Reviews · Cadillac CTS-V

What Is Thy Bidding

Cadillac spent 50 years selling comfort to people who had already arrived. Then it built a 640-horsepower four-door that out-lapped a Viper, embarrassed a Mercedes-AMG GT, and is now worth more than it was three years ago.

By Douglas James · 16 minute read

There is a great scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Vader is graced with the Emperor in hologram form, and he says, "What is thy bidding, my master?" In those few words it shows how powerful the Emperor is, and how much Vader — the most feared name in the galaxy — respects him. If there ever was a vehicle that could encompass that, it would almost certainly be the Cadillac CTS-V. Another way of putting this is that this would be Vader's car if he lived in our galaxy, and not so far away and so long ago.

The CTS-V has been covered by every possible journalist in the car realm who has had the chance to get their hands on one at one time or another. It is that special and that elusive. A 640-hp master of disguise, and one not to be reckoned with. Only true masters can control the hate of the power in it; harnessed correctly it is a force unlike any other, and a force not to be taken lightly. If you are not trained, if you are not disciplined, do not underestimate this thing. Get lulled by the four doors, the leather seats and the luxury amenities and you will forget what you are sitting on top of. The CTS-V will take control and most likely kill you. At least you will be comfortable.

So What Makes This Cadillac So Sought After?

First off, it is a Cadillac.

Not long before this, Cadillac had come through a transformation from being seen as past its prime — the retirement car. It was holding on to an image from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even the 80s, from when it was king. If you had one, you had made it. If you didn't, that is all you wanted. It was the height of luxury, technology and respect. It told people who you were before you arrived.

But as the 90s rolled around, the Europeans were taking control of the luxury market with their sleek, modern, sporty sedans. The Japanese were coming from a different angle, combining luxury with reliability. Cadillac responded in kind with the STS. It looked the part, and with its Northstar engine up front and center it still could not hold a candle to the competition.

Then came the half-assed attempt at a sports sedan that was, in reality, an Opel Omega with a crest on the hood. They called it the Catera and marketed it — genuinely, in public, on television — as "the Caddy that Zigs." It did not zig. It failed horribly.

It wasn't until the first CTS came about that Cadillac blew the doors off everyone's expectations. The first-generation CTS-V produced 400 hp and was praised for its handling and driving dynamics — two words nobody would ever have associated with the land yachts of the past.

The second generation took the name so much further, and in three distinct directions: sedan, coupe, and wagon. Yup. It had 556 hp, looked aggressive from any angle, and had no curves anywhere — just right angles, everywhere, telling you this was not to be trifled with. All three are coveted to this day, especially the wagon, because that is never happening again.

So when the time came for the third, people could not wait to see what it was about. It did not disappoint. It had grown. It had become a true luxury sedan, with refinement written all over it — and a nuclear-powered engine on meth that would destroy roads and your gas card.

The Engine Came From a Corvette, and It Was Not Allowed to Be as Good

It took the engine from its TIE fighter cousin, the Corvette Z06. The supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 arrives in the Cadillac with the same forged aluminum pistons, the same powder-metal forged connecting rods, the same titanium intake valves, and the same Eaton blower stuffing 1.7 liters of air down its throat every single rotation.

And then Cadillac was told it could have 640 horsepower instead of 650.

Not because of engineering. Car and Driver's Eric Tingwall put the reason on the record with admirable bluntness: the difference comes down to cooling, intake and exhaust routing, and "the always-lurking horsepower hierarchy dictated by brand management." Somewhere in a General Motors conference room, a person whose job it is to protect the Corvette drew a line, and the line was 10 horsepower wide. The Cadillac was allowed to get very close to the sports car and not one inch closer.

The rest of the hardware reads like a dare. Six-piston front calipers and four-piston rears, lifted from the Camaro Z/28's carbon-ceramic brake package. Iron rotors 15.4 inches across at the front and 14.4 at the rear — so large that the rears would be illegal in the racing series the previous CTS-V coupe competed in. Cadillac considered carbon-ceramics, then decided it would rather every single car leave the factory able to do the job, and set the target at two full fuel tanks of uninterrupted lapping without cooking the brakes.

Don Sherman's verdict on the whole package, in Car and Driver, ran to four words: "This is pharmaceutical-grade stuff."

Read that panel again and find the line that should not be possible: 0 to 150 mph in 17.4 seconds. In a car with rear cupholders.

It Was Never Actually the Heavy One

Cadillac had finally figured out the recipe, and had marinated long enough to produce one of the best sports sedans in the world. Its character was different from the E63 and the M5 at the time. It feels big — it drives like something with mass, and it never lets you forget there is a lot of car underneath you — but the wizards in GM's chassis department somehow made it nimble and agile anyway.

Here is the part that surprises people, including the people who owned the German cars: it was the lightest one in the fight. Not by a rounding error, either.

At low speeds it is calm and collected, with just enough rumble in the engine to keep you alive and to remind you that you are sitting on an explosion that would put Wile E. Coyote to shame.

