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Meet the other Cadillac wagon. It's as American as ABBA

The Cadillac CTS Wagon became a cult classic the second it went on sale. We all knew that it was never going to sell in anything approaching significant numbers, and if that "we" didn't include those actually working at GM, one would have to wonder what they were smoking. Cadillac was still having a hard enough time trying to convince people that it was now a BMW-fighting sport luxury brand rather than the purveyor of Grandpa-piloted land yachts. To many, a sport sedan like the CTS seemed like a stretch. But a CTS sport wagon? It sure seemed like GM was just doing things for funzies, an impression only enhanced by the CTS-V Wagon. Forget cult classic. That thing was an instant legend.  And yet, the CTS wasn't the only Cadillac of that era offered as a wagon. It wasn't even the first. Before GM said "to hell with it, let's have some fun" on this side of the pond, over in Europe, it had already taken a page from its old badge-engineering playbook to create the 2006 Cadillac BLS Wagon. It was available as a sedan, too, but its awkward majesty is best enjoyed as the long-roof model.  There's just something off about the whole thing, right? That's probably because it also looks vaguely familiar, as if you've seen it before. So where the hell does this thing come from? Sweden! Behind that Cadillac Art and Science face is a Saab 9-3, and in the case of the BLS Wagon, the Saab 9-3 Sport Combi wagon. The roofline is the dead giveaway, as no other wagon has ever looked like that. In fact, the roof and windows were the only exterior elements to copy directly over from 9-3 to BLS. No kidding. With the Cadillac front end, doesn't the Saab-funky-boxiness make it look like a miniature hearse? The answer is yes. GM's design team, led by Ed Welburn, was quite pleased with his work. Perhaps it even egged him on to create a real Cadillac sport wagon? "The whole team was very excited to apply Cadillac's design language to a wagon for the first time," said Welburn in a press release from the time. "The V-shaped chrome-plated grille, a Cadillac hallmark, is picked up again by the shape of the rear window, and the body side character lines make it unmistakably a Cadillac." The interior is surprisingly different from the 9-3, including the ignition switch migrating from the center console up to the steering column. It also wasn't exactly in keeping with the Cadillac norm of the time.

Ecto-1 is the barn find of a lifetime in 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife'

Following the women-led "Ghostbusters" reboot in 2016, a completely new chapter in the franchise will be born in 2020. "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" will feature a fresh cast, a modern story and cutting-edge cinematics. Yet, one thing will remain the same: the famous Ecto-1. The first trailer for the upcoming film shows the classic movie car — a highly modified 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Futura Duplex — still has a little gas in the tank, even after sitting in a barn for more than 30 years. "Afterlife" follows a character played by Finn Wolfhard (Mike from "Stranger Things") as he, his sister and his mom are evicted and move to an inherited farmhouse in Summerville, Oklahoma. The property, previously owned by the kids' grandfather, turns out to be a secret storage facility for all of the old Ghostbusters gear. Grandpa was Dr. Egon Spengler. The research, the uniforms, the ghost traps and the Ecto-1 are all tucked away and out of sight. Trevor, Wolfhard's character, finds the automotive relic and is able to start the old box of bolts. He and his sister Phoebe are then seen careening the Ecto-1 through a field and testing out the car's gunner seat in town.  Paul Rudd enters the picture as Mr. Grooberson, a teacher at the kids' school who shows an interest in Phoebe's ghost trap. As somebody who remembers the Manhattan Crossrip well, Grooberson schools the kids on the past and, with them, explores their connection to it all.  The trailer closes with a Bill Murray quote from the original film: "Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma ... I believe that everything happens for a reason." He, along with Dan Aykroyd and Sigourney Weaver, are expected to have some sort of involvement in the new movie, though it's unclear what that will be. We'll find out more next year when "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" opens summer 2020. P.S. How about that Ford Ranchero GT?

Cadillac's Johan de Nysschen clarifies a few points on the brand's future

Last week, Motor Trend ran coverage on a journo roundtable with Cadillac president Johan de Nysschen. During the roundtable, de Nysschen cited a few reasons for the decline in sedan sales, including gas prices, "young consumers" — read, millennials — less interested in driving dynamics than lifestyle accessories, and the state of U.S. infrastructure. Jalopnik homed in on the last two reasons, and those became the story, including here in our post on the roundtable. So de Nysschen called Jalopnik to add more context. The original reaction pieces painted de Nysschen's rationales as an excuse for sporty sedans not selling well, when the issue is Cadillac's sporty sedans not selling well. His main clarification: "I wasn't advocating the idea that the world is black and white, that if you're a young buyer a millennial or a teenager that you don't enjoy driving." On that note, it would be ridiculous to deny millennial and sedan-segment bugbears; de Nysschen has market research and the industry-wide, rabbit-like crossover breeding program to back him up. Yet even as he touted the success of the XT5, noting that it's "the third-best-selling luxury nameplate in the U.S. after the Lexus RX, and the Mercedes C-Class," he could add, "But the irony is not lost on me that the C-Class is a sedan." The circumstances laid out in the follow-up piece inject more likely color into the situation: the brand's onetime, singleminded focus on the U.S., followed by a singleminded focus on China that left the U.S. market wanting for attention. We could add to that: years of lackluster products and awful attempts at volume and brand engineering under the old GM at the same time that downsized premium luxury products, crossovers, and SUVs began their rocketship trajectories; trying to live off the Escalade success; and the carmaker's desire not to offend its older, traditional buyers while concurrently wooing "coastal influencers." De Nysschen also acknowledged that Cadillac interiors aren't where they need to be, saying, "We recognize that's where we want to improve." The result, as de Nysschen put it, "We're playing with the hand that we've been dealt.