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Cadillac upgrades ATS sedan to match new coupe

The big news when it comes to the Cadillac ATS for 2015 is surely the addition of the new coupe model, but that doesn't mean that Cadillac has forgotten about the sedan as well. In fact GM's luxury brand has rolled out a few choice enhancements for the four-door to bring it more in line with the new coupe.
Among those changes that we spotted a couple of weeks ago is a new front fascia that incorporates the brand's new wreath-less emblem, and a sleeker front bumper. The interior has been upgraded as well with new trim options as well as some new tech including Siri Eyes Free functionality, dictated text messaging and optional inductive smartphone charging.
Though the ATS Coupe does away with the base engine, sedan buyers can still opt for the 2.0-liter four with 202 horsepower and 191 pound-feet of torque. The 3.6-liter V6 carries over unchanged at 321 hp and 275 lb-ft, but the 2.0-liter turbo four gets the upgraded torque rating of 295 lb-ft (the highest in the range) to go with its 272 hp. Some new color choices are also among the upgrades you can read more about in the press release below.

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.

Will attaching the electrodes re-animate Cadillac?

This announcement last week from General Motors —"Cadillac will be GM's lead electric vehicle brand"— followed quickly by the surprise reveal Sunday night of a Cadillac EV crossover, leads one to wonder whether this is a case of GM pulling out the defibrillator and hoping a full-on jolt of electricity will revive Cadillac from its ongoing diminution in the market. In 2018, Cadillac U.S. sales were 154,702 vehicles, which was down from the 156,440 it had sold in 2017. And the 2017 sales were down significantly from the 170,006 vehicles delivered by Cadillac in 2016. And that is down from the 175,267 sales of 2015. Sure, part of Cadillac's problem — one shared by some other OEMs — is that its sedans aren't selling. But if we put those to the side, realize that in 2018 sales of the venerable Escalade were down by 2.2 percent. Admittedly, that rig is a little old in the grille, and it's suddenly gotten strong competition from the Lincoln Navigator, so a sales decline isn't too surprising. But the XT5, the compact lux vehicle that was launched in 2016 as a model-year 2017 product, had an 11.3 percent decline in a segment that is doing nothing but growing. This is not promising. Although the argument at GM HQ might be that Cadillac can reinvent itself as a Tesla fighter, one of the things that isn't often noted about Tesla vis-a-vis other OEMs is that while sedan sales are generally down, Tesla, which had an estimated 2018 sales volume of 197,680 (according to Cleantechnica.com), made its numbers primarily with the Model 3 and Model S, both sedans, as it has just the Model X crossover. So it isn't just about vehicle architecture. It is going to take more than an electric SUV to change Cadillac's performance. But here's where circumstances can fall in Cadillac's favor. Scale can be highly beneficial to Cadillac versus Tesla. The Chinese market, even though it is weakening of late, will be largely predicated on "New Energy Vehicles," which means electrified and fully electric. And while Tesla only just now broke ground on a factory in China, LMC Automotive reports that as of December 2018, SAIC GM is already well-established there and is the third-largest vehicle manufacturer in China (behind SAIC Volkswagen and FAW Volkswagen). Cadillac is going to be able to take advantage of GM's global efforts in developing EVs, so soon the Cadillac showroom could be filled with an array of luxury EVs that may make even Tesla loyalists take another look.