Sherman's line about the steering is the one I keep coming back to, because it tells you exactly what kind of machine this is without a single number:

Then It Went to a Racetrack and Beat a Viper

Every year Car and Driver takes the season's fastest new cars to Virginia International Raceway, runs them around the 4.1-mile Grand Course, and reduces the whole business to a lap time. In 2015 they took 18 cars.

The Corvette Z06 won it outright at 2:44.6 — the fastest car of the year, and at the time the second-fastest anything ever to run the event. It beat the $274,120 Lamborghini Huracán. It beat the $353,115 McLaren 650S Spider. It beat the Porsche 911 GT3, the Mercedes-AMG GT S, and everything else that turned up.

And in the very same price class, wearing the very same engine, sat the Cadillac.

Put it another way. The nearest car ahead of the Cadillac that day was the Mercedes-AMG GT S, 5.8 seconds up the road. Then the Porsche 911 GT3, another 0.6 seconds beyond that — 6.4 seconds clear of the Cadillac in total.

Both of those are two-seat sports cars. Both were bred for exactly this and nothing else. And both ran in a price class that begins above the one the Cadillac was in — Car and Driver put the Mercedes and the Porsche in the $125,000-to-$244,999 bracket, with the AMG GT S alone starting at $130,825. The Cadillac turned up with a window sticker of $95,290, four doors, a trunk, and seats you could sit in for six hours without needing a chiropractor afterward.

And in Car and Driver's Lightning Lap record book, going back across every year they have run the thing, that 2:56.8 sits 0.6 seconds quicker than a 2006 Dodge Viper SRT10.

A leather-lined sedan with heated seats and a trunk beat a Viper around a racetrack, and then presumably drove home with the air conditioning on.

Car and Driver's own write-up of the lap says it better than I am going to, so here it is in full:

Where It Actually Loses

Three years later Car and Driver lined it up against the new BMW M5, the Mercedes-AMG E63 S and the Porsche Panamera Turbo. Same day, same crew, same strip of tarmac — the only way a comparison like this means anything.

The Cadillac had the most horsepower in the group. It was the lightest car there. And it got destroyed off the line.

The M5 and the E63 S both drive all four wheels. The Panamera drives all four wheels. The Cadillac is the only car in that group trying to put 640 horsepower through two rear tires, and off the line that is not a fight it can win. It never could. Physics gets a vote.

Then the road stops being straight, and look what happens.

Car and Driver instrumented tests. The three rivals are from Car and Driver's four-way super-sedan comparison; the Cadillac column carries its own best recorded figures from the instrumented test quoted earlier in this piece. Bold marks the best figure in each row. Note the curb weight line: the Cadillac is the lightest car in the group, and the only one that does not have all-wheel drive to carry.

It out-brakes the Mercedes and the Porsche by four feet apiece and finishes within two feet of the M5. It holds the same 0.98 g on the skidpad as the BMW. It carries the most power and the least weight of anything there. The only place it is comprehensively beaten is the one contest decided in the first three seconds, by the number of tires doing the work.

Which tells you exactly what kind of car this is. It is not a drag racer with cupholders. It is a car that gets quicker relative to everything else the longer the corner goes on — and that is precisely why it beat a Viper at Virginia International Raceway and lost a stoplight to a BMW.

And Then It Did Something No Cadillac Was Supposed to Do

Another interesting fact, and one that is rare in the car world — especially with Cadillac, and especially with sought-after sports sedans. The CTS-V is holding its value better than its Mercedes and BMW counterparts. That is somewhat unheard of.

It is not unusual for high-end sports cars and sedans to lose value as time passes. A newer one comes out and yours is no longer top dog. Reliability questions creep in. Upkeep costs climb. It was never great on fuel. The tech ages badly. Take your pick.

But the CTS-V stayed strong. Kelley Blue Book currently has the 2016 car retaining 107 percent of its value over the past three years — which is not depreciation at all, it is the opposite, and it puts the car in the top 10 percent of all 2016 sedans for value retention.

The second-generation wagon went further and simply left. Cadillac built 514 of them with the manual gearbox. The market average for one now sits around $69,658, against a sticker in the mid-sixties when they were new. A used car with 15 years on it, worth more than it cost, because there will never be another supercharged manual station wagon from an American luxury brand and everybody worked that out at the same time.

What Is Thy Bidding

The CTS-V is not the best sports sedan ever built. The Germans have been at it longer and their cars are more polished at the edges. What the Cadillac has is something rarer than polish, and it is the reason people are still hunting them down and paying over sticker for the privilege.

It is the only one of them that feels like it might not be entirely on your side.

An M5 wants to make you look good. An E63 wants to make you comfortable at 150 mph. The CTS-V wants to know whether you were serious, and it will find out on the first on-ramp.

Answer it properly and it will do anything you ask of it. Every time. Without hesitation, and without ever once suggesting you might not be up to it.