I had to haul my bleary-eyed self out of the sack at 4:00 AM in order to grab this choice vantage point at 11,000 feet, about halfway up the road to the summit, but the sight of this incredible race car just made the sleep deprivation worthwhile. Everything else I see today will just be a bonus. (Read More…)

Bryan writes:

I have a new baby, and a prized Miata, and want to keep both. Therefore I am considering selling my daily driver, a 2002 Cadillac STS with 82K miles. In order to reduce overall monthly costs, I need something with extremely high MPG. Therefore I am considering the Honda Fit.

I like small cars. I love the Miata. However, the STS is simply the nicest car I have ever driven. It’s like being friends with a mobster. Life with the “Soprano STS” is easy: soporific comfort, isolation, lots of leather, and nonchalant delivery of raw power if/when I need it. Did I mention this is the same model Silvio drove to whack Adriana in the NJ Pine Barrens? Every time I get nervous about the Northstar head gasket, the car pinches my cheeks and reassures me “ya worry too much!!!”

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Pop quiz: when does an eight-month-old story generate a huge amount of interest? When it’s got political overtones, of course. And what better way to milk the last dregs of bailout resentment than by telling a story that seems too bizarre to be true: Cadillac is a “proud” chief sponsor of a Chinese Communist Party-produced film entitled “The Birth of a Party” (or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” depending on the quality of your translator). The story started last September, at ChinaAutoWeb.com, and was recently revivified by the Washington Times, Commentary Magazine, and Big Hollywood. Our main interest in the story has to do with its lessons about the rise of China, that country’s tortured relationship with luxury goods, its foreign (from the American perspective) political economy and Cadillac’s continued need for better momentum in China… but clearly others are more interested in it for different reasons.

The political point seems to be that government money is being funneled to the Chinese Communist Party via General Motors, an accusation that, though shocking, doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny. After all, nearly anyone doing business of any kind in China ultimately supports the political and economic structure created by the Chinese Communist Party, legitimizing it and lining its pockets. And surely nobody is suggesting GM abandon China altogether, thus eliminating its greatest opportunity for growth. Meanwhile, as the Freep helpfully points out, Caddy needs all the help it can get in China: without a single vehicle in the luxury car top-ten, Cadillac needs to be aggressive in marketing to China. Still, from a PR perspective, Cadillac clearly has a line to walk here… perhaps it should look for less visible (and risible) ways of building up guanxi (connections) with the powers that be in the world’s largest market for cars.

Yesterday we gave GM kudos for addressing its lingering vehicle weight issues by redesigning the head of its popular 3.6 liter V6, and shedding 13 lbs in the process. It was, we noted, the kind of news that showed GM is staying focused on the nitty-gritty of product development, sweating the details. But, according to a fascinating piece by GMInsideNews, new-product development at GM still has its issues. Specifically, Cadillac’s development of a new BMW 3-Series fighter, known as ATS after its “Alpha” Platform, has faced more than its fair share of what GMI calls “drama.”

Turf battles, unnecessary “wants” on checklists and ultimately a severe case of “Mission Creep” have created a vehicle that now needs a crash diet, according to GMI’s sources both within GM and at suppliers working on the Alpha/ATS program. For a vehicle that’s taking on an institution like the BMW Dreier (not to mention costing a billion dollars to develop), these are troubling signs indeed.
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Cars like Cadillac’s 556 HP, rear-drive, manual transmission-equipped CTS-V SportWagon are the kind of offering that enthusiasts lust after, even if a relative “value-price” of $70k-ish keeps it in aspirational territory. And by offering a CTS “Performance Edition” with the option of mating a six-speed manual to GM’s well-liked 3.6 liter V6, Cadillac gives enthusiasts an appealing opportunity to bask in some of the V’s reflected glory. But apparently not many enthusiasts are interested in pursuing this opportunity, as InsideLine reports that the manual transmission option will be dropped from the 2012 CTS 3.6.

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I firmly believe that it’s more fun to drive a (relatively) slow compact hatch fast than to drive a big, fast car well below its potential. I remain hopeful that someone will offer a car with five doors and rear-wheel-drive that weighs under 3,000 pounds. (I’d say under 2,700 pounds, but that’s clearly a pipe dream.) Then Cadillac put a CTS-V in my driveway for a week. A wagon with a manual transmission, no less. That Cadillac even offers such a combination warrants respect. The lure of the dark side has never been stronger.

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Back in January, when news broke that GM would be pulling its 2.8T V6 from the Cadillac lineup, I reckoned that

Cadillac needs to figure out if it wants to keep its SRX saddled to an underwhelming engine, or if it wants to add its widely-lauded 3.6 direct injection V6 to the SRX lineup.

And you know what? Cadillac made the right call (or at least the obvious one). But will GM seal the deal and drop the unloved 3.0?

