Cadillac's $1,800 'Book' subscription paused after two years — too costly to deliver

Book by Cadillac launched in early 2017 as General Motors' answer to Rent the Runway for cars: for $1,800 a month, members could swap among Cadillac models, with registration, insurance, taxes, maintenance and unlimited mileage folded into the fee. The subscription aimed to turn a luxury brand into a service rather than a one-off purchase.

The pilot was expensive to run. Cadillac had built it as a test, and the logistics of delivering and picking up a different car for each member every month soaked up money. The Wall Street Journal reported that the service was ending because it was too costly to deliver multiple cars to each customer.

Cadillac paused the program effective December 1, 2018, saying it would use what it had learned to improve the experience and announce next steps later. It never relaunched. Competitors including Porsche Passport, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo's Care by Volvo pushed on, but Cadillac quietly shelved one of the first US car-subscription experiments.