It’s an all-too-common problem: You have $158,000 burning a hole in your pocket, and a burning desire for a car that’s not like other cars. You want something that’s yours, something unique. Cadillac now has the answer for you. The company just introduced Curated by Cadillac, a bespoke program for the 2026 CT5-V Blackwing that promises to turn your briefcase full of cash into a unique, hand-painted Cadillac with your choice of special interior and exterior colors. Arguably the best Cadillac in the lineup, done up in your favorite colors — what’s not to like?
Curated by Cadillac is a neat concept, but it has an issue: The competition. Automakers are increasingly offering custom jobs for the fabulously wealthy. Cadillac is the latest, but Porsche has long offered its Paint to Sample program for custom exterior colors — for less money, too. Cadillac offers “more than 160” exterior colors for the $59,000 Curated upcharge, while Porsche’s base-tier PTS treatment asks just $13,620 to apply “more than 190” colors to a comparably base-priced Taycan. If you want Porsche to develop a one-off color just for you, or based on a paint sample, that’ll be $31,100.
More than just color
Now, of course, the Cadillac package offers more than just hand-applied exterior paint. There’s also a number of exclusive interior options, which Cadillac describes as “an expanded selection of colors and materials that can be mixed and matched in millions of different combinations to deliver an interior environment as individual and unique as each client.” The automaker hasn’t yet specified what those options are, but hopefully there are some wild leather colors included. Whether those interior colors are worth the $45,380 that the Curated by Cadillac program costs over Porsche’s PTS, though, is up to the buyer — that much cash buys you a lot of deviated leather out of Stuttgart.
Curated by Cadillac is a neat concept. I’m always excited when automakers start adding colors to their lineups, and I’ll be crossing my fingers that some wildly-colored CT5-V Blackwings start showing up on Facebook Marketplace in my price range in a few decades. I just can’t help but wonder whether the people with $158,000 to burn on a car are really going to spend it on this, rather than a Porsche in Viola Purple Metallic or some similarly beautiful shade. For $59,000 on top of the CT5-V Blackwing’s base price, is Curated by Cadillac really worth the expense?
