Cadillac: Escalade Premium Sport Utility 4-door on 2040-cars

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Autoblog's ultimate holiday rides

Over the hills and through the woods, it's the time of year when many of us visit family and friends for the holidays. But getting there can be a chore. It's cold and snowy across much of the United States, and even if the climate is favorable, the drive to grandmother's house often is not. Think back to holiday road trips of yore: They probably included crying babies, antsy children, hungover adults and frequent bathrooms stops all around. Now, we're all at different life stages here at Autoblog, and the perfect car for one staffer might be as useful as a team of Budweiser Clydesdales to another. Some of us bounce from family event to family event with children and a labrador in tow, while others prefer a quieter, simpler holiday. But whatever the endeavor, we all need wheels. With that in mind, here is the unofficial Autoblog list of the ultimate cars in which to tackle the holiday season. 2015 Ferrari FF To borrow a chestnut from Top Gear presenter James May, "As you'd expect, I've done this properly." That oddly voluptuous ruby bolide in the photo above? It's a 2015 Ferrari FF – all 652 all-wheel-driven horsepower of it. What makes a Ferrari the ideal for holiday time in PaukertLand? My Midwestern winter breaks are wonderful, but they're typically frenetic and slushy, involving a lot of schlepping from house to house and even city to city, not to mention inevitable last-minute runs for forgotten presents and dinner ingredients. Needless to say, a powerful V12 is a welcome ally for such duties. And this one isn't just a friend when the road is clear. The FF has been gifted Ferrari's novel 4RM AWD system, and despite sitting lower to the ground than, say, an SUV, it's a pretty effective tool for real winter driving, especially when outfitted with a set of snow tires. Unlike other Ferraris, it's also a rather practical thing, with legitimate seating for four adults and 15.9 cubic feet of cargo space – that's precisely as much room as a Mercedes E-Class – and you can fold the rear chairs and cram 28.2 cubes-worth of holiday cheer in the back. Okay, so it's far from cheap and fuel economy isn't that great, but who cares? Just drop a paddle-shifted gear or two, bury the throttle and Repeat The Sounding Joy. Ain't the holidays grand? – Chris Paukert Executive Editor 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe My Mom gives out more presents than any other human being I've ever encountered.

Cadillac: The standard of what?

Cadillac's tagline "Standard of the World" goes back to 1908 when it won the Dewar Trophy. While you might think that the moniker and the trophy have something to do with a feat of racing and daring-do against a cadre of British, French, and German marques, it's nothing of the sort. Rather, Cadillac achieved the trophy because of interchangeable parts. The parts they were producing back then were so well-made that Henry Leland, who established Cadillac, was able to disassemble three Model Ks, mix up the parts, and then put together three functioning cars. This amazed the Brits who handed him the trophy, and the "Standard of the World" was born. During the past several months, Cadillac has been producing news releases that would seem as though the company is the Standard of the World: "Cadillac Global Sales Rise 44.2 percent in January ... 18 percent in February ... 22.1 percent in March. . .40.9 percent in April ... 33.8 percent in May ... 7.2 percent in June." Like the Dewar Trophy being about manufacturing not performance, things are not necessarily what they seem. That is, Cadillac's growth is predicated on performance in China, not in the US. Through June, its China sales are 80,357 vehicles for the first five months of 2017, versus 72,073 in the US. The China number is a 75.4-percent year-over-year increase while the US number is a 1.6-percent decrease. For the entire globe, Cadillac has sold 164,174 vehicles. Of them, 65,250 were the XT5. That was followed by the ATS, at 34,277 units. In the US, the XT5 is doing reasonably well, as it has moved 29,798 units during the first six months. The ATS, conversely, is doing not particularly well, as it is down 26.2 percent with sales at just 7,209 for the year so far. To put that into some sort of context, know that Cadillac has sold 7,370 copies of the generally derided XTS, which is down 24.7 percent. The CTS is down 36 percent at 5,059 units, and the only other car in the lineup (we'll pretend that the ELR doesn't exist anymore and it shortly won't), the CT6 sedan, is up 172.7 percent – but they have sold only 5,397 CT6s. While Caddy talks a good game about competing with the likes of the BMW 5 Series and the Mercedes E-Class, know that those two sedans have been sold 17,036 and 20,783 times this year in the US respectively. So what is Cadillac chief Johan de Nysschen to do? According to Reuters, it is to cull the lineup.

Cadillac finds a few more horsepower for ATS-V

We've rarely found cause to complain about a car getting more power, and guess what? That's not going to change here. After initially announcing that the new ATS-V would come to market with a Corvette-matching 455 horsepower, Cadillac has come back with an SAE-certified 464 horsepower. That, as Automobile points out, puts the high-performance ATS in spitting distance of the base Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG and its 469 hp. Anyone else feeling bad for owners of the 425-hp BMW M3? While the ATS-V is getting a bit more grunt, somehow, we doubt Cadillac will adjust its previously published performance figures. Expect 60 miles per hour to arrive in 3.9 seconds, with a top speed of 185 mph. As of this writing, a lucky Autoblog staffer is lapping the ATS-V around Circuit of the Americas in Austin as part of the sedan's big launch. So while we can't fill you in on its real-world performance just yet, expect a big update soon. Related Video: