Introduction

The Cadillac CTS is virtually all-new for 2008. Cadillac has moved the style, performance and in-car electronics way upmarket from the original CTS in an effort to be more competitive with the best of the imports, namely the BMW 530i, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Lexus GS, Infiniti G35, and Audi A4. The 2008 Cadillac CTS boasts major changes to the engines and chassis that upgrade performance. The CTS offers a choice of two V6 engines and a choice of either a newly designed six-speed automatic or a six-speed manual, making it the only American luxury car still available with a manual. The CTS comes with rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. The front and rear tires are a full two inches farther apart in track width for 2008, so the general body shape is wider, and a great deal more aggressive looking, with exaggerated front and rear wheel flares. In addition to the traditional 3.6-liter V6, there's a whole new 3.6-liter, 24-valve V6 engine with direct fuel injection that makes 15 percent more power. The new engine not only makes more power, it gets better fuel economy, even after adjusting for the new, stricter rules that the EPA is now using for fuel economy labeling. Styling changes include a huge new grille and larger, more in-your-face light elements front and rear. It looks like it's hungry for red meat. Its new levels of grip, handling and steering were modeled after the BMW 530i sedan, and it was developed by the Cadillac engineers on BMW's home ground, the 14-mile, 73-turn Nurburgring circuit in Germany.

Walkaround

Cadillac has completely redesigned the CTS front end for 2008, with a much larger eggcrate grille that fits with the Cadillac family look of the DTS, STS, and Escalade. The new grille provides more incoming air for the engine cooling, brake cooling and transmission cooling functions. The large lighting units at the front and rear make very good use of light-emitting-diode or LED technology, lots of light and lots of style for little electrical load. Likewise, the taillights, rear quarter panels and decklid have been redone, and the rear bumper has been rejiggered to feature exposed dual exhaust tips. Altogether, this is a much, much better looking car than the previous CTS, with more adventurous lines everywhere, especially in the gracefully sloping rear roof section, which isn't as harshly angular as on the previous edition.

Interior Features

The crazy-quilt nature of the original CTS interior, with lots of different textures but all in black, has been thrown away, and it's been replaced by a very nice new design for 2008 using black and brushed metal and chrome, very contemporary and very space efficient. This was our biggest complaint with the pre-2008 CTS models. The entire dashboard has been lowered and moved further away from the front seats to give a more airy and open feel to the car that the original didn't have; it felt like a high-walled bunker. The center stack on the CTS is beautifully done, easy to read and use, with some interesting new readout placements here and there. On our sojourn through some of central California's tastiest, windiest roads, the front bucket seats held us down and in comfortably, and behind the wheel. We really appreciated the range of adjustment offered by the power seats and the power steering column adjustments; we've always felt that all cars should have tilt-and-telescope columns for ultimate comfort and proper driving position. The instrument package is complete, easy to read, and graphically pretty. Our car had the AM/FM/XM Bose 5.1 sound systems, the 40-gigabyte hard-drive, iPod connector and USB port for ultimate musical enjoyment. Using the navigation screen, it's easy to switch back and forth between the three broadcast and three stored-music formats by simply touching the screen, and the blue display is large enough to be read from the back seat. We think it's one of the best overall, most fun to use sound systems we've ever used in a car.