2018 Cadillac Ats on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Cadillac to augment dealers with 700 'boutique' stores

Johan de Nysschen is on a mission to revitalize Cadillac. Since taking over as chief executive of the American luxury brand, the former Audi and Infiniti exec has set about moving the brand's headquarters to New York, switched advertising firms, launched a completely new naming scheme for its model line, and has a whole raft of new products planned. And now he's working on changing how its dealer network operates. Speaking at both the Washington Auto Show and the NADA dealers' convention in San Francisco this week, de Nysschen has outlined a new plan for its US dealers. The network presently consists of over 900 stores – some 200 of which are stand-alone Cadillac dealers, with the remaining 700 attached to other GM brand showrooms. Contrary to earlier fears, de Nysschen notes that the dealer network is larger and covers more territory than those of import brands, and has no intention of cutting that number down. But he is asking those 700 mixed-brand dealers to create a new showroom experience for Cadillac customers. In this latest announcement, Cadillac refers to a new model of "boutique" showrooms that will encompass new technologies, higher-trained staff and luxury amenities to give those attached Cadillac showrooms a more unique feel. The plan includes installing "virtual showroom" systems that will allow potential customers to configure a new car using interactive displays and "potentially even holograms." The plan also calls for "new standards for compensation... with more precise alignment of local sales and potential for each dealer" in order to make sure that the requisite investment in the infrastructure and staff training are worthwhile for the dealers. Just what form these new systems will take, we don't know at this point. Nor are we sure why Cadillac isn't including its 200 stand-alone "flagship" dealers in the initiative. But we're sure we'll be finding out more about de Nysschen's plans on the dealer front in due course. Cadillac Discusses U.S. Dealer Network Development 2015-01-22 WASHINGTON, D.C. – As part of Cadillac's overall mission to expand and elevate within the premium automotive sector, the brand today outlined its strategy to upgrade its U.S. dealer network. Speaking at both the Washington, D.C. Auto Show today, and this weekend's annual National Auto Dealers Association convention in San Francisco, Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen will outline how the brand will target enhancements in the customer experience.

2016 Cadillac CTS-V First Drive [w/video]

A million insects lost their lives today. Boxelder bugs and mayflies making the ultimate sacrifice in Elkhart Lake, their carapaces no buffer against a rocketing rectangle of safety glass. Their bodies gorily streaking into spangles along the diamond-faceted face of the Cadillac CTS-V. Road America is a four-mile ribbon of pavement snaking its way through the emerald center of the country's northern heartland. Since the 1950s it's seen uncountable fields of diverse racing machinery rocket over its hills and around its 14 corners. I would imagine that on those occasions the tramping of onlookers and hubbub of vehicles, both competitive and commonplace, would dissuade a great number of our six-legged friends from making their way onto the track. But today it's just me turning laps. Inconceivably just one journalist, driving the baddest roadgoing Cadillac ever made, on one of the loveliest circuits America has ever carved out. So big-winged bugs made it out to me in a vast array and a tragic sum, and I drilled through them oblivious to anything but one of the greatest days of driving I've ever had. Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster. For 2016 Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster worthy of the carnage described above. The words "epic" and "awesome" are hilariously overused on the Internet, but in the case of the CTS-V's 6.2-liter supercharged V8, their literal meanings are fitting. The capacity to produce 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque is astounding. Feeling those outputs come to growling life under my foot arch, uncorks different reactions in my brain as the day wears on: first trepidation, next cautious optimism, finally red-eyed bloodlust. A glance at the power and torque curves will show you that the charged V8 behaves more like a naturally aspirated thing than a turbo'd on/off switch. Peak torque arrives at 3,600 rpm, horsepower at 6,400, giving the engine lovely, linear power delivery. Even with top torque happening near the middle of the tach, there's no small amount of the stuff when the engine first spins up, so launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. Launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. On the roads around Wisconsin, using all of the available power is hardly advisable, but I have no trouble driving this fast car slowly (sort of).

Cadillac's Blackwing V8 was the best engine at the worst time

It should be clear that GM knows how to innovate and engineer excellent products when it wants to. Cadillac's 4.2-liter twin-turbo Blackwing V8 is recent proof of that. Yet, as related in an extensive Road & Track piece, the Blackwing became victim to some of The General's bugbears, like the reticence to — for whatever reasons — unleash its excellence everywhere, fund that excellence, and be consistent with that excellence over the long term beyond the Corvette and full-sized pickups and SUVs. The R/T story relates tales told by "several people deeply involved with the Blackwing project" about how an engine 18 years in the making was deprived of its reasons for being in less than three. Starting around 2000, GM spent a dozen years building Cadillac up to the point where the American luxury brand could rationally flip to the chapter called, "Taking the Fight to the Germans, but for Real this Time." The first steps in the plan meant an exclusive platform and an exclusive engine. The platform was called Omega. You know the engine's name. They were going to be the aluminum-blocked fist and velvet glove enabling Cadillac to break on through to the other side of luxury — proper luxury to global standards, that is — with a range of beautiful and dynamic crossovers and sedans. An engineer involved in the project estimates GM poured $16 million into the Blackwing's clean-sheet development. Many more seven-figure sums went into creating the first sedan on the Omega platform, the CT6. The automaker dropped millions again poaching ex-Audi and Infiniti chief Johan de Nysschen, and moving Cadillac's headquarters to New York City in 2014. Further pallets of cash funded the development and debut of the Escala concept at Pebble Beach in 2016. In 2018, GM revealed its dramatically named DOHC twin-turbo V8. Considering what came before, the Blackwing clearly wasn't designed for cars. It was designed for world domination. However, against the backdrop of plummeting sedan sales, the CT6 didn't sell like GM had hoped. The automaker hesitated to marshal another fleet of Brinks trucks to fund entries into a cratering bodystyle. Removing sedans from the world domination equation created more difficult math for the crossovers and the Escala.