2006 Cadillac Xlr V Convertible 2-door 4.4l on 2040-cars

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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

Cadillac exec realizes ELR pricing was stupid high

At least one Cadillac exec has finally started to come to terms with something we knew all along: the initial $75,000 price for the ELR plug-in hybrid was way too high. The bad decision in part led to the model selling just over 1,000 units last year. Company marketing boss Uwe Ellinghaus recently gave an interview to Bloomberg where he discussed what went wrong. "The MSRP was, indeed, a mouthful," Ellinghaus said to Bloomberg. "We overestimated that customers would realize our competitors were naked at that price." People balked at the ELR's price from the very start, and dealers were receiving $5,000 at one point just for getting customers to test drive the PHEV. Later, some incentives for buyers were as high as $14,000. Cadillac planners saw a conundrum when it came to the ELR's price. Too low of a figure was thought to bring the model close to the Chevrolet Volt, and $75,000 was also believed to signal Caddy's PHEV as something special. "We just wanted to make this a statement for the brand of how progressive we are," Ellinghaus said to Bloomberg. Cadillac is now working to rehabilitate the ELR's reputation with a host of updates for 2016. Buyers get a 25-percent boost in powertrain output, additional standard features, and the whole package comes with a $9,000 drop in price. The tweaks should help the luxurious PHEV make a better second impression. Related Video:

Canada opens probe into 250,000 GM pickups, SUVs over brake performance

Transport Canada, the auto safety regulator, has opened a probe into braking issues in nearly 250,000 General Motors full-size pickups and SUVs after U.S. officials launched a similar probe last year, the agency said on its website. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in November into 2.73 million U.S. 2014-2016 model year SUVs and pickups after receiving 487 reports of hard brake pedal effort accompanied by extended stopping distance that were attributed to deterioration of the engine-driven brake assist vacuum pump. Transport Canada's probe covers 249,700 2015 through 2017 model year vehicles including the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Suburban, Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon as well as 2014-2017 Chevrolet Silverado LD and GMC Sierra LD vehicles. The U.S. agency said it had reports of nine incidents of vehicles incurring damage as a result of colliding with another vehicle or fixed object at low speeds and reports of two injuries. NHTSA said if the pump fails to operate, the amount of brake power assist can be significantly reduced, extending vehicle stopping distance. The NHTSA sent GM an information request in a Feb. 7 letter. A GM spokesman said he had no update on the investigation. Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis