2014 Cadillac Cts 3.6l Luxury on 2040-cars

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Cadillac ELR, Nissan Resonance and Ford Atlas win Eyes on Design awards

This year's annual Eyes on Design awards were presented at the end of press days for the Detroit Auto Show on Tuesday. Given out for the best production and concept car designs that debuted at the show, and voted on by an esteemed panel of actual car designers, this year's award for best production vehicle design went to the 2014 Cadillac ELR. The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette, which was the show favorite among Autoblog editors, apparently did not impress the Eyes on Design judges enough with its all-new vent-festooned design.
The award for best concept design was actually split as a tie among the Nissan Resonance and Ford Atlas concepts. Last year's winners were the 2013 Ford Fusion and the Lexus LF-LC concept.
The Eyes on Design organization also presented a new honor this year called the Catalyst Award to Bob Lutz, former Vice Chairman of General Motors. Lutz is reported to have given a defense of design in his acceptance speech, arguing that advancements in quality across the industry as a whole have made good design a key differentiator for buyers.

Cadillac CT6 hybrid likely to appear in Shanghai

Cadillac is poised to reveal a hybrid version of the CT6 sedan later this month at the Shanghai Motor Show. Rumors have swirled of the sedan's pending reveal, and General Motors product chief Mark Reuss reportedly confirmed its existence last fall during an investor conference. On Wednesday, Reuss again said that GM is working on the hybrid CT6, and when asked by Autoblog, he hinted at the pending debut. "We've really got to wait until we finish rounding out the portfolio," he said. "The Shanghai show is where you should look for all of it. So stay tuned." A Cadillac spokesman declined to comment, but confirmed "we will add variants." The brand has already announced two V6 engines and is looking to expand the line. Reuss also said GM has considered a V-Series model for the CT6, but it's focusing on launching the four-cylinder and V6-powered sedans first and promoting V-Series versions of the CTS and ATS that arrive this year. "The [CT6] architecture is certainly capable of doing it," he said. "The question is who's going to buy the CT6? What kind of person? And do we need a V-Series off of that is the question we haven't answered yet. It's certainly capable of doing it ... we've certainly thought about it." Details of the hybrid powertrain aren't known, but it could use plug-in technology. Chevrolet announced the 2016 Malibu will get a hybrid model that employs electric powertrain features from the new generation of the Volt. For the CT6, electric-vehicle technologies would likely be used to extend range and aid the performance of the conventional engine. Related Video:

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.