Rental Review: 2016 Cadillac CTS

I spent the first of the week in Virginia & North Carolina. Unfortunate to be in the worst state for horsepower. I'm pretty sure the cops there can smell when its actually used. I booked my car last week. The choice was a Ford Fiesta, or a CTS for the same price.

Not my car, but close enough. Add a ugly front plate, and it's pretty much the same I think. I have had a biase agianst american cars for years. They earned this bias, with the crap they put out the last decade. I fully believe they earned every bit of the market collapse, and we shouldn't have bailed them out at all.

That being said, I loved that car. 270hp isn't jaw dropping, but when your DD is a 02 4runner, its jaw dropping. Paddle shifting was fun. Not clutch fun, but I sat in enough traffic that I didn't miss the clutch. Interior quality impressive. I don't know why you need a motorized cupholder cover. Seating adjustments were awesome. every car needs motorized bolster support. I want cooled seats in every car too.

Also, every car needs a HUD. Having the car give the speed limit, as well speed readout, is genius. You could swap it to navigation, or radio display. Being VA, I cared more about the speed limit.

audio/air/nav controls were terrible. I never figured out how to control the air. Something as simple as temp & fan control should not be buried in a touch screen. They need to team up with someone and improve the entire system. You could talk to the car, but it NEVER got it right.

If I had a spare 50k and drove alot, I'd buy it. Maybe in 20 years I'll afford something this nice.

In reply to lnlogauge: Remember, Wall St. caused the collapse, but Ford, GM, and Chrysler Group certainly didn't help with the auto industry downturn.

I don't mind working the clutch in traffic, but I also don't drive in only urban areas. How comfortable are the seats?

I fully believe they earned every bit of the market collapse, and we shouldn't have bailed them out at all.

They failed because we left CAFE alone for too long. In the absence of sufficient regulation, unsustainable business practice is the default setting of capitalism. After CAFE updates hit, everyone and their mom had 40mpg hwy cars for sale in no time flat. Would have been handy when gas prices spiked and noone could afford SUVs anyway, eh? Like two years earlier? WHOOPS.

However, they turned out to be on the cutting edge of business practice with 'too big to fail/jail'. Many of the biggest private institutions on the planet now fully incorporate what was learned during that period of bailouts.

Anyway, glad the Caddy managed to pierce your wall of bias. I havent driven the current CTS but i've driven the last gen and the ATS and other than the annoyingly smudgy piano black haptic center stack controls, i like them quite a bit.

Mr_Clutch42 wrote: In reply to lnlogauge: Remember, Wall St. caused the collapse, but Ford, GM, and Chrysler Group certainly didn't help with the auto industry downturn. I don't mind working the clutch in traffic, but I also don't drive in only urban areas. How comfortable are the seats?

I sat in them for 4 hours on one drive, and felt fine. The Toyota yaris I had for my last rental, did not provide that feeling.

Mr_Clutch42 wrote: They failed because we left CAFE alone for too long. In the absence of sufficient regulation, unsustainable business practice is the default setting of capitalism. After CAFE updates hit, everyone and their mom had 40mpg hwy cars for sale in no time flat. Would have been handy when gas prices spiked and noone could afford SUVs anyway, eh? Like two years earlier? WHOOPS.

I'm not saying your wrong, but I think if regulations is the only thing that pushes you for innovation, you are not heading in a good place. Look at the lineup for the 2005 chevrolet.

http://www.autobytel.com/chevrolet/2005/

That 3rd gen cavalier was in its 10th year of production. The Astro was in its 10th year of production. They were still making astro's in 2005!!!

In reply to lnlogauge:

I am happy that you liked the car. And were even willing to give it a try. Many folks just hold on to the bias like it is a matter of life or death. I still find it interesting how many people completely ignore Toyota's various throttle pedal failures. I don't think the throttle pedal failure make Toyota a bad quality company but at least I acknowledge it happened. Similar for the American based multinational auto companies but on the opposite side. They get blamed and held accountable for stuff outside their control.

Cars are the ONLY product in the USA most Americans do purchase and that 80-95% of Americans purchase with a financed loan/lease lasting several years. So when the stock market/housing bubble destroyed the lending industry, USA based auto companies were a victim of the economy crash and the most likely to experience it's negative effects. Should they have tried to build up some protections against external banks controlling their cash flow, yes. But they didn't cause it all.

Another aside. When some congress person talked negatively about the auto execs flying a private plane to washington I laughed. Those planes are not as nice as most think. And for me the biggest response back should have been..

"Look Congress we have a company that employs several thousands of people across the globe and so we contract a supplier to provide air travel for our employees to support the work at those various global sites. For instance if we are launching a new car in Mississippi, we send about 300 engineers/purchasing/etc support employees to and from that site each week or month as needed. We do this on a regular so I award a multi year contract to a small business owner to handle the flights for our operations. We fail.....those small business owners probably will fail. We flew here on a 10 year old plane, to be the most cost effective in our travel plans, and also to continue supporting one of our supply bases."

The execs were there to explain the impact of the autocompanies on the broader economy. That jab was actually an opportunity missed.

lnlogauge wrote: That 3rd gen cavalier was in its 10th year of production.

That same site says the Cobalt was out already in 2005. I have to think that the Cavalier was fleet only that year, not retail.

In reply to lnlogauge:

All I can say my fellow GRMr is that I hope you dive deeper behind the curtain to evaluate your opinion about the auto industry.

BTW I am no longer in the auto industry.

Keeping an Astro van in production for 10 years would actually be a good thing for most folks to brag about. A good product for commercial and personal users. So good that it remained profitable for 10 years. Jeep Cherokee (xj) was almost of legal age before it got cancelled.

Also as a result of 9-11 some programs were put on hold to figure out what was going to happen in the global economy, thus some delayed programs. For post 9-11 many US automakers bit the bullet to try and move the economy along selling cars a much reduced rates of return. Unfortunately they got too excited and offered too good a deal with GM starting the whole employee pricing for everyone thing. If we didn't have the bubble and burst in 2007-9 then maybe they would have corrected or maybe we would have had an auto financing bubble, who knows.

Again I am not saying the US auto companies are the BEST just not as bad as many seem to think. I lump Toyota right in there with the big 2 plus FCA and maybe VW. All have their faults and wins and very little separates them in quality anymore.

Weird. I thought this thread would be about the CTS...

My parents have a 2012 and we also test drove a couple of similar vintage with and without the cooling seats. We found that the cooling seats were uncomfortable compared to the regular ones. I surmised because of the plumbing that had to go into them. Sounds like they have that whipped in the 2016s?

Weird. I thought this thread would be about the CTS...

News Flash: it is perfectly decent. /thread? That's a pretty short thread!

I'm fine with the other semi-relevant content keeping it going. My .02

In reply to Vigo: Great point with your first one. They also want to stay too big to fail because they're trying to keep Tesla from reaching the masses legally, which is crony capitalism.