This Cadillac does not have a V8. I know what you’re thinking: what is the point of having a true American car that doesn’t have a big, burbling V8? Well, the new CT6 is Cadillac’s latest attempt at breaking into the European market, and this is its Mercedes S-Class rival. As such, it’s been designed … [Read more…]
By 1976, Cadillacs had become so swollen that they plowed through corners, averaged 13 mpg (4.6 km/l), and were as quick off the line as an M24 tank. Despite a massive 500cid V8, output of the ’76 Eldo was a lowly 190 brake horsepower, with a top speed of just 109 mph (175 km/h).
No car better sums up America at its peak than the 1959 Cadillac—a rocket-styled starship for orbiting the galaxy of new freeways in the richest and most powerful country on earth. With 42 in (107 cm) fins, the ’59 Caddy marks the zenith of American car design.
Foar 1950s America, cars did not come much more glamorous than the 1953 Eldorado. “A car apart even from other Cadillacs,” assured the advertising copy.
We owe a lot to the ’49 Cadillac. It brought us tail fins and a high-compression V8. Harley Earl came up with those trendsetting rear rudders, and John F. Gordon the performance motor. Between them they created the basic grammar of the postwar American car.
It almost (but didn’t quite) make it to the street. The Cadillac Sixteen was a prototype that test-bedded General Motors’ vast new 32-valve V16 engine, which was very clever.
Okay, so you’ll never get to drive it, or ride in it, or maybe even see it (except on television). Shoot at it with a high-powered rifle and the bullet will bounce off. Let fly with a rocket-launcher before the Secret Service take you out and Cadillac One will barely be dented. But it can’t … [Read more…]
Caddys have a traditional image as luxurious barges that roll gracefully round the corners and then glide along the straightaway with an imperious smoothness. Yes? Actually no, because that stereotype has been blown clean away by the Cadillac CTS-V, the superstar in Cadillac’s V-Series high-performance line that made its debut in 2004.
American car makers can get hustled into precipitate action, and so it was with the Cadillac Escalade. This appeared in 1999 as a hastily conceived and poorly implemented response to numerous luxury SUVs from marques like BMW, Toyota and Mercedes that were appearing like a rash on roads everywhere. In particular, the boys at General … [Read more…]
It was to be the finest ultra-luxury coupe the world had ever seen. Cadillac’s first two-seat roadster since 1941 would combine ‘European elan’ with ‘American muscle’, and ‘grandpa’ General Motors would accept no compromise to its offspring’s tour de force. Witnesses to the Cadillac Allante’s unveiling in 1986 acclaimed its sleek, dramatic lines, and basked … [Read more…]