All Entries Tagged With: "Cadillac CTS"
ADL TV | GM @ 100 Yrs: Cadillac
“MISTER EARL”
There’s nothing quite like having the man who designed the Corvette Sting Ray tell you, the interviewer, that you’re not giving GM’s larger-than-life chief designer Harley Earl enough respect.
My question: “Did you ever work with Harley Earl back in the day?”
Bob Veryzer: “He was around. It was never Harley Earl. It was always Mister Earl.”
To which GM’s VP of Global Design Ed Welburn added, “It was only until recently that people started calling him Harley Earl.”
Apparently, GM’s artistic duo hadn’t seen any of Buick’s “My name’s Harley Earl” TV spots. Nevertheless, at this gala in honor of Cadillac, clear respect for an icon was the order of the evening.
Last summer we drove up to Saratoga Springs, New York where instead of placing bets on horses we braved the worst tempests that the Hudson River Valley could throw our way to tape a story about Cadillac’s past and where it might fit in GM’s tomorrow.
GM had turned 100 years old and the Saratoga Auto Museum threw a party in honor of Cadillac. Many GM big wigs were there, including GM’s G.M. for Cadillac, Jim Taylor.
As grim as Caddy sales looked last July, the financial markets had yet to crash and the General was still almost a year away from filing for bankruptcy protection. We were in, if you like, the eye of the perfect storm.
In this segment with a T.R.T. of 07:15, we watch some of the best and worst of Cadillac’s past; hear comments from the marque’s fans; and get a real sense that in the midst of the celebration, GM’s top brass knew what was to come.
“This is a new world we’re going into,” Mr. Taylor notes, “Quite frankly I don’t think anybody realizes how big a difference there’s going to be. Until you wake up in four or five years and realized what happened.”
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Credits
Executive Producers: Gunnar Heinrich & Neil Rogers
Editors: Michael Russell | Neil Rogers | Kevin Kusina
Camera: Joshua Schnitzer | Gregory Dwyer | Neil Rogers
Writer | Host: Gunnar Heinrich
Special Thanks: GM | Saratoga Auto Museum | Dres. Ward Heinrich, Sr. & Jr.| J.M. Ficca
GM Bankruptcy & Cadillac
By Gunnar Heinrich
THERE’S just no replacing Cadillac.
As GM files for bankruptcy today, it’s worth noting that the second of four divisions that GM intends on keeping is America’s last true luxury car maker.
Yes, Mercedes-Benz builds ML and GL-Klassen in Alabama. And true, there is still Lincoln whose Town Cars ferry America’s big shots from one city block to the next.
But neither count, really. Lincoln has no soul. And Mercedes-Benz is still very German. It doesn’t matter where they build ‘em.
So, Cadillac is “ours”, for better or for worse. And in recent days, it’s been for better.
A quick recap of recent stock.
The CTS is the sharpest midsize luxury sedan on the market. It’s just too bad that only the limited production CTS-V truly performs.
And the Escalade still has its over-sized thumb on the pulse of the luxury SUV market. Everyone else (the Europeans, in particular) can’t match the large truck’s big pimpin’ cred. We should also be mindful that this is the only Caddy that still makes into pop culture’s lexicon.
The SRX and STS are both due for an overhaul. Hopefully, they’ll get just that. The DTS just keeps on tickin’ for Florida’s senior citizenry.
For its part, the General sees a certain value in a strong Cadillac and has sacrificed stronger divisions – Pontiac – to ensure that the crested wreathed logo lives on to float GM through another day or another bond(s).
Let’s hope in this brave new GM to come, the company in its leaner form will be able to further Cadillac by building fewer cars of greater quality that will exceed their rivals -not merely hope to match them.
What else should we expect from the “standard of the world?”
Driven To Distraction By In-Car Displays
By Gunnar Heinrich
YESTERDAY, I picked up an Automobile back issue.
I don’t usually read Automobile or American car mags, in general. As far as US car mags go, I used to be a Road & Track and Car and Driver guy (as it happens both are owned by the same parent corporation which will make for an interesting tale when both auto rags have to merge inside the next five years).
That said, I do enjoy reading Ezra Dyer’s column (he widely appeals to us gear heads in the 18-36 demographic) periodically as he’s less bound by editorial tape in Automobile than he is in the Times‘ broadsheets.
In this past issue, Mr. Dyer discussed hybrids and posed the question to would-be green drivers, “Do you pay fetishistic attention to your little-miles-per-gallon video display?”
Yes. The answer, I was surprised to find myself say, was and is yes.
I’ve been driving a number of cars with really attention grabbing displays lately.
- Cadillac CTS with pop up touch screen nav. display and real-time traffic map.
- Cadillac XLR-V with in dash nav. screen.
- Toyota’s Highlander Hybrid with in-dash battery-engine monitor display (doubling as reverse camera screen).
- BMW 335xi coupe and a M.Y. 07 525xi both fitted with iDrive.
- Mercedes-Benz (W220) S500, SL500, and S550 (with Benz’s superior interpretation of iDrive)
- Nissan Altima with instant economy gauge bar graph.
Fitted with CVT, I drove a Nissan Altima north last weekend to Montreal. On I-91 it poured most of the way through Massachusetts and Vermont which with weekend traffic should have captured my total attention.
But it didn’t thanks to this little bar graph just below the speedometer that instantly measured the car’s fuel economy.
Like some orange pixel screen from a Pinball machine and as quaint as Homer’s little sippy bird featured in The Simpsons, the graph encouraged me like some zealous used car dealer to SAVE! SAVE! SAVE!
When the line touched the far right corner it teased me into dreaming that we could make the 400 mile journey on just six gallons (@ 60+ mpg) rather than a full tank of $4 per gallon unleaded.
Trouble was the moment I pressed the gas pedal as much as a millimeter the gauge would retreat to 20 mpg. And just to confirm, I felt as though I had to constantly check the graph to make sure that I was reaching my full mileage potential. It became a game.
And that’s the trouble in a nut.
Despite the various warnings of the more sophisticated systems and even some nanny measures – Cadillac’s XLR-V wouldn’t allow you to adjust course until the machine was in park – these displays are truly distracting.
And on the course to distraction…
There’s none I’ve test that was more so than the CTS with pop up nav display. When the display was raised above the dash making it slightly less than eye level, something in my subconscious felt like kicking back and watching my own progress on TV – even if that progress led me to an I.O.E. (involuntary off-road excursion).
Mercifully, that didn’t happen. But it could have. Which is why I had the screen retracted more often than I had it raised.
And again, the point. With the increase of what I’ll call “gimmetry” – the apt blend of gimmickry and gadgetry – comes an increase in the fetishistic attention to other things beside vehicular control.
So yes, Mr. Dyer. The answer still is yes.
