Cadillac is the fastest-growing luxury conversation in America. Almost nobody is steering it.
6.20B interactions in twelve months, up 114%. 2026 to date has already passed all of 2025. TikTok carries three-fifths of it, Escalade carries a quarter, Formula 1 fills the feed without filling the numbers, and the official channels are 8% of the total. This is what LunarCrush sees across X, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Reddit, and what we would do with it.
Seven years of quiet, then the feed caught fire
Yearly interactions: 2020 429.5M → 2021 436.5M → 2022 806.0M → 2023 1.43B → 2024 1.75B → 2025 3.81B → 2026 4.53B. Three inflections are visible in the monthly series: the F1 entry approval (Dec 2024, first month over 200M), the F1 launch season (Jan–Mar 2026, the all-time high for posts and creators) and July 2026, the record for reach on fewer posts than March.
Monthly interactions · Jul 2024 – Aug 2026
August 2026 is a partial month (21 days). Daily series summed by month; partial current day excluded everywhere on this page.
Reach per post is the number to watch
Average interactions per active post, monthly. The March 2026 F1 debut tripled post volume and cut efficiency in half; July recovered it on product and culture, not on race volume.
What made July 2026 the record
Attention half-life after the five largest spikes of the year: 1–3 days. Spikes reach 2–3.4× baseline and are gone before the next weekend; nothing compounds yet.
Where Cadillac lands, and what it lands on
8,320 brand-relevant posts created May 23 – Aug 21 after removing the noise (a live-music channel called Cadillac Chronicles, a person called Johnny Cadillac, song titles, the film, the town). X is where Cadillac talks. TikTok is where Cadillac lands.
By network · 639.8M interactions
By theme · 90-day active corpus
A post can carry more than one theme.
654M in 90 days at 431K per post. The only Cadillac product with a mass-culture footprint.
3,428 F1 posts at 67K average. Volume engine, not reach engine.
94M vs 1.78B in a year. The EV flagship is invisible inside its own nameplate.
Race weekends buy volume. They do not buy love.
Thirteen 2026 race weekends (Friday to Monday) against every other day of the season. Interactions +34%, posts +18%, sentiment -0.6, and the two days after a race run lower still (72). The team topic itself is cooling (−42% over three months) while the driver topics outgrow it: fans follow Checo and Valtteri, not constructors.
24.0M/day vs 18.0M/day.
9,598/day vs 8,105/day.
73 vs 73; Monday–Tuesday after: 72.
Every 2026 race weekend, measured
Weekend = Fri–Mon total and daily average vs the prior seven days.
| Race | Date | Weekend | vs prior wk | Sentiment | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 03-08 | 106.3M | +60% | 74 | -6 |
| China | 03-15 | 122.7M | +39% | 79 | +7 |
| Japan | 03-29 | 78.5M | -10% | 84 | +4 |
| Bahrain | 04-12 | 78.8M | +5% | 75 | +2 |
| Saudi Arabia | 04-19 | 60.9M | -18% | 70 | -3 |
| Miami | 05-03 | 107.0M | +16% | 72 | -8 |
| Canada | 05-24 | 69.2M | +44% | 66 | -9 |
| Monaco | 06-07 | 70.4M | +54% | 66 | -10 |
| Spain | 06-14 | 63.2M | -9% | 54 | -14 |
| Austria | 06-28 | 68.0M | +14% | 70 | +24 |
| Britain | 07-05 | 102.1M | +48% | 80 | +4 |
| Belgium | 07-19 | 188.1M | +59% | 79 | +1 |
| Hungary | 07-26 | 132.2M | -15% | 75 | -4 |
Attention half-life
Largest spike days of the year, the multiple over the trailing 30-day median, and the days until half the spike had decayed.
| Day | Peak | × baseline | Half-life | Sentiment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-20 | 72.5M | 3.3× | 2 d | 94 |
| 2026-07-26 | 54.1M | 2.3× | 1 d | 93 |
| 2026-05-05 | 51.1M | 3.0× | 1 d | 80 |
| 2026-07-08 | 49.9M | 3.0× | 3 d | 65 |
| 2026-03-15 | 46.7M | 2.5× | 1 d | 83 |
| 2026-07-14 | 45.7M | 2.6× | 1 d | 52 |
| 2025-08-26 | 43.4M | 3.4× | 1 d | 84 |
| 2026-04-25 | 35.2M | 2.1× | 1 d | 88 |
The one official post that fused F1 and product, "You can't corner @valtteribottas in his Cadillac OPTIQ" (Aug 4, 1.77M), is the best owned post of the summer and 56% of the Optiq topic's 30-day reach. That is the format to scale.
Above every peer until January. Below Lexus since March.
