Cadillac has a home in New York. GM’s luxury brand has signed the rental agreement for their new headquarters, located in the 330 Hudson building in Hudson Square.

The report came late Friday, and according to the New York Times, the lease deal gives Cadillac the top two floors of the 16-story building. That’s 34,000 square feet, or approximately 42 Manhattan apartments.

Built in 1910, the limestone structure is located at the intersection of three trendy neighborhoods — SoHo, Greenwich Village, and Tribeca — known for their famous art galleries and fashion boutiques and film festivals. The building itself was a former warehouse with a stone and brick colonnade facade. The glass-enclosed addition where Cadillac will reside was a modern addition completed in 2013.

Cadillac boss Johan de Nysschen’s controversial relocation hopes to capitalize on New York’s thriving culture as a crossroads of art, business and commerce. De Nysschen famously relocated Infiniti headquarters to Hong Kong when he headed Nissan’s luxury brand. He told the Post, “New York is a natural hub of activity for luxury brands and global and international business,” adding, “How much that will aid us remains to be seen, but that’s the basic thinking behind it.”

Infiniti is presenting an imaginative future race car design as part of the upcoming LA Auto Show’s Design Challenge. Though purely a thought exercise, it’s a peek into what automakers are conjuring behind the closed walls of their design studios.

Each year the LA Auto Show, home show to America’s auto design nexus, invites automakers and their design studios to come up with futuristic takes on a common theme. For 2014, that theme is “Sensing the Future,” which focuses on human-machine connection because apparently even autonomous cars are not yet communicating with us on a telepathic level.

Infiniti is the first to reveal their submission, called the Synaptiq. It’s not so much a car as a pod that fits into a range of vehicles. The premise is a new motorsports triathalon called ARC, or Air, Rally and Circuit, taking place in 2029. Races are broken down into three parts: a Formula One-esque road course stretching between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, an off-road rally stage to the Grand Canyon, and an airborne leg guided by virtual pylons back to LA.

At each section, the driver’s Synaptiq fuselage is removed (or ejected) from each vehicle for transfer. Wouldn’t it be easier for the driver to hop from vehicle to vehicle? No, because the way you control the car is a “spinal lock” connection port that takes human-machine interface to the next level. The Synaptic S.U.I.T. (Symbiotic User Interface Technology) actually has a slot on the back. You can imagine the rest.

Other competitors in the Design Challenge include Honda, Acura, Mercedes, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen, Toyota’s Calty studio, Peterbilt, and Chinese newcomer automaker Qoros. The winner will be announced during the LA Auto Show next week.

A new report finds Volkswagen will expand the Golf lineup with a compact SUV.
Scheduled to arrive in 2018 at the earliest, the yet-unnamed off-roader will partially fill the void that will be left by the current Tiguan when a larger and more upscale second-generation model is introduced late next year. The SUV will be more capable than the average compact soft-roader but it will not be a hardcore off-roader, either.

Industry rumors indicate the SUV will share the bulk of its mechanical components with the eighth-generation Golf that engineers are in the early stages of developing. The next generation of Volkswagen’s 4Motion all-wheel drive system will be available at an extra cost on most trim levels, and a gasoline-electric plug-in hybrid drivetrain could round out the lineup later in the production run.

If the rumor turns out to be true, expect to hear more about the Golf-badged SUV over the coming years.

Déjà Vu
The idea of a Golf on stilts isn’t new in Wolfsburg. Volkswagen traveled to the 1989 edition of the Frankfurt Motor Show to introduce a concept car called Golf Montana. Essentially a second-gen Golf with a steel ladder frame and a raised suspension, the concept was surprisingly given the green light for production and after generating an overwhelmingly positive response from show-goers. Over 7,000 examples of the Golf Country (pictured) were produced by Steyr-Puch in Austria until the model was axed in 1991.

A leak has prematurely revealed the Audi Prologue concept ahead of its scheduled debut at the Los Angeles Motor Show that will open its doors next week.

The concept was penned under the guidance of Marc Lichte, who’s been leading Audi’s design team since February. The leaked sketches suggest the Prologue boasts a sharper rendition of the company’s trademarked Singleframe radiator grille and thin angular headlights that likely pack advanced matrix beam technology.

The Prologue features a fastback-like rear end accented by thick C-pillars and aggressive horizontal tail lamps. The coupe stretches 200 inches long, 76 inches wide and 54 inches tall, dimensions that make it about the same size as a standard-wheelbase A8.

Lichte explains the concept draws inspiration from key models in Audi history including the 90 quattro IMSA GTO, the original TT and the first-generation A8 that was launched in 1994.

Full details about the Audi Prologue will be published in the coming days. Stay tuned to Leftlane for live images of Audi’s latest concept straight from the show floor in L.A. starting next Wednesday.

What’s Next?
While the new look is expected to inspire nearly all future Audis, the L.A.-bound show car will specifically influence a new range-topping coupe that will fight head-to-head against the Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe. Set to land in 2017 at the earliest, the two-door will be offered with a long list of engine options including a twin-turbocharged V8 tuned to send over 600 horsepower to all four wheels.