Jerry Flint over at The Car Connection is running one of his curmudgeonly rants again. Only this time, it is about Cadillac.

It seems that he is convinced that Cadillac has lost their momentum compared to the Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW’s of the luxury world. To see his sales numbers, you have to admit that Cadillac is not seeing double digit growth of sales.

However, I’d counter that Cadillac is still in rebuild mode. They do not have nearly the number of models of these companies (even counting all variants, Cadillac has 11 offerings to BMW’s 18, Lexus’ 10 – the only one on this list with fewer models, though they aren’t pumped up by counting variants like V-Series or the 3 version of the Escalade, and Mercedes’ 27), and they are still in a multi-year push to rebuild the brand image through competitive product. This all takes time to register with buyers (as a visitor to this site, obviously you are ahead of the rest of the market).

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Categories: Models, News, Commentary
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Jalopnik is running a story today about a possible new product move for Cadillac. Rumor has it they plan to chase the European competition downmarket below the existing BLS with an even smaller, rear-drive car. Expect this model to be designed in the same vein as the Euro-only, hatchback-esque models like the BMW 1-series, Audi A2, and the Mercedes A and B class cars.

They conjecture that this car would be built on a cut-down version of the new Zeta rear-drive chassis, but given the size of that platform, we think the following is more likely – base it on the new, flexible Kappa chassis that is currently used on the Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky, and Opel GT. GM has already shown coupe and wagon variants based on this platform, so a 1-series competitor would be a natural.

Oddly, this would leave the BLS as the only non-reardrive model in Europe. Perhaps, instead of an Epsilon 2 based, all-wheel drive variant we’ve been expecting, they could move to Zeta for its second act.

This would play into our latest hunch that Cadillac will move the STS up into 7-series/S-Class/A8 territory (and the current front-drive DTS to go away altogether), making room for the CTS to move into 5-series/E-class/A6 land, with the 2nd generation BLS becoming a true 3-series competitor and coming to the US market. We don’t expect the sub-BLS Cadillac to make its way here unless the BMW model comes here first and meets wild success.

Now, if they’d just build an entry-level (30-40k USD) range roadster on Kappa, bring the rumored BRX to market – to compete against the BMW X3 and upcoming small utes from Audi (Q5) and Mercedes (GLX) then they’d really be hitting the competition hard.

Read the story over at:

Jalopnik.com: Mini DeVille: Cadillac Eyeing a Run at the BMW 1-Series?

Categories: News, Commentary, Rumored Models
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Leftlane News is running a great set of the new CTS-V getting its groove on at the Nurburgring in Germany.

Unlike previous CTS-V spy shots, these give us a pretty clear view of the unique grill and lower bumper that will differentiate this CTS from lesser examples.

It appears that the mesh grill will return along with an agressive lower air intake…now if we could only get some definitive info on what that air is feeding and cooling…

Expect the CTS-V to arrive a year after the new CTS (likely as a 2009).

Read all about it and see lots of photos at:

Leftlane News: 2009 CTS-V on the Nurburgring

Categories: News, CTS, V-Series, Spy photos
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Leftlane News is reporting today on a dealer meeting held by GM where many new products were shown.

Of interest to the Caddy Edge audience is that the production CTS was shown (and as expected, almost identical to the ‘60 Minutes’ CTS shown by Bob Lutz). Also of interest is that a clay model of a new STS was shown that had significantly new styling (no details on how it compared to the new CTS) and was not the car shown in the spy photos of the 2008 STS we’ve been seeing as of late.

The future is looking even brighter for Cadillac.

Read all about this and the other dealer previews at:

Leftlane News: GM previews 2008 Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS, STS to dealers

Categories: News, CTS, STS / SLS
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WorldCarFans.com has posted a few undisguised pics of the upcoming STS refresh.

New are tail lights, grill, and other minor trim differences.

Take a look at what we can likely expect in the 2008 STS over at:

WordCarFans: More Cadillac STS Facelift

Categories: News, STS / SLS, Spy photos
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