Cadillac Seville Sls, Cadillac Seville ,cadillac, Seville Sls,sls, Cadillac Sls, on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Ford C-Max spot aimed squarely at Cadillac ELR 'Poolside' hubris [UPDATE]

If we had tried to predict the first video response to the controversial Poolside video for the Cadillac ELR, we would not have thought it would center on compost. But, hey, it's always nice to be reminded that the real world is sometimes better than fiction. Instead of the chic swagger of 'Poolside,' 'Anything Is Possible' is all about getting dirty. The new short in question is called Upside: Anything Is Possible and it promotes two things: Detroit Dirt and the Ford C-Max Energi. As in the ELR ad, Ford's plug-in C-Max only makes an appearance at the tail end of the spot, but instead of the chic swagger of Poolside, Anything Is Possible is all about getting dirty. The ad stars Pashon Murray, co-founder of Detroit Dirt, which takes natural waste from around Detroit, composts it into soil and then spreads that around "forgotten parcels" of Detroit to create urban farms. Detroit Dirt gets its bio-waste from a lot of sources, including the Detroit Zoological Society (all that herbivore manure has to go somewhere), Ford and General Motors, but this particular ad was the idea of Ford's PR agency, Team Detroit. It was a frenetic shoot, filmed with an LA-based director right after a big winter storm blew through Detroit, and Murray couldn't be happier with the result. "This was Ford Motor Company pushing my story, letting me tell the story that I believe in," Murray tells AutoblogGreen. "I get to help push this car and I get to tell my story." She says that the Team Detroit and Ford had to agree on the message, "from my understanding, [YouTube] is where they wanted to start, not where they wanted to finish." The ad is already getting a positive response on Twitter, so we won't be surprised if it shows up in more places soon. "It's not saying Ford is better than GM. It's telling the story of a black woman who's working hard in Detroit." As Detroit Dirt has off-screen support from both GM and Ford, it's unsurprising to hear Murray say that the video "is not a rivalry thing." She notes that the ad agency Team Detroit came to her and offered to tell the Detroit Dirt story using the framework of the GM ad. "It's a parody on this commercial, but it's not saying Ford is better than GM," she said. "It's telling the story of a black woman who's working hard in Detroit." What is that story? It's about urban farming, recovery and recycling. Murray tells us that for the last seven or eight years, she's been dedicated to sustainability.

GM intends to offer semi-autonomous vehicles by 2020

Prepare for a few years of technological saber-rattling, as the world's automakers begin pushing to bring self-driving cars to market. Earlier this week, Nissan announced that it aims to offer autonomous vehicles by 2020, while Google, BMW and several other marks are working on similar efforts.
General Motors is doing things differently, though. Rather than push for a fully autonomous car, it's continuing to refine its semi-autonomous Super Cruise, a product that we tested in April 2012 and that will eventually see use on some Cadillacs before trickling down to the rest of the General Motors family. Super Cruise, which is undergoing testing in the Cadillac SRX, doesn't take complete control out of the driver's hands. Rather, under a very specific set of circumstances on the freeway, it will marry the capabilities of things like lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control to allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel. All of which sounds a lot like the system Mercedes-Benz is launching on the 2014 S-Class.
The system is still in development, according to John Capp, GM's director of electrical controls and active safety technology. Now that that the biggest hurdle, steering control, has been cleared, GM's engineers can focus on things like teaching the system to adapt to differing road conditions and visibility levels. As we reported in 2012, Super Cruise is still befuddled in low-visibility situations or when road markings aren't particularly clear.

Such Sweet Sorrow: Cadillac's CTS-V gets an Irish wake

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. The honkin', stonkin' second-generation CTS-V, powered by Cadillac's brawny supercharged 6.2-liter V8 has been a very good thing. And now that the 500 final coupes – the only CTS-Vs designated 2015 models – have been built (just five remain unsold as of this writing), it is indeed a good thing that's come to an end. But Cadillac is not letting 2009–2015 CTS-V go gently into that good night, even as its replacement is poised to debut in just in just two months at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Instead, Cadillac invited us to Austin's Circuit of the Americas racetrack for what it called an "Irish wake" for the model that has proven to be one of the quickest and most charismatic models in General Motors' history. If you don't know what an Irish wake is, if you envision storytelling, songs, debauchery and more than a little liquor, you'll be in the ballpark. In this case, though, adrenaline substituted in for the booze, with squealing tires and shrieking V8s providing the singing. The debauchery took the form of an all-you-can-drive lapping of COTA in all three bodystyles – coupe, sedan and wagon – and the stories were told by the grins plastered on our faces all day. First and foremost, we'll miss the CTS-V's perfect balance of luxury and sportiness. Even after six years with no major changes, the CTS-V is surprisingly spry. Certainly, you never forget that it's a heavy thing, weighing in anywhere between 4217 pounds for the manual-equipped coupe to 4424 for an automatic wagon, but with 0-60 times of about four seconds and the ability to hit about 150 mph on COTA's back straight, the Vs remain an absolute hoot on the track. Sure, some of its details – the blocky front fascia shapes and the spoiler on the sedan and coupe models, for example – look a bit dated, but the overall design still looks sufficiently badass. The interior design has worn pretty well, too, and however Cadillac may feel about center stack buttons being so last decade, we favor them over the capacitive-touch madness of today's CUE system. We're not going to bother doing another full review of the car here, but suffice it to say, there is plenty we will miss. First and foremost, will be the CTS-V's perfect balance of luxury and sportiness. Rumor has it that Cadillac will offer the 6.2-liter LT4 V8 in the next generation (we predict about 600 hp), but we hear that the new car will skew more toward luxury than balls-out performance.