By Bill Adam

When I was just a little boy growing up in Canada, it became readily apparent that I was in love with cars. Not just in love with them, but in LOVE with them.

Much to my parents’ dismay, I’d spend hours looking through magazines for pictures of cars, which I’d then cut out to save in a scrapbook, instead of doing other, more useful things: like homework. I look on those times as giving my father an excuse to find out how truly wonderful a bottle of Dewar’s can taste.It’s quite possible that my very first word might have been Ferrari, or Porsche or maybe even Edsel, but I was definitely born with this love pumping through my veins.

Sports cars headed my lust list, but even some of the better looking sedans still made me turn my head to stare as they drove by, and listen to the growl of their exhaust. All, except one: the Cadillac. That was the car driv-en by “the old people” – the ones with money who only wanted to drive sedately through town in maximum comfort.

For me to love one of them… well, pigs would have to fly first! A few years ago, Cadillac may have agreed with my thoughts as they took one of the biggest styling gambles in automo-tive history when they unveiled their radical CTS. This wasn’t just the standard evolutionary change, but in fact, was a REVOLUTIONARY one. Gone were the huge, bulbous body pan-els and bland styling, replaced by crisp, knife edged fenders and a design that quite frankly wasn’t loved by all.

Indeed, it was a style that didn’t reach out to me at first either, but listening to a Cadillac executive at a private showing, he said that this gamble was necessary as the median age of the buyers was over 70 years of age, and that repeat buyers were, quite literally, dying out.

So, a massive change HAD to be made. Since that day, the design has been refined to the point that it’s now become widely accepted and admired by a MUCH younger consumer, but Cadillac wasn’t content just to sit back and dabble in this luxury car market. They decided to challenge the two most highly respected performance sedans in the world – the BMW M brand, and Mercedes Benz AMG cars – in every category.

Luxury, quality, desirability, and of course, speed. Buyers of the two European “uber sedans”, knew that they were getting something special when they bought their cars, so the Cadillac effort had to be both comprehensive AND su-perior. And just to make sure that they were comparing apples with apples, hundreds of miles of testing was done right in the German manufacturers’ back yard, at the famed Nurburgring race track. A huge challenge for sure, but oh, was it worth it!

Styling on this latest edition CTS-V is both handsome and dramatic, and looks of appreciation come from people of all ages. The nose of the car, with its’ wire mesh grille (a la Bentley), and front aero splitter hint that this is much more than just a pseudo performance sedan. Further back, distinctive fender flares bulge out over the wheels, giving a definite serious look to the car. It’s like seeing NFL star Jason Taylor in a tuxedo – handsome, with a lot of class, but you know there is serious power lurking there.

Hot European sedans have always addressed much more than just acceleration, and Cadillac has done a stellar job do-ing the same thing. Massive Brembo brakes ensure that incred-ible stopping power will ALWAYS be there, no matter how hard they’re used. Driving through the Swiss Alps or the mountains of California, it’s comforting to know that you’ll always have secure, fade free braking EVERY time you want it.

The interior is both luxurious AND sporting, using hand craft-ed materials, beautiful rich and dark real Sapele wood and a cut-ting edge “infotainment system” that is highlighted by both a pop up navigation screen and a 40 gig hard drive. Seating on the op-tional 14 way adjustable Recaro sport seats is superb, both com-fortable and with perfect support for those blasts down lonely rib-bons of road. A compliment must also for the use of the Alcantara material on the steering wheel.

This suede-like fabric looks both elegant and sporting at the same time, but is also the MOST COMFORTABLE steering wheel I’ve ever turned! No matter what the weather, the wheel is never too hot, not too cold and ALWAYS provides excellent grip. Outstanding!

 

 

And now… we turn to the heart of this machine: the engine! Oh me, oh my… and what an engine it is! The statistics will tell you that it is a 6.2 liter supercharged V-8 that puts out a tire shredding 556 HP, but reading those numbers just can’t give you any idea of just how strong this is! This is horsepower enough to hum-ble most sports cars, if the need arises, at any time, at any speed. Running through a six speed automatic transmission, the car will accelerate from 0 – 60 mph in an eye watering 3.9 seconds. The quarter mile is consumed in 12.2 seconds by which time your doing almost 120 mph, AND well ahead of either the BMW M or AMG cars.

Some people (maybe those “old Cadillac” driv-ers), might call this “wretched excess”, but I’d disagree. Excess? Perhaps. Wretched? Absolutely not! Better, more accurate adjec-tives might be addictive… wonderful… maybe even therapeutic. This engine is just to swoon for!

But as good as the engine is, the balance of the car has to match to make it a worthy challenger to those M and AMG cars. So, it was that after all their hard work building this ma-chine, the Cadillac engineering team took it back to the torturous Nurburgring race track and walked away with the fastest time EVER done by a four door sedan. Period! In fact, the time set – on street tires no less – was faster than most “SuperCars” have ever done. That, is handling!

So, So, So, So, So, So, So, with the Cadillac CTS-V looking so good, providing such a high level of comfort, and being able to devour sections of road at a frantic yet safe pace, is there a negative to the car? Well, per-haps. Because if you’re one of those people who love to stand at parties and brag about the exorbitant price you just had to pay for your latest car, then you’re suddenly going to find yourself changing subjects.

Listing well below $70,000, you’ll have a car that can run ahead of either an “M” model BMW, or AMG model Mercedes, and is more than $20 K less than either competitor. An incredible car! I think I just saw a pig fly past my window.