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Autoblog Podcast #326

Easter Jeep Safari concepts, Shelby 1000, 2014 Cadillac CTS and Mercedes CLA45 AMG leaks
Episode #326 of the Autoblog Podcast is here, and this week, Dan Roth and Zach Bowman talk about this year's Easter Jeep Safari concepts, the 1,200-horsepower Shelby 1000 and leaked images of the 2014 Cadillac CTS and Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG. We wrap with your questions and emails, and for those of you who hung with us live on our UStream channel, thanks for taking the time. Keep reading for our Q&A module for you to scroll through and follow along, too. Thanks for listening!
Autoblog Podcast #326:

2016 Cadillac CTS-V First Drive [w/video]

A million insects lost their lives today. Boxelder bugs and mayflies making the ultimate sacrifice in Elkhart Lake, their carapaces no buffer against a rocketing rectangle of safety glass. Their bodies gorily streaking into spangles along the diamond-faceted face of the Cadillac CTS-V. Road America is a four-mile ribbon of pavement snaking its way through the emerald center of the country's northern heartland. Since the 1950s it's seen uncountable fields of diverse racing machinery rocket over its hills and around its 14 corners. I would imagine that on those occasions the tramping of onlookers and hubbub of vehicles, both competitive and commonplace, would dissuade a great number of our six-legged friends from making their way onto the track. But today it's just me turning laps. Inconceivably just one journalist, driving the baddest roadgoing Cadillac ever made, on one of the loveliest circuits America has ever carved out. So big-winged bugs made it out to me in a vast array and a tragic sum, and I drilled through them oblivious to anything but one of the greatest days of driving I've ever had. Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster. For 2016 Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster worthy of the carnage described above. The words "epic" and "awesome" are hilariously overused on the Internet, but in the case of the CTS-V's 6.2-liter supercharged V8, their literal meanings are fitting. The capacity to produce 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque is astounding. Feeling those outputs come to growling life under my foot arch, uncorks different reactions in my brain as the day wears on: first trepidation, next cautious optimism, finally red-eyed bloodlust. A glance at the power and torque curves will show you that the charged V8 behaves more like a naturally aspirated thing than a turbo'd on/off switch. Peak torque arrives at 3,600 rpm, horsepower at 6,400, giving the engine lovely, linear power delivery. Even with top torque happening near the middle of the tach, there's no small amount of the stuff when the engine first spins up, so launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. Launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. On the roads around Wisconsin, using all of the available power is hardly advisable, but I have no trouble driving this fast car slowly (sort of).

Cadillac exec realizes ELR pricing was stupid high

At least one Cadillac exec has finally started to come to terms with something we knew all along: the initial $75,000 price for the ELR plug-in hybrid was way too high. The bad decision in part led to the model selling just over 1,000 units last year. Company marketing boss Uwe Ellinghaus recently gave an interview to Bloomberg where he discussed what went wrong. "The MSRP was, indeed, a mouthful," Ellinghaus said to Bloomberg. "We overestimated that customers would realize our competitors were naked at that price." People balked at the ELR's price from the very start, and dealers were receiving $5,000 at one point just for getting customers to test drive the PHEV. Later, some incentives for buyers were as high as $14,000. Cadillac planners saw a conundrum when it came to the ELR's price. Too low of a figure was thought to bring the model close to the Chevrolet Volt, and $75,000 was also believed to signal Caddy's PHEV as something special. "We just wanted to make this a statement for the brand of how progressive we are," Ellinghaus said to Bloomberg. Cadillac is now working to rehabilitate the ELR's reputation with a host of updates for 2016. Buyers get a 25-percent boost in powertrain output, additional standard features, and the whole package comes with a $9,000 drop in price. The tweaks should help the luxurious PHEV make a better second impression. Related Video: