pit and paddock –Our dailies: a 2024 Cadillac Lyriq and 2025 VW Atlas. The Lyriq has been almost perfect, and the Atlas is likely our favorite family vehicle ever.

Before I go on, I’d like to start with a sincere “Thank you” to all who have read and commented on my COALs.  This has been my first attempt at writing for other people’s consumption on a regular basis, and it has been enjoyable to interact with you all, while also serving as a sort of therapy for me.

The early stories were the most fun to recall and share.  They recounted my formative years, when a car was not just a transportation appliance, but at once a most valuable possession, a (mostly) trustworthy companion, and a physical embodiment of freedom. From there, the cars themselves became exponentially better, while the car ownership experience moved largely from existential to transactional, spiritual to consumer.  Accordingly, while the cars themselves, and the stories that they channeled, became infinitely less interesting, life continued to grow more complex and ambiguous, while ultimately more fulfilling.

In my sixth entry, I shared with you my first ‘adult’ car – a 2000 VW Jetta.  That was my inflection point.  It was the first car I owned that was not at least a decade old, if not two.  Prior to it, I owned two cars originally registered in the 1970s, and two in the 1980s.  Including the Jetta (and excluding my wife’s vehicles), I’ve since owned four cars from the 2000s, three from the 2010s, two from the ‘20s, and one more from the 1980s that I have yet to document.  To date, I have not owned a single 1990s model vehicle, and I figure at this point I probably never will.  With a few exceptions, most don’t appeal to me in the way that cars that preceded or succeeded them have and still do.

As our readers know, COALs are not just about the cars. Each contributor’s stories are memoirs documenting their lives, situations, and relationships, with the cars serving as useful plot devices tying together their lives’ larger themes.  I spent much of my first three entries talking about how influential my dad was in my early carhood.  Between helping me buy and then learn basic maintenance on my first car, then mentoring me through extensive and repeated bodywork on my next, he was my first north star of auto stewardship.  Later, and in particular during the time I moved to Seattle to ‘find myself’, my oldest brother began to play a key role, guiding me and bailing me out as I dealt with maintaining cheap (but interesting) cars.  He remains my mechanic-on-call to this day.  Meanwhile, Dad and I continued to share our automotive experiences and passions right up until his passing in the summer of 2025.  I shared his automotive history in a sidebar to my COALs.

My mom never learned to drive, so I would frequently split dropoff and pickup duty with my Dad.  Mom and I had some of our best conversations behind the windshield of my 1977 LTD II and subsequent 280ZX.  Mom was a wonderful woman and a terrific mother, and like many moms she could also be quite headstrong.  I didn’t recount the time I got the Jetta stuck on an unplowed street while driving her home from work.  Being claustrophobic and obsessively routine, she decided that instead of allotting me the time and patience to work the car out of the drift, she would walk home two miles in two feet of snow so that she could have her tea and toast (luckily I was able to unstick the Jetta and catch up with her before she hit the mile mark).  Mom passed in early 2020, not a direct victim of Covid, but perhaps collateral damage.

My dear friend Jason, mentioned in my 1982 Rampage and 1976 Cougar series, was another great one lost along the way.  He and I shared several passions – in particular a lifelong fanaticism for the Seattle Seahawks and a lust for Pontiacs (Firebirds in particular, but he also had a couple of Fieros).  I loved him like a brother, and lost him in 2019.

I’ve also shared a bit about my wife in this series.  She has been my constant through the last three decades of change.  And of course, there are my kids.  Samantha was born in 2011, and I shared how I drove her home, slowly through a snowstorm, in my excellent 2005 Subaru Outback 3.0R.  Jack came home just 20 months later in our 2011 Toyota Sienna – our first true family hauler, which would serve us valiantly and unglamorously for 11 years.

All of these entries brought us to where we are now, COAL-wise.  I’ll start here with a brief overview of our two dailies, then save my final entry for my fun car.

