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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:

2016 Hennessey CTS-V is properly ridiculous with 1,000 horsepower

We truly live in a halcyon era of automotive performance with models like the latest Shelby GT350 Mustang and 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat. And now Hennessey Performance Engineering is bringing something with absolutely obscene power to the world with its tuned 2016 Cadillac CTS-V that packs a ludicrous 1,000 horsepower. The latest CTS-V isn't even on sale yet but should be a powerhouse straight from the factory. Under its carbon fiber hood is a 6.2-liter supercharged LT4 V8 with 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque that makes the sedan capable of a 200-mile-per-hour top speed. Hennessey's take ditches the blower in favor of two turbos to feed air to the engine. To cope with the extra power, the mill gets upgrades like forged aluminum pistons and forged steel parts for the rods and crankshaft, and transmission upgrades are also necessary to make it all work. Buyers can even spec things like carbon-ceramic brakes and a widebody kit to allow for bigger tires. The crazy numbers are leading to some big performance claims from company founder John Hennessey. "I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph," he said in the Caddy's announcement. Hennessey is building just 24 of these 1,000-horsepower sedans for the 2016 model year. However, for those that want to keep the supercharger under the hood, the company is also offering upgrades with 750 hp and 800 hp for the CTS-V too. All of them sound absolutely ridiculous in an utterly fantastic way. 2016 HPE1000 Twin Turbo Cadillac CTS-V Texas Tuner Plans to Build World's Fastest 4-Door Sedan Sealy, Texas-When the next generation Cadillac CTS-V hits the streets later this year, it will have 640+ hp and a top speed of nearly 200 mph. To the team at Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE), this is a good starting point. The company plans to pick-up where they left off with the last gen CTS-V by producing the world's fastest 4-door sedan: The Hennessey HPE1000 Twin Turbo CTS-V. "A couple of years ago, the State of Texas gave us the opportunity to test one of our specially tuned CTS-Vs – our VR1200 Twin Turbo coupe. It ran 221 mph (356 km/h) on State Highway 130, near the Circuit of the Americas", said company founder, John Hennessey. "It was still pulling on when we ran out of road. I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph (386 km/h)". Hennessey plans to offer a limited run of only 24 units for the 2016 model year.

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.