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Cadillac’s peak as a build-quality leader and dominant luxury marque probably came earlier than the late 1960s— let’s say 1956— but the perception that GM’s flagship brand was losing ground started sometime soon after the first of the front-wheel-drive Eldorados hit the scene. By the late 1970s, The General was all about faux-metal emblems in cursive script and Beadazzler-applied plastic heraldic crests stuck all over Caddies. (Read More…)

Before GM delivered a one-two-three punch to Cadillac’s image with the Seville, V8-6-4 engine, and Cimarron, the first of the front-wheel-drive Eldorados attained some sort of zenith for strip-club-owner-grade, ridiculous-yet-awesome Detroit Iron. Here’s a ’68 Eldo that will never drive the Las Vegas Strip again. (Read More…)

It’s hard to believe that The General was once so dominant that it sweated over the fear of being split up by the federal government via antitrust regulations, and that GM’s divisions cranked out more than 25 separate passenger-car engine types (counting Opel and Holden models) during the decade. Why, The General boasted ten different car V8s during the 1960s (not counting earlier models intended for warranty replacements, industrial use, etc); eight of those engines were being built in 1965 alone. Imagine a manufacturer today so mighty that it could offer eight totally different V8 engines (in 14 displacements) for sale in its new cars! (Read More…)

The designer of Cadillac’s recent ULC city car concept seems to think so. Niki Smart tells Autocar

The time is ripe for Cadillac to make this car. We need a bigger spread of models, particularly for Europe. The Mini’s success is proof of people’s open-mindedness.

Whether or not Cadillac needs a subcompact car in its lineup, Smart’s point that the MINI is proof of consumers’ “open-mindedness” is worth examining. Specifically because MINI was launched as a unique brand, its success is more of a testament to the brand’s slick marketing than any consumer “open-mindedness.” After all, BMW made certain to launch the MINI as a MINI before bringing out a BMW version of its front-drive chassis… and when it does bring out a BMW-branded version, it can probably expect a certain amount of pushback from hard-core fans of the brand.

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Given that European luxury brands have generally had their way with Detroit-based competitors in the US market, it should come as no surprise that Cadillac has failed to make any appreciable headway in the European market. The brand has been launched and re-launched in Europe four times in the last twelve years, according to Autocar, and its latest relaunch was supposed to boost sales to 20,000 per year by 2010. Despite that ambitious goal, Cadillac has fallen flat with European buyers, having moved about 1,300 units this year. As a result, the latest re-launch of Cadillac has been accompanied by dramatically scaled-back expectations: 2,500 units per year within the next “several” years (Cadillac expects the new ATS to make up about 1,500 units of this volume). Only limited numbers of CTS sedans and wagons will be converted to right-hand drive for the UK, and diesel engines for the CTS range are on hold. But even with a more modest approach to Europe, Cadillac is widely expected to keep struggling in Europe. After all, Lexus spent some $2.8b attacking the European luxury market, but sales which peaked at 60k in 2007 have retreated to a mere 30k units. As Cadillac gets stuck into its fourth re-launch, analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer is not optimistic

We were not amused (to coin a phrase) at Ford’s decision to tax fans of the hatchback by adding $500 to the price of its five-door Fiesta and forthcoming Focus. And rather than following Ford’s example, GM has priced its CTS-V Sportwagon some $475 cheaper than its $63,465 CTS-V sedan, by starting prices for the unique muscle wagon at $62,990 (including destination). Needless to say, we love the wüchtig, 556 HP CTS-V, so the prospect of a distinctively be-hatched version for less money is like catnip here at TTAC HQ. On the other hand, our beef with Ford has to do with its refusal to offer the practicality of a hatch at the base price point, and that argument doesn’t really hold water in the tire-smoking world of supercharged V8 rocketships. Moreover, $475 doesn’t exactly make much of a difference when you’re talking about a car that costs the equivalent of four base Fiestas. Still, we like to think of this as a win for the wagons… if only in principle.

In 1977, GM offered the above two vehicles for sale. Squint a bit; can you see a certain fundamental similarity? Yes, their exterior skin and styling were somewhat different, but once you peel back the vinyl top and other superficialities, you’d find a lot in common, as is obvious from their basic shared architecture. They both rode on the same basic platform/suspension, although the bottom one did have its rear wheels extended three inches for a touch more leg room. They both sported GM’s fine 350 (5.7 L) V8 engines, the top one with 170 hp, the bottom with 180 hp. The Chevy Nova (top), with more than a hint of BMW in its styling, was perhaps the best handling American sedan of its time, given that it also shared its underpinnings with the Camaro. The Nova’s  price started at $3500 ($12k adjusted). The Seville (bottom), was aimed at the Mercedes S Class, and went out the door for about $14k ($48k adjusted), or four times as much. Can you tell where this is going? (Read More…)