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Hear the new Cadillac CTS-V torture some tires

The 2016 Cadillac CTS-V seems like the type of wonderful gift that Santa might cook up in his workshop for one extraordinarily good boy or girl. However, the first chance for most people to actually see the super sedan and its carbon fiber pieces in real life is at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show in January. As a stocking stuffer until then, Caddy has released this video highlighting the latest V-Series roasting its tires better than any dinner for the holidays. With the supercharged 6.2-liter V8 from the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 nestled into the CTS-V's engine bay, the Cadillac certainly has quite a bark coming from its exhaust. The mill might be detuned slightly from the 'Vette to 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque, but that's still plenty for this smoky application. Enjoy this tease of the future V-Series, ahead of the Detroit show. Related Gallery 2016 Cadillac CTS-V View 15 Photos News Source: Cadillac via YouTubeImage Credit: Related images copyright Cadillac Cadillac GM Luxury Performance Videos Sedan

Cadillac expects major growth in China

The US sales issues facing Cadillac are not being paralleled in the People's Republic of China, as a new report from Automotive News indicates the US luxury maker should see its sales increase by as much as 40 percent.
The report cites Cadillac's own forecasts, which put its 2014 sales in the PRC at 70,000 units after cresting 45,000 vehicles at the end of August. Provided the sales pace holds true through 2015, the brand would hit its new 100,000-unit sales goal, AN reports.
"We're very optimistic about the luxury market, we believe that the luxury market by 2016 here will become the largest luxury market in the world, surpassing even the size of luxury in Europe," GM China President Matthew Tsien told AN. "With [Cadillac president] Johan [de Nysschen], we have somebody that really is an executive that understands luxury, but he also is very, very keen on understanding what do we need here in China for Cadillac to be successful."

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.