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MIT puts V2V technology on its 2015 Top Ten list

Of all the technologies swimming around the automotive world, it is vehicle-to-vehicle communication that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fished out as one of its Ten Breakthrough Technologies of 2015. It joined emerging tech like brain organoids, supercharged photosynthesis, and Project Loon on the list, and got the nod over autonomous driving because, as the MIT Technology Review wrote, V2V communication "is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety." How so? Because actual cars transmitting data like their location, speed, steering angle, and state of braking to one another at least ten times per second provides a greater degree of awareness than sensor readings and algorithms. The US Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been working for years on standards and a regulatory schedule for introducing V2V to the marketplace, and Cadillac plans to incorporate V2V into at least one of its vehicles by 2017. Since we've begun the year with a number of stories of cars being hacked into, that got us wondering about the security of V2V communications. In a recent piece by our own Pete Bigelow on what motorists should know about getting their cars hacked into, he wrote that although cyber break-ins are extremely difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to do remotely, V2V is "one more conceivable avenue a hacker could use to impact multiple cars at a given time." So we spoke to Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Security Innovation about it. The automotive consultancy company has been working with the DOT since 2003 on V2V technology and the issues around it - namely security and privacy - and its chief scientist, William Whyte, is the technical editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1609.2 standard outlining its security protocols. Those protocols are expected to be finalized by the DOT toward the end of this year and then come into effect in 2016, and the company's Aerolink product is the security solution Cadillac will use. Whyte said, "If you hack into a car, V2V is the hardest place to start," and Pete Samson, the general manager of Security Innovation's automotive team, said "There are ten or 12 alternate attack surfaces" around the car that would make much easier targets.

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.

2020 Cadillac CT5 debuts at N.Y. Auto Show as a proper sport sedan

The 2019 Cadillac CT5 is here, and it's not a tweener sedan. After having done battle with the luxury sedan world through cars that were either too large or too small, Cadillac is using the CT5 to take direct aim at the BMW 3 Series, Audi A4, Alfa Romeo Giulia and Mercedes C-Class. Specifically, the CT5 replaces the CTS, but takes on vehicles one class smaller than what the CTS did. So, let's take a look at what Cadillac is bringing to the table. To begin, GM knows it has a winner on its hands with the Alpha platform used on the CTS and ATS and the Camaro, so engineers adapted it to the CT5. This seems like a great start, because we all happen to love the driving dynamics from vehicles on this chassis. The wheelbase is a couple inches longer than the CTS, but the CT5 is a couple inches shorter in overall length. As a result, the wheels get pushed toward the corners of the car, leaving the CT5 with relatively short overhangs in the front and rear. It looks different than both of the to-be-discontinued Cadillac sedans, but we wouldn't call it revolutionary. The rear end isn't quite a "sportback," but it's a "faster" shape, eschewing a traditional sedan's long decklid for a sloping-roof look instead. This shape does come at the expense of rear seat headroom, but we'll dive into the interior later. We got a little preview of the powertrain setup before this official reveal, but details were scarce. The base engine is the recently new 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder found in the Cadillac XT4. Just as it did in that vehicle, this engine makes 237 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque. While it might be down on power compared to the old 2.0-liter in the ATS (272 horsepower and 295 pound-feet) we found it to be incredibly smooth, refined and not lacking in thrust compared to the old unit. We're sure the four-pot will offer sufficient power for the CT5, but the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 is lying in wait. This engine makes 335 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. Both engines are paired to a 10-speed automatic transmission and can be had in rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive in every configuration. So yes, you can get the V6 with rear-wheel drive, thankfully. Cylinder deactivation is also equipped to both these power units — the four-banger is able to run on two cylinders, while the V6 drops to four. Cadillac was entirely transparent about its new pumped-in engine sound strategy, too.