Except this one went on until Sunday and Monday
This one is for Barrie
I’m normally not much of a GM enthusiast, there are not very many products GM that I would consider buying at the current point in time, but I was looking at their depreciation and thought it might be a good idea to check out some of the hits I was getting on the autotrader.
Saturday afternoon, I pulled into the dealership to check out a car most would agree a 26 year old shouldn’t even consider. It has a very fancy logo on the front end.
Yes that’s right a Caddy! Before you get TOO excited, it has one of these logos on the back end
, so no not the “V”.
This particular beauty came with every option, A/C, heated leather seats, HIDs, power everything, sun roof,
on-star, integrated telephone (voice operated), programmable driver positions, auto dimming mirror, bose upgraded stereo with 6 disc CD changer, wood accents, alloy wheels
, upgraded sports suspension and of course a 3.2L 220Hp V6 matted to an Aisin
MANUAL transmission, that’s right MANUAL!
I was asked if I would like to take her for the weekend, how could I refuse? I added a nice 300+km to the odometer which leads to a LONG review of this vehicle.
So here she is
, a beautiful maroon coloured 2003 Cadillac CTS with 18800Km on the clock. Asking price? $30,998. Originally selling price? EST $55k+
With a beautiful rear as well
and her hips are too shabby either
First impression are always important and this car has an different grill, all chrome, with a less flashy caddy logo, I like it.
So I stepped into the car at the dealership and was very impressed. Nice leather, every option known to man, nice comfy feeling seats, I was impressed from the get go.
Interior 
So the interior is a tad bland, since everything is grey but it isn’t too bad, this coming from an interior whore. Driver controls are well laid out, Power mirrors, auto up and down for front passengers, rear passenger auto-down, lock out and driver 1 and driver 2 pre-sets for seating and mirror positions.
The steering wheel is a nice size, not too large and not too small, perfect for this type of vehicle and well positioned. It has manual tilt but no telescoping, usually I don’t require either, but with the 8 way adjustable seats that moved in what seemed every possible direction I was hoping for a telescoping as my comfy driving position was a big too far from the wheel, I later adjusted the seats a million more times and found something was great for highway cruising and a flick of a switch brought me a tad closer for more concentrated driving maneuvers.
The steering wheel also contains cruise control, on-star, volume, and buttons 1-4 which I’m not sure of the use. The volume control is particularly nicely done as it is a round rotating knob for easy quick up and down changes.
The dash is a little bit on the hard plastic side,
for $55k or $60k I would not be happy with this, as a used car for $30k, I have no issues. The buttons were a tad far reaching, but were intuitive even with many options. Options include, a trip computer, digital clock, fuel tracking computer, temperature readout, dual zone auto climate control, heated seats, which by the way are GLORIOUS, and I’m sure many other things I am forgetting….. oh yes the memo recorder built into the sun visor
The instrument cluster is very nice and lights up with a orange hue at night, very soft on the eyes and very clearly read with or without my glasses.
The cluster contains a speedometer
and tachometer
as well as fuel gauge and analog clock. The speedometer needle moves from MPH to KM/H when the units are changed on the man centre dash control, it’s a very slick system that had me smiling on my drive.
Other interior appointments? Well rear seats that sit 5 fairly comfortably, 60/40 split
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and centre armrest with 2 cup holders that are held on with Velcro that seem to fall down every time you flip the armrest down.
Under the hood
a nice V6 with the Caddy logo on the top
.
Trunk size, nice and large, big enough for a months vacation or more after be used to an S2000 sized trunk!
Large enough in fact to fit 2 sit tables and a dresser from Ikea
The DRIVE! So finally the drive! Well I drove the car over 300 kilometers so far, I will be returning after work tomorrow so I got a few more minutes of seat time left as I post this. We drove out of the dealership lot, and we were on fumes, so my first order of business was to fuel up, I didn’t want to fill it and waste the gas, so I put $20 in of premium and was hoping I could make it a long distance on the fuel.
