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Cadillac's CEO on Apple CarPlay: ’extremely clunky’

In this new world of advanced in-car infotainment and connectivity, car and tech companies alike are creating interfaces with mixed success. Apparently one system has annoyed Cadillac CEO Johan de Nysschen enough he's openly griping about it. In an interview with our friends at Yahoo Finance, the CEO had a number of complaints about Apple CarPlay, a system that, along with Android Auto, is rapidly becoming a staple of automotive infotainment. Though he acknowledged the system's potential, de Nysschen said CarPlay "is extremely clunky." He highlighted issues he's had with Apple Maps reacting too slowly for turn-by-turn navigation on the highway, app transitions that weren't smooth, and some quirks he found when using voice commands. While we won't say Apple CarPlay is perfect by any means, we're also not so sure it's deserving of such high-profile criticism, particularly from Cadillac. This is because Cadillac's own infotainment system CUE, has not been loved by those of us at Autoblog. And while Cadillac has announced it has a new version of CUE that might fix our issues with it, it's not exactly rolling it out expediently. So before ripping on other infotainment, de Nysschen, maybe make sure your own system in order. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Cadillac Catera

GM's Cadillac Division was having a tough time in the early 1990s, with an onslaught of Lexuses and Infinitis pouring across the Pacific to steal their younger customers while high-end German manufacturers picked off their older customers. Flying an S-Class-priced model between assembly lines in Turin and Hamtramck hadn't worked out, so why not look to the European outposts of the far-flung GM Empire for the next Cadillac? That's how the Catera was born, and I have found a rare first-year example in a North Carolina car graveyard. Across the Atlantic, GM's Opel and Vauxhall were doing good business with prosperous European car buyers by selling them the sleek rear-wheel-drive Omega B (whose platform also lived beneath the Holden VT Commodore in Australia). Here was a genuine German design that competed with success against BMW and Audi on their home turf! So, the Omega B was Americanized and renamed the Catera. Opel wasn't a completely unknown brand to Americans at the time, since its cars were sold here with their own badging through Buick dealerships from the middle 1950s through the late 1970s (for a much shorter period, American Pontiac dealers attempted to sell Vauxhalls). Even after that, plenty of Opel DNA showed up in the products of U.S.-market GM divisions. The Catera was by far the most affordable Cadillac for 1997, with an MSRP starting at $29,995 (about $59,113 in 2024 dollars). Being a genuine German car, it looked much more convincingly European than the DeVille ($36,995), Eldorado ($37,995) and Seville ($39,995). Inspired by the ducks on the Cadillac emblem (they were really supposed to be martlets, mythical birds with no feet and occasionally lacking beaks), Cadillac's marketers went after youthful car shoppers with a whimsical animated duck named Ziggy. For the 21st century, the birds were removed from the Cadillac emblem in order to attract California buyers under 45 years of age. As we all know, the Catera flopped hard in the marketplace. What sold well in Europe turned out not to translate so well in in North America, especially when bearing the badges of such a historically prestigious brand. The Catera's engine was a 54-degree 3.0-liter V6 rated at 200 horsepower and 192 pound-feet. Just as had been the case with its predecessor, the Allante, no manual transmission was available.

2019 Cadillac XT4 almost revealed in Oscar commercial

The wait is nearly over to see the new Cadillac XT4. The company announced that the new luxury crossover SUV will make its debut at the New York Auto Show and hit dealers in the fall. Before all that, though, we're getting a sneak peek in the above commercial for the new Caddy, which will also air during the Academy Awards. The ad doesn't show us many surprises. It has the same clean and slightly creased lines of most of the rest of the Cadillac lineup. The shape of the grille is very clearly inspired by the Escala. We do get a nice look at the tall D-pillar hugging taillights, which really give the Cadillac a stand-out appearance. When the Cadillac is revealed, we're expecting it to have turbocharged four-cylinder power under the hood powering either the front or all four wheels. This is because it's going to be built off of the Chevy Malibu platform. It will also usher in new interior design language featuring an electronic, likely monostable shifter and a cadre of physical buttons rather than a bank of touch-sensitive ones. Image Credit: Cadillac Cadillac Crossover SUV Luxury cadillac xt4