When I made it big as a comedian, even before I started doing The Tonight Show, I took my dad out to buy him a car. My dad was Italian and felt he had to have a Cadillac.

We go into the showroom at the Cadillac store and there’s a big white Cadillac sat there. I remember the salesman saying, “You want the regular interior or the interior de EleGAAAANCE?” And I said, “Oh, we’ll have the interior de EleGAAAANCE.”

This was in 1984, and the inside of the car was all crimson and tufted. I mean, it looked like the decor of a brothel. It was a white Cadillac with red upholstery and great big buttons.

My dad thought this was the most fabulous thing ever, but my mother did not — she was so embarrassed to drive in this car. My mother was from Scotland, you see, so any show of ostentation was meet with “Aach”. They would go down the street and sit at a lights and if there were people next to them she would lean across and say: “You know, we are not really Cadillac people, our son got us this.” My mother was so embarrassed to ride in this flashy white car that she would slump below the level of the window so she couldn’t be seen.

So that’s what Cadillacs always meant to me: big, old men’s cars. They were good though: the air-conditioning was freezing, the heating was boiling, everything was dependable. Cadillacs didn’t stop well or go round corners decently, but they did what they were supposed to do — take Italian guys around and look real cool. I remember my uncle saying: “The Cadillac is the Rolls-Royce of automobiles!”

In a way he was right. In 1949 the Cadillac was the greatest car in the world: it had Hydramatic transmission, a V8 engine, electric windows, air-conditioning . . . all the stuff that Rolls-Royce owners could only dream about. It was smooth, it was fast, it was quiet . . . it was just a terrific car.

The trouble is that the same thing happened to Cadillac that happened to the British car industry, which is now starting to happen to the Japanese car industry, too. People get lazy, you see. They think, “Let’s just keep making the same thing, let’s not put the profit back into new development, let’s put it into financing and into other areas.”

Twenty years ago at Cadillac, an exciting new feature was not the introduction of disc brakes or the improvement of handling, it was a voice saying, “Your door is ajar”. Nonsense things like that meant Cadillac lost its way.

Now, though, Cadillac seems to have got its act together. In fact I have never seen a brand execute a turnaround as effective as this one. The company once again seems to comprise engineers, and appears to be getting rid of nonsense such as landau bars — S-shaped bars at the rear fitted solely for decorative reasons — and awful gold roofs.

I believe the Cadillac CTS and CTV are two of the best, most entertaining American cars currently on sale. And the XLR, which is scheduled to arrive in Britain early next year, is a good car too. Cadillac is now cool like it has never been: when we have rappers like 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg on the show, the words Cadillac Escalade are all they want to hear. They love the Escalade, which really is the coolest car out there. That makes me smile, because like I said, when I was a kid Cadillacs were for old men.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the XLR and it’s a good all-round package. The chassis is one of the most modern platforms available, the standard model has more power than the Mercedes SL350 or SL500, and here in America it’s a bit cheaper than the competing Mercedes or BMW so that’s the big advantage. In the UK that advantage is unfortunately lost: the XLR will cost around £70,000 compared with £58,510 for the SL350 and £72,160 for the SL500.

It has all the modern features you’d expect, such as keyless entry, but I’m always suspicious of things like that because they make me think of Sherlock Holmes TV shows set during the war, where Holmes investigates someone who has cut an electrical wire to an alarm. I recall him saying in a cut-glass accent: “Ah, electricity, the high priestess of false security.” It’s the same for me. All this electronic stuff is wonderful until your battery goes dead. I like the simple mechanical-ness of pulling a switch.

Despite which, I like the XLR, and the way its roof goes up and down is an engineering marvel, although you don’t get much boot space. I guess you might just be able to get a nine-iron in there.

If you want brilliant high-speed handling then get the Corvette . . . although I still thought the XLR handled pretty good and rode nicely. It seemed more responsive than the Merc and more like the Dodge Viper. If they bothered with focus groups, half would like the Viper and half wouldn’t. Then the company says: “Well, half didn’t like it, so we’d better not make it.” Trouble is, the half who do like it absolutely love it, and if you can sell it to that half then that’s fine. It’s the same with the XLR, so it’s good that Cadillac stuck by its beliefs.

It is also a style that appeals to those who grew up in the 1980s and are now in their twenties or thirties and used to those angular Japanese shapes, transformer-type things and Star Wars-inspired objects. That’s where it has appeal. It’s okay: I like it, and it certainly doesn’t bother me, even though it’s not of my age group.

The other thing that’s great is that the stylists and engineers are working together for the first time at Cadillac — or so it seems to me. Years ago you’d style a car and that was that. Now you engineer a car first, then the stylists come in.

The bottom line is that all cars are good now — there really are no bad ones. When I was a kid, every two years we’d go to the Midas Muffler exhaust dealer, bring our guarantee and they’d put a new tin muffler on, which would last for one winter. My dad had a 1966 Ford and by 1969 it was so badly rotted that my foot went straight through the floor.

Nowadays, though, what you have to sell is your branding, quality and style. BMW is the standard now: if you are anything less than BMW you are simply not in the game. The XLR is close though — it’s a real good up-to-date car, although worryingly some of the trim appears to come from the GM parts bin.

This is a turning point for Cadillac, a company that is constantly fighting the old customer who has been there for 50 years and will buy a new Cadillac every three years. Those customers are going to walk in, see the shape of the new XLR or even the CTV and go, “Standard shift? What the hell is that?” So you have to replace that customer with somebody new, and the company seems to be doing that pretty well. I know a lot of young guys who are excited about the new Cadillac models.

I like the fact that it’s a clean sheet of paper, because to get an American car company to start with a clean sheet is a pretty good thing. All they need do now is keep the quality and get rid of the little things that break. Rudolph Giuliani had that idea when he was mayor of New York: he reckoned that if you could fix the small crimes the big crimes would look after themselves. It’s the same with cars — if the radio doesn’t work or a piece of trim falls off it may be no big deal, but it is in your face and it bothers you.

That’s always been the problem with American cars: they run for ever, you can’t kill them, but you get in and shut the door and . . . “ker-klink”, some chromed plastic falls off the door and your friends go: “Hey, nice new car, Bob!”

Timing is everything, and just as Cadillac gets it together I get my first-ever Cadillac. It’s not an XLR or a CTV but an old 1957 model.

I wasn’t looking for one but an old boy called me up the other day. He’s 88 years old and a Normandy-beach veteran. He goes, “Jay? Jay Leno? My name is Ed. I’m 88 years old and I don’t have any family but for one nephew and he’s an asshole. I don’t want to give him my car so I want you to have my Cadillac.”

So I talk to him and he shows me his second world war diary. He’s a pretty sharp guy so I say, “Ed, I’ll restore it to brand new for you.” So he gave it to me, and now I finally own a Cadillac.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model: Cadillac XLR
Engine type: V8, 4565cc
Power: 320bhp @ 6400rpm
Torque: 310 lb ft @ 4400rpm
Transmission: Five-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Suspension: Independent, double wishbone all round
Fuel: 17mpg (city), 25mpg (open road)
Acceleration: 0-60mph: 5.9sec
Top speed: 155mph
Price: $75,835 (UK circa £70,000)
Verdict: Breathes new life into a vintage marque

Jeremy Clarkson is away