The Book by Cadillac vehicle subscription service will return in 2020 after a year-long hiatus, General Motors announced last week.
The service was suspended at the end of 2018 due to poor performance, and Cadillac said it would re-think the service before bringing it back for another go.
Apparently, Cadillac is done thinking. The subscription will be brought back starting in February 2020, GM Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl told an industry conference last week. She told Automotive News (subscription required) that Cadillac learned a "significant" amount from its previous attempt with Book. It was also not without its upsides: approximately 70 percent of users were new to Cadillac.
2020 Cadillac XT4
Book launched in New York City in 2017, later expanding to markets in Texas and California. Like other similar services, it offered subscribers the option of choosing from a number of Cadillac vehicles that could be swapped as many as 18 times per year. For a fee of $1,800 per month, members received courtesy delivery and pickup, insurance, unlimited miles, maintenance, and detailing.
It was widely reported that Cadillac ended up spending more for some of those services than anticipated, which made it look iffy on paper. It's unclear yet how Cadillac has chosen to address these issues, but it seems likely that customer swap opportunities might be reduced while the monthly subscription price increased. Wahl did not elaborate on either.
Book was the first premium subscription service to hit the market, but the space is now also occupied by Porsche's Passport, Care by Volvo, Access by BMW and Mercedes-Benz Collection, just to name a few. Others are expected to dip their toes into the water soon as well.