PARIS — With beautiful, branded shop windows and broad boulevards punctuated by ornate architecture, downtown Paris is the intersection of new-world fashion and old-world grandeur. Hermes, the Louvre, Dior, Domaine National du Palais-Royal, Louis Vuitton, Eglise de la Madeleine, Chanel.

Cadillac’s flagship European showroom has found a home here.

Housed in a historic 1919 building across the street from Palais Garnier Opera House, the 122-year-old luxury brand’s Cadillac City Paris showroom is a showcase of state-of-the-art automotive fashion.

This week, the fashion is motorsports, as the automotive world has descended on France for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A 690-horsepower, V-8 powered Cadillac V-Series.R Hypercar greeted shoppers, tourists and media this week as they streamed in and out of Cadillac’s huge two-story store on Rue Meyerbeer — one of five European stores for the brand, including Zurich, Switzerland; Stockholm, Sweden, and Hamburg and Frankfurt, Germany.

The race car is representative of Caddy’s four-car assault on Le Mans as the brand tries to win the historic race 75 years after it first competed there in the 1950s. If the V8-powered V-Series.R represents the current fashion in sportscar racing, then the electric Lyriq V-Series — also introduced into the store this week — represents the state of European auto fashion.

“We transformed the entire space in honor of the 24 hours of Le Mans, so we are expecting a lot of traffic to see the beautiful race car — and then watching the Le Mans race with us. We have grandstands, we have popcorn, we have big live viewing screens,’ said Cadillac France Communications Director Isabelle Weitz. “And the Lyriq-V is a big introduction for us. Obviously, the performance aspect, I think, is really going to be of interest.”

Like the Apple Opera Store on the Rue Halevy just around the corner from Cadillac City Paris, the showroom gives off a high-tech vibe behind a historic façade. The modern, open space encircles a wrought-iron circular staircase that disappears into the ceiling on its way to the second floor. Instead of iPhones, laptops and tablets, the V-Series models are the product centerpieces. But the second floor feels very Apple Store-like with long tables full of tablets that customers can use to configure their new Cadillac — complete with colors, wheels, V-performance.

It’s a decidedly American high-tech feel, and the Cadilac store was filled with young families and young adults interacting with the tablets as well as the race car.

“The Paris showroom is ornate outside, but feels homey on the inside for families and kids who want to spend time with the products,” said popular model, social influencer and race car driver Lindsey Brewer as she conducted a photo shoot at the store.

Inside, passersby signed up for Lyriq test drives — the cars pulling up to the curb for a slow drive around Paris’s choked evening streets. Since the showroom opened last year, Cadillac has grown to the fourth best-selling EV maker in France. In a country where many owners (unlike in the United States) get their cars via company fleets, some of Cadillac’s biggest customers include telecom, food and postal companies.

Weitz said this new tech mixes nicely with a brand that — for all its years in the wilderness in the late 20th century — is integrated in European culture. Cadillacs inhabit the songs that Europeans listen to — Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac,” “Cadillac Song” by Ariana Grande, Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love” — and the new models reinforce that image with cutting-edge Dolby Atmos tech. Cadillac even sponsors the EF Pro Cycling team — providing its Lyriq support vehicles for the Tour de France.

“Unlike Jaguar, for example, that is completely reinventing itself for the electric age, Cadillac is keeping a focus on its heritage while also moving forward,” said Brewer, who raced in the Indy NXT series at the Detroit Grand Prix in 2024. “It’s innovating in fashion and in music.”

Cadillac will follow up this year’s Le Mans-palooza with an even more audacious entry next year into Formula One, Europe’s most prestigious open-wheel racing series. Cadillac’s presence here is about more than performance, however.

The brand sees a unique opportunity to recast itself as the “Standard of the World” in Europe — leaning into its roots as an innovative luxury brand with a new generation of electric cars in a country that bears its namesake.

“Cadillac is named after a small town in southwest France,” said Cadillac France Sales Chief Chahine Bouaiache. “We are selling our cars to Parisians who love the design of the car. The designer was a French woman,” referring to Magalie Debellis, former manager of Cadillac Advanced Design who led the Lyriq styling team.

Cadillac believes that its history of innovation positions itself to take advantage of new digital and electric automotive tech. The brand innovated the electric self-starter (1912), column-mounted shifter (1938), air suspension (1957), heated seats (1966), LED lighting (2000) and magnetic ride suspension (2022) — all of which the Lyriq, Optiq and Vistiq share.

The Paris store leans into its history with a hallway decorated with features covering the brand’s achievements organized into four sections: Innovation, La Mode (fashion), Le Cinema (Cadillac in movies), La Musique. One innovation that’s missing from the EVs? Super Cruise, Cadillac’s innovative, hands-free driving system that the European Union — lagging the United States — has not approved for use on its roads.

“I was born in France, grew up in Germany. Cadillac, for me, is a brand that you just know, and I think that's I speak for the whole of Europe,” Bouaiache said of the distinctive Lyriqs plying Paris streets. “It's one that always had incredible design innovation, technology ... it's just one that turns heads. You want to look at it.”

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