Interaction-weighted sentiment, 0–100, monthly. June 2026 was the worst month on record at 60, with fourteen days at or below 50 and a floor of 29 on July 9. The shape is F1-shaped: suspension failures in Canada and Belgium, a leadership change, penalty threads, plus a GM transmission class-action clip at 2.6M. TikTok (72) and Reddit (60) carry the negativity; Instagram (95) and YouTube (83) are healthy.
Cadillac vs Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW
Shaded band = below 65, the zone every luxury peer avoided this year.
Lexus 77 · Mercedes-Benz 79 · BMW 69 · Porsche 68 · Tesla 67.
Canadian GP suspension failure, team-boss change, Belgian GP repeat.
The most-shared Cadillac news of the summer; roughly half of it hostile. Do not amplify.
Lexus-scale today. Mercedes is two points away.
Share of interactions inside a ten-brand luxury set (Cadillac, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Volvo, Land Rover, Infiniti, Acura). BMW takes roughly half; Porsche and Audi 13–17% each. Cadillac's line is flat-to-up while its absolute base doubled: the category is growing with Cadillac; Cadillac is not yet taking share from it. The two-point gap to Mercedes is ~250–400M interactions a quarter.
Luxury-set share of voice · monthly
Automotive Brands · 24h interactions, live
Lincoln omitted: the topic is contaminated by Abraham Lincoln.
Who the audience compares Cadillac with
Co-mentions inside brand-relevant posts, 90 days.
Forty-three accounts move half of it. Most of them posted once.
4,303 creators produced the 8,320 brand-relevant posts. The top 1% (43 accounts) generated 45% of interactions; 78% of creators posted exactly once and those single posts were 51% of reach; creators under 50K followers are 74% of the base and 41% of reach. Cadillac's audience is an algorithmic lottery with a small set of repeat winners, and the owned channels are 8.3% of the total.
43 accounts. Top ten alone: 27%.
78% of all creators. Nobody has re-engaged them.
181 owned posts, 53.2M. The other 586.5M is earned.
The creator map
Six segments, 90-day performance inside the Cadillac conversation. Every card deep-links to the LunarCrush profile.
The lottery, quantified: amplification ratio
Interactions ÷ followers on posts over 500K. A 3,800-follower account reaching 6.8M is the algorithm, not the audience.
Whitespace: covers the competitors, never Cadillac
From a 12,064-creator pull across 48 topics. Ranked in two or more luxury-competitor topics, zero Cadillac interactions.
| Creator | Followers | Competitor reach | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| @omid_mouazzen · YouTube | 1M | 3.2M | bmwluxury carsporschesupercars |
| @theautobharat · YouTube | 2M | 2.7M | bmwtesla |
| @neox_oficial7 · YouTube | 90K | 2.3M | audibmwjdmporsche |
| @SawyerMerritt · X | 1M | 2.1M | evriviantesla |
| @diecastgarageshow · YouTube | 24K | 1.8M | audicar enthusiastschevroletfordporsche |
| @joshthepig-jtp · YouTube | 175K | 1.8M | audibmw |
| @jpperformance · YouTube | 3M | 1.8M | audibmwporsche |
| @georgejsaliba · YouTube | 885K | 1.6M | audibmwevporschetesla |
| @quickfloorz · YouTube | 475K | 1.6M | audibmwporsche |
| @autocrash0 · YouTube | 189K | 1.3M | chevroletfordjdmporschesupercarstesla |
| @caranddriver · YouTube | 856K | 1.3M | acuraaudibmwchevroletlexuslucid |
| @joavi_ · YouTube | 247K | 1.2M | audibmwchevroletford |
| @omid-highlights · YouTube | 56K | 1.0M | audiluxury carsporschesupercars |
| @zegarek · YouTube | 163K | 960K | bmwluxury carsporsche |
The flagship is shrinking. The regions are winning.
Six-month follower series from LunarCrush creator pages. Both TikToks grew 25–60%; @Cadillac on X and @cadillac on Instagram lost followers while publishing campaign stills into feeds that reward motion, sound and a person. Four regional accounts each beat the US flagship's per-post average by 20–100×.
Cadillac-owned accounts · 90 days in the Cadillac topic
| Account | Followers | Posts | Interactions | Per post | 6-month trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| @cadillac · TikTok | 513K | 9 | 13.9M | 1.5M | +25% followers · 6 mo |
| @cadillacf1 · TikTok | 621K | 74 | 18.8M | 254K | +60% followers |
| @Cadillac_F1 · X | 284K | 414 | 13.6M | 33K | +6% · 4.6 posts/day |
| @cadillacf1 · YouTube | 69K | 21 | 6.4M | 306K | +73% followers |
| @cadillacf1 · Instagram | 4M | 35 | 3.2M | 92K | flat · largest owned audience |
| @Cadillac · X | 757K | 13 | 288K | 22K | shrinking |
| @cadillac · Instagram | 4M | 7 | 172K | 25K | shrinking |
| @cadillac · YouTube | 290K | 5 | 255K | 51K | +4% |
Regional accounts · the R&D lab
Arabia: lifestyle and arrival. Canada: show the tech. México: V8 sound in Spanish. Korea: the Escalade as status object.
