The XT5 has been a home run for Cadillac - and we got to try it twice

Cadillac used to have a bit of a crossover problem. While other luxury brands had been selling these versatile vehicles left and right, Caddy was playing catch up, marketing its portfolio of brash, high-performance sport coupes and sedans under the "V" designation, alongside the regular versions of these cars.

But Johan de Nysschen, the executive who runs the marque, wanted crossovers, to compete with BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, Lincoln, Volvo - heck, pretty much everybody in the luxury space.

True, Cadillac has the mighty Escalade, but that's a large-and-in-charge mega-SUV. It's not really designed for most suburban families. It also had the SRX, a crossover that evolved from a wagon, but it was getting long-in-the-tooth and wasn't an effective modern combatant in battles against the premium crossovers from the Germans and Japanese.

De Nysschen's goal is to shift the portfolio away from aggressive, near-exotic designs and platforms and bring Caddy into alignment with the rest of the luxury market. That means more crossovers, starting with the XT5, the SRX's replacement and the most important Cadillac in years.

So far, the vehicle has ben huge hit. Almost 25,000 have been sold through the first five months of 2017 - monthly sales are pushing 6,000. And the XT5 was just introduced last June.

A while back, we sampled the SUV when we received not one but two versions of the XT5, one in Florida and one in the New York-New Jersey area. Transportation Reporter Ben Zhang tried the black XT5, which came with a slightly higher-level trim package and tipped the price scales at about $64,000, while Senior Correspondent Matt DeBord investigated a $58,000 "crystal white" XT5.

Here's what we thought: