2003 Cadillac Cts Luxury Sport Sedan 4-door 3.2l on 2040-cars

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GM, Pilot will build EVgo fast chargers at 500 truck stops across U.S.

All of our maps showing electric vehicle charging stations across the U.S. are going to need an update. Today, General Motors, Pilot and EVgo announced plans to work together on a nationwide DC fast charging network. The plan calls for 2,000 charging stalls that can deliver up to 350 kW to be installed at up to 500 Pilot and Flying J travel centers in the U.S. The goal is to have DC fast chargers available in 50-mile intervals across the country. The new charging stations will feature GM's "Ultium Charge 360" branding and "Pilot Flying J" logos but will not be limited to drivers of GM EVs. The plugs will use CCS connectors and be available to anyone. GM EV owners can take advantage of benefits, including the ability to make exclusive reservations, get discounts on charging costs and streamline the charging process with Plug and Charge and in-vehicle apps that can provide real-time charger availability. The first installation phase will take place in 2023, and "the bulk of the installations" should be completed by 2025, EVgo CEO Kathy Zoi said during a conference call with reporters announcing the plan. "We're gonna get going immediately and commence all of that engineering and planning stuff," she said. "We've got a pretty orderly plan." Pilot CEO Shameek Konar said the company expects the new EV charging stations to coexist with the current fuel infrastructure. "An average Pilot Flying J location is about 10 acres," Konar said. "This will be in addition to all of our gas pumps. The way I think about it is, this is a new source of energy that is going to coexist with gas for quite some time. We can debate how long, but we need to serve both groups of customers." Installing DC fast chargers at hundreds of Pilot's travel centers — aka truck stops — means there should be food, drinks, restrooms, WiFi and even showers available while you wait for an EV to charge. Pilot recently announced its “New Horizons” plan that will invest $1 billion in upgrading Pilot travel centers with more premium amenities, including expanded seating and lounge areas. While the exact amount of time it will take to charge an EV using these new stations will vary on the EV and its current state of charge, most EVs can refill from a low state of charge to around 80 percent in 20-30 minutes on a fast charger. The new stations are future-proofed to deliver up to 350 kW, a charge rate that few EVs today can handle.

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Cadillac Catera

GM's Cadillac Division was having a tough time in the early 1990s, with an onslaught of Lexuses and Infinitis pouring across the Pacific to steal their younger customers while high-end German manufacturers picked off their older customers. Flying an S-Class-priced model between assembly lines in Turin and Hamtramck hadn't worked out, so why not look to the European outposts of the far-flung GM Empire for the next Cadillac? That's how the Catera was born, and I have found a rare first-year example in a North Carolina car graveyard. Across the Atlantic, GM's Opel and Vauxhall were doing good business with prosperous European car buyers by selling them the sleek rear-wheel-drive Omega B (whose platform also lived beneath the Holden VT Commodore in Australia). Here was a genuine German design that competed with success against BMW and Audi on their home turf! So, the Omega B was Americanized and renamed the Catera. Opel wasn't a completely unknown brand to Americans at the time, since its cars were sold here with their own badging through Buick dealerships from the middle 1950s through the late 1970s (for a much shorter period, American Pontiac dealers attempted to sell Vauxhalls). Even after that, plenty of Opel DNA showed up in the products of U.S.-market GM divisions. The Catera was by far the most affordable Cadillac for 1997, with an MSRP starting at $29,995 (about $59,113 in 2024 dollars). Being a genuine German car, it looked much more convincingly European than the DeVille ($36,995), Eldorado ($37,995) and Seville ($39,995). Inspired by the ducks on the Cadillac emblem (they were really supposed to be martlets, mythical birds with no feet and occasionally lacking beaks), Cadillac's marketers went after youthful car shoppers with a whimsical animated duck named Ziggy. For the 21st century, the birds were removed from the Cadillac emblem in order to attract California buyers under 45 years of age. As we all know, the Catera flopped hard in the marketplace. What sold well in Europe turned out not to translate so well in in North America, especially when bearing the badges of such a historically prestigious brand. The Catera's engine was a 54-degree 3.0-liter V6 rated at 200 horsepower and 192 pound-feet. Just as had been the case with its predecessor, the Allante, no manual transmission was available.

GM Recalling Another 2.7 Million Vehicles In Five Separate Campaigns

The recalls keep rolling in from General Motors, evidently keen to avoid repeating the mistakes of the ignition-switch debacle and clean house. This time they're all coming at once, with five separate recalls announced together covering approximately 2.7 million vehicles. The largest of the five actions involves over 2.4 million units of the previous-generation Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx, Pontiac G6 and Saturn Aura in order to fix brake light wiring harness, which have been found to be susceptible to corrosion. The recall is separate from the 56k Aura sedans which GM recently recalled over faulty shift cables, not to mention the previous massive recall of 1.3 million vehicles – some of them the same models – but appears to have resulted from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation that started with the G6 almost a year ago. The second-largest campaign involves the 2014 Chevy Malibu, specifically those fitted with GM's 2.5-liter engine and stop/start system, approximately 140,000 examples of which has been found to have problematic brakes. The issue does not appear to be connected to the recall of 8k Malibu and Buick LaCrosse sedans (also involving brake woes) which we reported upon last week. Four crashes have been reported in such models, but GM admits it's not yet clear if the problem was a contributing factor in the accidents. A further 112k Corvette models from the 2005-2007 model years are being called in for problems with their low-beam headlamps resulting from a flexing relay control circuit wire that's not meant to bend. GM says it is "aware of several hundred complaints" about this issue, but notes that there have been no reports of related accidents. In addition, over 19k examples of Cadillac CTS from the 2013 and 2014 model years are being recalled over windshield wipers that might not work after a jump start. Finally, GM is also bringing in 477 examples of its 2014 Chevy Silverado, Tahoe and GMC Sierra (though not the Yukon) to fix a problem with a tie rod in its steering rack. As ever, all recall repairs will be performed free of charge, and GM is now estimating that recall-related actions this quarter will result in an estimated $200-million charge against its second-quarter earnings. Read the full announcement from GM below for further details.