| Account | Followers | Posts | Interactions | Per post | vs @Cadillac on X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cadillac México · X | 141K | 1 | 11.8M | 11.8M | per-post beats US flagship 534× |
| Cadillac Arabia · TikTok | 209K | 2 | 15.4M | 7.7M | per-post beats US flagship 348× |
| Cadillac Canada · TikTok | 18K | 1 | 9.5M | 9.5M | per-post beats US flagship 429× |
| Cadillac Korea · YouTube | 3K | 1 | 7.8M | 7.8M | per-post beats US flagship 353× |
What the data says works
Formats ranked by average interactions per brand-relevant post, the posting-time map, and the language split. Every owned post above one million this summer had motion, sound and a person in it. Model hashtags (#escalade, #optiq, #blackwing) carry the reach; #cadillac alone does not.
Formats · average reach per post
Languages · brand-relevant posts
Official Cadillac F1 channels post in English only. Portuguese is led by Be Fast Podcast (130 posts, 17.7M); Spanish by the Checo ecosystem.
When Cadillac posts land · Pacific time, interactions by hour created
05:00 and 08:00 PT are the peaks (European race-weekend morning and the US East-coast commute); 12:00–14:00 is the product window; nothing after 19:00 performs. Tuesday–Thursday beat the weekend because race-week build-up out-performs race day.
Sized by the data, ordered by prize
Each play carries its evidence from this audit and a sized prize. Tap to expand.
Evidence. The Bottas × OPTIQ post (1.77M) is the #1 owned post of the summer and 56% of the Optiq topic's 30-day reach. F1 is 22% of posts at 53K average; product posts average 431K.
Prize. +150–300M interactions per quarter by converting F1 volume into product reach
Evidence. Family content is the strongest organic format (698 posts, 57.9M, 83K avg). Escalade IQ is 5.3% of Escalade conversation.
Prize. Move Escalade IQ from 5% to 20% of the Escalade conversation
Evidence. Regional accounts out-perform the US flagship 20–100× per post on near-zero production.
Prize. +50–100M per quarter at zero production cost
Evidence. Dave Smith Motors: 15.8M on 4,350 subscribers. Massey Cadillac: 2.1M on 761 followers. Nobody coordinates them.
Prize. An owned-adjacent channel worth 30–60M per quarter
Evidence. LARTE alone is 33M+ in 90 days; Blackwing content is 10% of brand reach and the most loyal audience.
Prize. Owns the enthusiast core
Evidence. Classic content is 2,000 posts and 212M organic, the highest-sentiment theme, and has no official home.
Prize. +30–50M per quarter plus a sentiment lift
Evidence. One Cadillac Canada demo did 9.5M; the theme is 0.6% of conversation.
Prize. Tech-leadership narrative against Tesla FSD and Mercedes Drive Pilot
Evidence. Portuguese is the #2 language (107M), Spanish #3 (49.6M); official output is English-only.
Prize. +40–80M per quarter and Checo fan-base retention
Evidence. A single Hypercar sim lap did 18.8M; 410 gaming posts in the window.
Prize. Reaches under-25 males the brand otherwise misses
Evidence. June 2026 cost ~20 sentiment points; TikTok (72) and Reddit (60) carry the negativity.
Prize. Close the 7–9 point gap to Lexus and Mercedes
Dutch GP, Zandvoort, Aug 21–23. The team topic is down 40% week over week while the master topic is up 5% and creators are up 16%. The play is not more race posts: it is one driver × product post on @cadillac TikTok before Sunday (Checo or Valtteri, Escalade IQ or Optiq-V, Spanish cut), and the regional accounts re-posting it. That is the single highest-leverage action available in the next 72 hours.
September to November, and how we would measure it
Driver × Product #1–2 with ES/PT cuts. Launch the Cadillac Creators repost tag. Brief ten GCC and US Escalade creators. Stand up Reddit listening.
Escalade IQ family program (25 loans). Dealer pilot (10 dealers, 4 formats). Heritage Archive #1–4. Three Super Cruise creator demos.
Home-race content in Spanish with Cadillac México; fan-node partnerships; LARTE/Hennessey collab drop; Blackwing week at SEMA; year-in-review.
Scorecard to run weekly on LunarCrush
Tooling: one LunarCrush custom collection (cadillac, escalade, escalade iq, lyriq, optiq, vistiq, celestiq, blackwing, cadillac f1, super cruise; exclude cadillac chronicles, cadillac records, johnny cadillac) plus the weekly topic and creator pulls this audit was built from.