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Cadillac tipped to call flagship something other than LTS

Cadillac wouldn't be Cadillac without large sedans in its lineup, and while the XTS has had to hold down that end of the fort all on its own, it won't have to for too long. That's because the luxury brand in the General Motors portfolio is preparing to roll out its new LTS, stylistically previewed by the Elmiraj concept pictured above. Only now, the latest thinking is that the upcoming flagship model may not be called LTS at all.
As Automotive News points out, Cadillac's naming scheme is all over the place at the moment. The ATS slotting below the CTS makes sense (alphabetically), but where do the ELR, SRX and especially the Escalade fit into that naming hierarchy? And how would LTS - as the project has been known until now - sit above the XTS?
Fortunately, Cadillac may be on the case, as two of the division's most recent senior appointments seem keen to rationalize the naming scheme. One is Uwe Ellinghaus, who joined Cadillac as chief marketing officer late last year. Speaking of the brand's nomenclature last spring, Ellinghaus was quoted as saying, "We are aware that this is currently a weakness of the Cadillac brand." And his new boss is bound to agree.

Cadillac ATS was almost front-wheel drive

"We were going to do a front-wheel drive Cadillac compact off of Delta because it was going to be less expensive," Doug Parks, General Motors' vice president of global product programs, told the Automotive News during the Detroit Auto Show in January of this year. That sentence, referring to early ATS discussions more than five years ago - a period when the automaker, and the industry, was struggling - reveals that Cadillac's highly acclaimed rear-wheel drive compact sedan almost never happened.
Parks revealed that that automaker actually built a 2.0-liter test mule, on GM's Delta platform (shared with the Chevrolet Cruze and Buick Verano) and tested it in Europe. While the prototype was "pretty darn good," according to Parks, the team realized that in order to compete against Mercedes-Benz and BMW it would have to invest in a new rear-wheel drive platform.
The resulting all-new Alpha platform would eventually underpin the Cadillac ATS, and many would argue that its balanced rear-wheel drive chassis is its single most important attribute. Thankfully, the Alpha's goodness won't stop with the ATS. The upcoming 2014 Cadillac CTS and the future Camaro will also share its architecture, meaning the Cimarron will remain a distant memory.

2015 Cadillac ATS-V gunning for the BMW M3

Spy photographers have spotted something interesting. Cadillac engineers have taken to public streets with the upcoming ATS-V and a playmate: the current BMW M3 Sedan. The prototype seen here wears a more aggressive front fascia, flared fenders and beefy brakes. Quad exhaust tips and what looks to be a small lip spoiler on the trunk deck sum up the most obvious visual changes over the standard ATS outside. Word has it the ATS-V will bow with the same twin-turbo 3.6-liter V6 available in the nose of the XTS. In that application, the engine is good for a stout 410 horsepower, which should be more than enough to hustle the sedan around a track.
Other details are still murky, however. First and foremost: will GM offer the ATS-V with an honest manual transmission, like it does with its big brother, the CTS-V? Something tells us we won't have long to wait to find out - the machine will likely bow next year as a 2015 model. Until then, dig in on our newest bevy of spy photos.