2009 Cadillac Cts Base Sedan 4-door 3.6l (delivery Possible) on 2040-cars

Auto blog

GM admits Cadillac ELR no real competition for Tesla Model S

Last year, then-CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, made it clear that the company lookouts at the Ren Cen had California automaker Tesla in their sights. "If you want to compete head-to-head with Tesla, and we ultimately will, you want to do it with a Cadillac," he said. So, given the fact that the Cadillac ELR has a plug and sells for roughly the same price at the Tesla Model S ($75,000 vs $69,900, before incentives) and that Cadillac doesn't have any other electric vehicle on the horizon, you'd be forgiven if you thought that the way that Akerson wanted to challenge Tesla's EV success was with the ELR. Well, you'd apparently be wrong. "The ELR is a different car, it's a different price point. It's way-different technology." - GM's Mark Reuss Speaking yesterday in Detroit, GM's head of global product development, Mark Reuss, admitted that the ELR is not the Tesla competitor that Akerson promised. "People like to say the ELR is [competition for the Model S], but it's really not. It's a different car, it's a different price point. It's way-different technology." So, if we follow that logic to conclusion with Akerson's quote from last year, then the only way that Cadillac can eventually compete with Tesla is with a pure electric car, and that seems an outside chance, at best, for the foreseeable future. Through the end of July, Cadillac has sold 578 ELRs since it went on sale earlier this year. Tesla doesn't break out monthly US sales, but has sold 15,114 Model S EVs around the world in the first six months of 2014. For his part, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has already said that GM is headed down the wrong path with plug-in hybrids like the ELR or the Chevy Volt. Speaking about the Volt last year, Musk said, Chevy "sort of created something that's a bit of amphibian," which resulted in a car that's, "Okay but not great."

Cadillac Rear Camera Mirror | 2017 Autoblog Technology of the Year Finalist

We give Cadillac a lot of credit for being the first to make good on the promise to replace mirrors with cameras and displays. That was good enough to earn the Cadillac Rear Camera Mirror a place on our 2017 Technology of the Year awards shortlist for new features. The idea behind this system is relatively simple; what perhaps took more doing was getting the regulations in place to allow a video feed to replace the government-mandated mirror. The hardware and that rules compliance starts with what looks like a normal rearview mirror – because it defaults to being a mirror until you switch on the display or in the event the system somehow fails. Flip the little toggle at the bottom of the mirror – the one normally used to switch from day to night mode – and the reflection is replaced by a very crisp feed from a camera at the back of the vehicle. This live stream gives you a wide-angle view of what's behind, without obstruction from back-seat passengers, headrests, or any bodywork. The camera is even shielded from weather and has a coating to shed water. What you see doesn't exactly look like a normal reflection, but the quality is good enough and you see more than you would normally with something aimed through today's small rear windows. But because it isn't actually a reflection, you have to make some adjustments. When your eyes are focused down the road, glancing at a mirror gives you a view the same distance away but in the rear. With the rear camera mirror, a glance back requires your eyes to first refocus on the display, which takes a moment. And unlike a normal mirror, which you look through at an angle, this display is angled toward the driver but projecting an image that looks straight back – no matter how you move it, the image doesn't change like a mirror's would. And because it's an image and not a reflection, you can't choose what's in focus and lose your sense of depth perception. It's not clear whether objects in mirror are closer or farther than they appear. And there are other limitations. For instance, while the display balances bright lights and dark surroundings well at night, it is tricked by LED headlights, which flicker at a rate faster than the camera shoots. The result is a distracting strobe effect like you get when you point a smartphone camera at any LED light source. For those with migraine sensitivity, this kind of fast flashing can cause real problems.

Such Sweet Sorrow: Cadillac's CTS-V gets an Irish wake

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. The honkin', stonkin' second-generation CTS-V, powered by Cadillac's brawny supercharged 6.2-liter V8 has been a very good thing. And now that the 500 final coupes – the only CTS-Vs designated 2015 models – have been built (just five remain unsold as of this writing), it is indeed a good thing that's come to an end. But Cadillac is not letting 2009–2015 CTS-V go gently into that good night, even as its replacement is poised to debut in just in just two months at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Instead, Cadillac invited us to Austin's Circuit of the Americas racetrack for what it called an "Irish wake" for the model that has proven to be one of the quickest and most charismatic models in General Motors' history. If you don't know what an Irish wake is, if you envision storytelling, songs, debauchery and more than a little liquor, you'll be in the ballpark. In this case, though, adrenaline substituted in for the booze, with squealing tires and shrieking V8s providing the singing. The debauchery took the form of an all-you-can-drive lapping of COTA in all three bodystyles – coupe, sedan and wagon – and the stories were told by the grins plastered on our faces all day. First and foremost, we'll miss the CTS-V's perfect balance of luxury and sportiness. Even after six years with no major changes, the CTS-V is surprisingly spry. Certainly, you never forget that it's a heavy thing, weighing in anywhere between 4217 pounds for the manual-equipped coupe to 4424 for an automatic wagon, but with 0-60 times of about four seconds and the ability to hit about 150 mph on COTA's back straight, the Vs remain an absolute hoot on the track. Sure, some of its details – the blocky front fascia shapes and the spoiler on the sedan and coupe models, for example – look a bit dated, but the overall design still looks sufficiently badass. The interior design has worn pretty well, too, and however Cadillac may feel about center stack buttons being so last decade, we favor them over the capacitive-touch madness of today's CUE system. We're not going to bother doing another full review of the car here, but suffice it to say, there is plenty we will miss. First and foremost, will be the CTS-V's perfect balance of luxury and sportiness. Rumor has it that Cadillac will offer the 6.2-liter LT4 V8 in the next generation (we predict about 600 hp), but we hear that the new car will skew more toward luxury than balls-out performance.