2010 Cadillac Escalade Lux Sunroof Nav Dvd 22's 45k Mi Texas Direct Auto on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Cadillac says it made CUE infotainment a lot better

We've never been huge fans of CUE, the Cadillac User Experience infotainment interface. It's been around a few years now, and the best thing we can say for it is that it now supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, making it easy enough to replace most of the interface with a familiar smartphone-based system. Now Cadillac has made some big upgrades to the system that should address at least some of our concerns. First and foremost, the system is claimed to be more intuitive, with a more logical interface design. Cadillac has added a Summary View that gives an overview of the climate, media, navigation, and phone all at the same time. The system will also be able to receive over-the-air updates, allowing Cadillac to make improvements more often and push them out to owners' cars, mush like Tesla and other automakers already do. The 4G LTE connection will also be used to connect the car with the cloud, where drivers can store and modify their own personalized set of settings. This My Driver Preferences profile will include things like contacts, navigation preferences, and recent destinations, and will also follow them from one car equipped with the system to another. That should come in handy for anyone subscribing to the $1,500-a-month Book by Cadillac vehicle subscription service, which allows participants to swap between cars when they choose. The cloud connection will also carry over to a new available navigation function, which Cadillac claims has a more intuitive, smartphone-like interface. It uses its data connection to provide current destination info and is supposed to learn a driver's habits, such as their preferred routes and frequent destinations, which the system will then attempt to offer up predictively – so the car should be able to know that you're heading home at 5:00. Additional apps for the system will be available through Cadillac's new Collection app store. And it's still compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. One sore spot that appears to have been improved is the digital gauge package, although Cadillac hasn't offered details on that extension of the system. The current iteration's ability to over-customize the interface (our personal favorite is the option to display a total of four speedometers between the head-up display and the gauge screen; see video below) and unintuitive controls make it difficult to use and learn, while the simulated gauges don't look particularly realistic.

Submit your questions for Autoblog Podcast #325 LIVE!

We're set to record Autoblog Podcast #325 tonight, and you can drop us your questions and comments via our Q&A module below. Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes if you haven't already done so, and if you want to take it all in live, tune in to our UStream (audio only) channel at 10:00 PM Eastern tonight.
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #325
Twin-turbo Cadillac CTS coming

Junkyard Gem: 1998 Cadillac Catera

A decade or so after Ford tried to swipe some US-market sales from European luxury marques by selling the German-built Ford Scorpio with Merkur badging, General Motors opted to sell the German-built Opel Omega luxury sedan as a Cadillac. The Catera was a reasonably nimble rear-wheel-drive sedan with a 200-horse DOHC V6 engine, and its badge-engineered nature made it a much less costly gamble than, say, the Cadillac Allante, which had its bodies built in Italy and flown to Michigan for assembly. Unfortunately, it had no manual transmission option, and Americans who remembered the miserable US-market Opels of the 1970s were put off by the Catera's Opelness. Its $29,995 list price was quite a bit cheaper than that of the (slightly less powerful) $39,800 BMW 528i and a bit less than the (slightly more powerful) $33,585 Acura 3.2 TL's cost, but the Catera didn't sell in large numbers. This one made it to a respectable mileage figure, and the nice interior shows that it was well-cared-for during its 18 years on the road. The ads for the Catera featured a cartoon duck named Ziggy. Fast, fun, fiendishly flexible! By 2000, Cadillac had ditched the duck and was touting the Catera's value. Related Video: