The kitchen clock has just turned 7am and I must be on my way: I have urgent business at the White House in Washington. I ease the Cadillac into “drive” and purr on to the highway as the radio recounts the final presidential wranglings of John McCain and Barack Obama.

In reality, I am taking the M3 towards Basingstoke. My mission is not to reassess the credibility of US foreign policy, but rather to size up its latest and most luxurious automotive product. That the White House I am travelling to has been unearthed, after much Googling, on the outskirts of Brighton and turns out to be a residential care centre, and that Washington is a quaint village on the nearby South Downs of West Sussex, illustrates how desperate motoring hacks can get for an angle.

Still, a journey by pockmarked British motorway is a rigorous test for any car, not least the Cadillac CTS saloon. If General Motors has serious hopes of taking its Cadillac brand into global markets, the cars must be up to altogether more demanding tasks than the freeway run to Sunset Boulevard.

The roads of this 150-mile journey place just about every demand possible on handling, ride and vehicle dynamics. Jaguar’s XF, BMW’s 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz’s E-Class excel in all these areas, and Cadillac must match them if it is to stamp its presence on the European executive and luxury car market.

Before going any further, I should confess that I positively lust after a Cadillac. The one I want is a convertible. In pink. Sporting white leather seats and whitewall tyres, with twin, rocket-like tailfins. In short, a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado, the defining automotive sculpture of an America whose postwar dreams still seemed attainable and where Buzz Aldrin and his fellow astronauts would soon be reaching for the moon, if not the stars.

If Cadillac could make that Eldorado today it would probably sell in hordes as a style-is-all “cult” car. But safety legislation forbids. And, sadly, after that Eldorado, Cadillac, like much of the rest of the US car industry, descended into an isolationist, US market-only school of engineering I once heard described at a Detroit Motor Show as Cars Restrained by Adequacy Problems. Sometimes acronyms speak volumes.

This latest CTS executive saloon is the first new expression of Cadillac’s determination to be classed as an international player. To do so requires a precision of fit and finish, of attention to ride and handling which, to be blunt, has been largely lost on relatively undemanding US consumers outside BMW-hugging markets such as the east Coast and California.

And the bottom line is that the CTS, engineered for both left- and right-hand drive markets, and with coupe, estate and diesel versions also on the way, makes a pretty persuasive case for itself, not least in looks.

This is the first model bearing the Cadillac family grille that doesn’t look like Excel spreadsheet boxes being blown apart by an Exocet. Aesthetically, it is far more successful than the first models that Cadillac has been selling on the UK market for the past five years – even the smaller, Swedish-built BLS model which is essentially a rebodied Saab. On the test drive, it certainly turned heads; but for all the right reasons.

Along small English backroads you eventually sense it muttering “Jeez”, for its ride and handling responses are not quite up to the very best European standards. But compared with traditional Cadillacs, the gap has shrunk from Grand Canyon to very small. For 99 per cent of European drivers, it is as swift (its biggest, 3.6 litre V6 petrol engine has 310 brake horsepower), capable and agile as can reasonably be wished – even more so in light of its compelling principal selling points.

There are two exceptionally good reasons for buying this car. The first is that the CTS is absurdly cheap, given its handsome looks and long-as-your-arm specification. For £29,995 ($44,923), its standard spec includes: leather interior, heated and electrically adjustable seats, dual-zone climate control, 10-speaker Bose sound system, DVD player, TV, MP3 playback, 40Gb hard drive, iPod input jack, touch-screen satellite navigation, automatic, rain-sensing wipers with heated screen-wash and electric parking brake. It has bi-xenon, high-intensity headlights and even night-time ambient ”mood” lighting. The same spec on a similarly-performing BMW 5-Series would result in a price tag well north of £40,000.

The second reason is that the Cadillac provides a means of standing out from the Jag and Deutschwagen crowd without need of compromise. It goes as well as it looks. And it really does look good. It is the first – but almost certainly not the last – Cadillac parkable on a British driveway that does not risk the owner feeling, just a smidgen, like a wally. Unless, of course, you insist on Eldorado pink.

Every schoolboy knows the Norman conquest began with the match result William 1, Harold 0 at Hastings in 1066. So what slip of mental cogs led me to refer to “Norman” the conqueror, not William, in a recent column is still under investigation by earnest men in white coats. I shall be released from the FT’s stocks shortly.

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The details

Cadillac’s first serious challenger in Europe’s executive saloon market: lavish specification at an exceptional price. Further models to follow

How much
£29,995 (306bhp, 3.6 litre V6), £26,995 for 2.8 litre model

How fast
0-62mph 6.3 secs, max speed 150mph (3.6 litre version on test)

How thirsty
25.4mpg on combined EU urban/rural test cycle

How green
264g CO2/km

Also consider
Chrysler 300C SRT-8 (425bhp) £41,100; Jaguar XF V8 Premium Luxury £45,500; Mercedes-Benz E350 Elegance (268bhp) £38,770, BMW 530iSE (268bhp) £34,995