Cadillac CTS-V
By Nigel Moll - February 1, 2009
The first CTS-V, introduced in 2004 with 400 hp, was a fun car. Most memorably, it was available only with manual transmission–not a notably smooth-shifting box, but a first for Cadillac since World War II and a signal that the company was serious about wooing performance-car buyers.
The new CTS-V takes the brand to the top rung, its 556-hp engine making it the quickest American sedan ever sold. The CTS-V still doesn’t quite achieve the fit and finish of a BMW or Mercedes, but the experience of exhilaration behind the wheel cedes nothing to the Germans.
To see Cadillac, historically a purveyor of hovercraft to the Stay Puft marshmallow man, in the top stalls of GM’s performance stable is a surprise, but in some ways it shouldn’t be: the brand has been trying to shed its reputation for staid, numb conveyances since the mid-1980s, if you count the Allanté as its first stab at sports-car stardom. Cadillac sold almost 21,500 of the two-seat, Pininfarina-bodied convertibles in seven years of complicated, intercontinental production involving a Boeing 747 freighter. The two-seat, stowable-hardtop XLR continues the Allanté’s assault on the Mercedes SL to this day, and in -V version it is the most expensive Caddy ever sold, at about $105,000.
By comparison, the CTS-V is a bargain at about $60,000, with twice the seating of the XLR, more power, the rigidity of a fixed hardtop and handling to hound or even trounce the best German sports sedans on the Nurburgring. A new BMW M5 will set you back close to $100,000, but a new M3 four-door typically sells in the low $60,000s, putting the CTS-V’s price tag right where it belongs to succeed.
Unlike near-geezers, such as myself, who still associate Caddies with marshmallows and wandering hovercraft, younger enthusiasts today see a Cadillac as something to aspire to. I was intercepted outside a deli by a youth breathless with the excitement of laying eyes on what was clearly the car of his dreams. He knew its horsepower, its torque, its wheel sizes, its zero-to-60 and quarter-mile stats and, boy, did he want one. With this in mind, I made a conscious effort to look at the CTS-V from a strictly fresh perspective, not jaundiced by memories of eight-liter sumo rollers with the driving appeal of a sofa.
The chiseled and multifaceted lines of the CTS-V’s exterior are straight out of the Skunkworks’ design book for the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, to the point that you wonder whether the thing might actually be invisible to police radar. (Alas, it’s built of steel and aluminum rather than radar-absorbent material, so no, it’s not.)
Open the doors and a classy interior of leather and microfiber beckons, particularly the two genuine Recaro seats in the front. The CTS-V we borrowed was black outside and in, a shade that seemed to match the car’s sinister shape. Its base price was $57,920, rising to $62,540 with destination charges and the three options installed: an “ultraview” sunroof ($900) with glazing that extended to the back seats, 19-inch polished aluminum wheels ($800) and a nav system ($2,145).
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