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Seinfeld and Don Rickles stretch out in classic Caddy for latest CiCGC

It's no surprise that for the newest episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, airing for the first time on the 4th of July, that a couple of American classics are involved. You'll Never Play the Copa unites Seinfeld with legendary curmudgeon Don Rickles, driving around in a stunner of a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Seville in Gleneagles Green (upholstery wrapped in Grandma-spec plastic, of course).
Mr. Rickles really steals the show in this one - maybe our favorite CiCGC to date - though the Eldorado plays a strong-jawed costarring role, for sure. Stories about Ronald Regan, Frank Sinatra, Billy Graham and, of course, Herkie Styles are more than worth the price of admission. Check it out below.

GM Super Cruise is evolving into Ultra Cruise, for hands-off city driving

GM has a "big team" working on an advanced version of its hands-free driving assistance system, Super Cruise, that will expand its capability beyond highways and apply it to city streets, the automaker's vice president of global product development Doug Parks said Tuesday. GM is also continuing to improve its existing Super Cruise product, Parks said during a webcasted interview at Citi’s 2020 Car of the Future Symposium. "As we continue to ratchet up Super Cruise, we continue to add capability and not just highway roads," Parks said, adding that a separate team is working on the hands-free city driving product known internally as "Ultra Cruise." "We're trying to take that same capability off the highway," he said. "Ultra cruise would be all of the Super Cruise plus the neighborhoods, city streets and subdivisions. So Ultra Cruise's domain would be  essentially all driving, all the time." Parks was quick to add that this would not be autonomous driving. Advanced driving assistance systems have become more capable, but they still require a human driver to take control and to be paying attention. "What we're not saying is that Ultra Cruise will be fully autonomous 100% of the time, although that could be one of the end games," Parks said. Parks didn't provide a timeline for when Ultra Cruise might be available. A GM spokesperson said in a statement after his interview that the company continues to expand its hands-free driver assistance system technology across its vehicle portfolio and has "teams looking at how we can expand the capabilities to more scenarios." GM said it "does not have a name or anything specific to announce today, but stay tuned." This new Ultra Cruise feature would put it in competition with Tesla's Autopilot advanced driving system, which is largely viewed as the most capable on the market today. Tesla's "full self-driving" package, a more capable version of Autopilot, can now identify stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the car to a stop on approach. This feature is still considered to be in beta. GM's Super Cruise uses a combination of lidar map data, high-precision GPS, cameras and radar sensors, as well as a driver attention system, which monitors the person behind the wheel to ensure theyÂ’re paying attention. Unlike TeslaÂ’s Autopilot driver assistance system, users of Super Cruise do not need to have their hands on the wheel. However, their eyes must remain directed straight ahead.

2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing First Drive Review | Peak oil

We may have embraced the coming of electrification. We may love a good, high-performance hybrid or EV. We could quite frankly not care less how a car makes power, so long as the end result is satisfactory. But man, nothing suits a big, square-shouldered American sedan quite like a V8. Question our commitment to Mother Gaia if you must, but the blat of a small block is the bass line in the song of American speed. And now onstage for the V8's farewell tour is the 2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, a midsize, manual-transmission luxury sedan that comes out swinging with a hand-built, supercharged 6.2-liter V8 making 668 horsepower and 659 pound-feet of torque. The CT4-V Blackwing may be great in its own right, but it's still down a pair of cylinders. The old Cadillac CTS-V (S not 5) was never the slimmest, sharpest or most luxurious sport sedan money could buy, but it always offered excellent performance for its price. It was also one of the few midsize manual transmission holdouts, at least until the third-generation V model debuted in 2016; for its brief run, it was offered only with the eight-speed automatic. Its spirit lives on in the CT5-V Blackwing, but Cadillac refined the formula significantly for its transition to the updated Alpha platform. The manual is back, it gained 28 horsepower and 29 pound-feet of torque, and the aerodynamics and braking were completely overhauled for this, the final iteration of the V8-powered Cadillac sport sedan. Apart from the larger footprint and all that comes with it, most of the Blackwing formula carries over almost unchanged to the CT5-V from its smaller CT4-V sibling. A six-speed manual gearbox is standard with a 10-speed auto available as an upgrade (which it truly is, in some ways). The electronically controlled mechanical limited slip differential, fourth-generation Magnetic Ride Control and various other tweaks made their way here too, but there are a few noteworthy deviations. Let’s start where the CT5-V stops: the brakes. Since the larger, heavier CT5 needs more braking capacity, its wheels grew an inch in diameter to accommodate a bigger set of stoppers. The wheels are wider too, the better to fit its Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires in 275/35ZR19 (front) and 305/30ZR19 (rear) – 20 mm wider up front and 30 mm wider out back than the 18-inch tires on the smaller CT4-V Blackwing. Exclusive to the CT5 is a carbon-ceramic brake package that reduces unsprung mass by 53 pounds and rotating mass by 62 pounds.