Being use to Japanese cars I started looking for the fuel door release, I sat in the gas station lot for a good 3-5 minutes trying to find the darn thing. I asked my girlfriend to look to make sure it wasn’t a manually operated one, she said nope, no thumb thing.
, so how the heck do I open this thing?
I couldn’t find a lever anywhere, so I got out of the car and pushed it in, hahahahaha, good ‘ol GM manual release hidden with no thumb pull. Alright put some 91 in her and lets get rolling.
The CTS drives REALLY nice, I was impressed. Clutch is a tad on the soft side, but good pedal feel as I never stalled it and never had to over rev to get the car moving. The gas pedal is drive by-wire and unlike the Mercedes I drove last weekend it had no delay. In fact I did not realize it was drive-by-wire until I set the cruise on the highway and the pedal was not pulled away from my foot as I expected.
The brakes are nice and linear and have good grab, I had confidence in them fully, although I never pulled any crazy hard stops the car seemed surefooted and didn’t get wiggly or light under moderate/hard braking.
The shifter has medium to long throws, no snick snick here, but I wasn’t turned off, the throws are very reasonable, less so than say the Hyundai Tiburon or Toyota Echo with their tractor trailer long throws. The one complaint I had about the transmission was reverse, it didn’t seem to have a distinct enough gate, I could not feel if the car was in reverse or not, although I never missed I was always second guessing myself.
The ride quality is like none I have ever experienced, the G35 I guess was close but the G35 is more of a sporty rough ride with luxury intensions. The CTS attempts a similar cross breed ride with a luxury flare. Bumps are soaked up nicely but not to the point that the car rides on air for days after you hit it, it settles quickly. As a result sharp hard bumps are still very noticeable, but as a contrast handling does not suffer. GM has done a great job with this suspension. Which cruising on the highway for 2 hours, my girlfriend fell asleep, highway noise was NILL, no engine noise, and BARELY audible road noise, I was starting to really enjoy this car. The heated seats and climate control give you the ultimate highway cruising ride, the seats were by far the most comfortable I have ever used because of their adjustability.
Handling isn’t S2000 quality but I was impressed, the car will easily out handle my impreza (probably not so much of a compliment but anyway), as a daily driver it is very capable. The traction control is unobtrusive, taking a off-ramp and a good clip I floor the car and felt ice beneath, riding on only all-season tires without traction control I may have been in the ditch, but the car handled all without drama and nicely displayed on the screen that traction control was engaged. The steering wheel is nice and weighty on the highway and not too bad in city driving. On the other hand when parking the car the wheel turns into a ultra light wheel that can be turned 2.5 times with a flick of a finger. I backed into a small tight area at Ikea and was impressed by the turning radius and ease of maneuvering at slow speeds. You have to remember this vehicle is very large compared to what I normally drive, but it doesn’t feel so, when tooling around.
Acceleration in the CTS is brisk, from what I gather 0-60 time in the 7.5second range. It seems to be a bit slow off the line, at around 3000rpm it comes to life and roars, and it FEELS super quick which is sometimes enough
.
I was also impressed by the gas mileage, I averaged 8.4L/100Km on my trip, there was about 100km in town driving. The computer displays instantaneous gas mileage as well as average. Acceleration under normal conditions sucks back the gas at a rate of 17-20L/100km, but as you level off to a cruising speed of 60km/h you average 5-7L/100km in 5th gear. Highway speeds of 110km/h come at the 3000rpm range and get you about 8L/100km on flat and 9L/100km uphill.
Conclusions WOW I was really impressed from the second I stepped foot into the car, so much so it is going to be VERY VERY VERY hard to let it go tomorrow afternoon. I will be sad to let it go. I have been trying to rationalize in my head buying the car to replace my impreza now, this car might be gone next year when I may actually be in the market for it.
The car is a dream and at $30k an amazing bargain. It would require RWD as after some snow today traction control was working overtime with the all-season tread, I tried some tail out driving in a snowy parking lot and it turned into just slide sideways with no control at all. I’ll say it again
WOW, I will admit it this car is a gem.
(Message edited by jamesbe on March 06, 2005)
