2004 Cadillac Xlr Convertible on 2040-cars

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Cadillac goes white-out on social media as prelude to Oscars announcement [w/video]

Cadillac appears to be in a very odd place at the moment. On one hand, Johan De Nysschen is pushing the company towards a much more luxurious image that includes converting 700 dealers into boutiques, and a blitz of new products is also supposed to be on the way in the coming years. However, at the moment sales aren't necessarily keeping pace with production, and there are reportedly heavy incentives available on some models. Now, we're seeing the earliest hint at the next strike in the brand's strategy as its social media presence goes white across the web. Go check out Cadillac's official pages on the major social media hubs, and all you can find is blank space. There's just a period on Twitter, a blank box on Facebook, another one on Instagram and the company logo is even gone from Pinterest. Perhaps most bizarre is YouTube, where Caddy is showing five minutes of absolutely nothing (embedded below) with no sound at all. The video description is only a period. All of this nothingness is supposed to be a lead-up to Cadillac unveiling a completely new advertising campaign during the Oscars on February 22. This method of blanking everything out beforehand could suggest a minimal, to-the-point message in the future. While it wouldn't be shocking for a few teasers to come out in the meantime, Caddy is keeping quite a secret before the big reveal.

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.

C7 Corvette won't spawn new Cadillac XLR [w/video]

Between the new 2014 Chevy Corvette Stingray and the even newer Cadillac Elmiraj Concept shown off at Pebble Beach, we were already expecting some sort of chatter of a Cadillac XLR redux. During an in-depth C7 Corvette discussion with Tadge Juechter, the car's chief engineer, Fox News asked if a Corvette-based, Bowling Green-built Cadillac will be built off the C7. Non-spoiler alert: the answer is no.
Juechter says that General Motors has "no intent" on transforming this car into a Cadillac product since the C7 has been optimized for the Corvette buyer, a consumer that's generally a different sort of person than a Cadillac intender who might also be cross-shopping a Mercedes-Benz SL-Class or BMW 6 Series.
While we're not ready to write off a future XLR altogether, we assume that the Corvette Cadillac experiment is most likely never going to happen again. The interview with Juechter is posted below, but the XLR discussion comes in at the 9:00 mark.