Gadgetory

now of all the American cars that say they go after the Germans and teach them a thing or two I'd have to say the Cadillac CTS has the best claim to actually doing that and so when General Motors the Cadillac division redoes the CTS a lots at stake let's see what the 2014 looks like it's right here behind me start with the face the more pronounced sort of a large grille nose it comes out more and is less flush with the car easy to spot of 2014 as is this interesting LED detail on the corner running up the front and along the strikes at the top of the fender again easy spotters trick there also notice how low the hood presents as it comes to the windshield that's something that you see a lot in modern cars that tend to be very high and thick at the cowl this car is about for some odd inches longer overall two and a half of that is in the wheelbase a little bit longer bulkier rear overhang as well but the car presents wider even though it's actually a little narrower because it's come down and gotten longer and underneath all these styling cues I'm showing you is a big weight loss story they pulled some 300 pounds out of the weight of this guy from the 2013 using mostly some aluminum structural components that's a big weight loss for a vehicle that has actually gotten longer but stays in the same size class now what's more fun after you take out 300 pounds from a cars weight than to add a whole mess of power to move that around that's a good formula here's the other part of the story this is the new top-end engine for the CTS this is before the CTSV comes out there'll be a new one of those coming but right now you can get this twin-turbo v6 420 horse 430 foot-pounds of torque those are great numbers also going out to an 8-speed very advanced automatic transmission that has programming logic that will let it jump a gear as it goes up and down to the gears if that's more efficient because as the gears get so close sometimes it doesn't need to go four five six seven eight it can hop one or two interesting logic there and note this design feature this car has got a cast and exhaust port not a separate exhaust manifold here where the turbo attaches that means that as soon as the exhaust valves open and expanding gases are coming out they are driving the turbo almost immediately not having to wait to pass down through an exhaust manifold and then get there this should lead to much reduced term Lag and of course that's one of the key things in a motor like this inside the new CTS following another Cadillac trend going all LCD in the cabin that means not just the big head unit where Cadillac Q lives but also over here the instrument panel becomes fully virtual and those gauges and indications can do a presto change-o to change what they're showing you as well as the look of how they're doing it now still coming after this vehicle hits the road a little bit later in 2013 will be a coupe version a new cts-v version and of course Cadillac is still working on electrification the ELR we saw rolled out recently so a lot of things were happening that have significant engineering changes for Cadillac and as you can see big changes in the skin as well