I traded in my 2020 Nissan Leaf SL Plus in December of 2024.  The Leaf was a satisfying car, and a perfect introduction to the EV experience.  When it was time to replace it, I deliberated long and hard over whether to go back to ICE, try a Hybrid or PHEV, or continue down the full BEV path.  The deciding factor? I recognized that after 4 years of not having to stop for gas on my commute, I was not about to start.  I did determine that, due to rapidly advancing technologies and even more rapidly depreciating EV resale values, I would return to leasing for my next car.  I found a gem in my current daily, a 2024 Cadillac Lyriq.

I fell in love with the Lyriq the first time I saw a spy shot.  If ever a car hit the mass market looking like a concept vehicle, this was it.  What appeals to me most is how it is at once futuristic, while also paying homage to classic Cadillac themes.  Case in point is the two sets of taillights.  The upper lights, framing the D pillar, recall (in my mind, anyway) the 1960 de Ville fin lights, while the lowers continue Cadillac’s 60-year tradition of slender vertical outboard lights.  Beyond the details, the overall proportions are highly appealing.  While ostensibly a CUV, its profile is pure shooting brake, much more wagon than Wagoneer.

The interior continues the blended retro/future theme.  Its digital display is a curved and rounded trapezoid that stretches unbroken from the driver’s door to the far side of the center console, and is easier to navigate than most systems and includes both CarPlay and full Google integration.  Among its cool features is the ability to project its Google-based navigation onto the screen in front of the driver, while the passenger can continue to engage with the entertainment features. Below the digital sea is a nicely detailed and extensive set of traditional switches for those frequently used but mundane features that are better served by muscle memory than a distracting digital display.  Beyond that, its seats are lovely, and rear leg room is limo-like while retaining a usable storage area. It’s fast, beautiful, comfortable, and almost perfect.  The ‘almost’?  It could have fewer rattles and squeaks.  Such is GM.

Meanwhile, we recently traded in my wife’s miserable 2020 Hyundai Palisade Limited.  Yes, I know that Consumer Reports and other media channels rate that vehicle highly, typically putting it at the top of their list of best vehicles in its class. Our experience was less than stellar.  From the showroom it was a beauty, competing well with vehicles $10-$20K more.  That sheen didn’t last long.  It suffered from the well-documented leather stench, and its interior materials degraded quickly.  Its transmission was bloody awful – it never failed, but it was frequently confused, shifting erratically and abruptly and often with a delayed engagement.  Its suspension was worse.  It would respond to the slightest of bumps with a bucking effort seemed intent on launching third row passengers through the sunroof.  In all, it felt like a cheap car dressed up in expensive clothes. Others have loved theirs, we did not.

The Palisade was replaced in mid-2025 on a leased VW Atlas SEL R Line. To date, it is unanimously the favorite family vehicle we have owned. Our prior experiences with German cars weren’t great, but this feels like a winner.  And even if it is not, it is leased, so we will be fine.  Why is the VW so impressive to us?  For such a large, heavy car, it feels light and nimble.  Underhood, the turbo 2.0 is a mini-might.  Producing 269 hp and 273 lb-ft of torque, it is perfectly matched to a smooth, precise 8-speed automatic that is perfectly calibrated to keep the powerplant in its sweet spot.

Its interior materials are excellent, the design is straightforward and elegant, and it is truly all-day comfortable.  Online reviewers do complain about its haptic controls and some fussiness to its digital interface, and they are fair criticisms.  Owners do, however, learn to navigate them quickly, and after a short learning curve, they are fine if not ideal.  Its interior space is remarkable – its key selling point for us was that its third row challenges many SUV’s second row in terms of comfort and accessibility, and its big-box syling has more usable space than any other three row that is not a truck-based SUV like a Tahoe.  The cherry on top is that, at least in R Line trim with exclusive wheels and trim, it looks like a (really) big GTI.

With that, we are almost up to date, though not for long.  The Cadillac lease expires at the end of this year, and my daughter will soon need a car, so I will take you along on those test drives.  In the meantime, one other car shares our garage, and I will document that in greater detail in my next entry.