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Well that makes me happy.
They've changed the Cadillac face.
You still recognise the kind of car it is, but it no longer looks like it was designed in a cutlery shop, all edges and blades and knives.
Softened it up.
More mature, more expensive looking, I think.
The first Cadillac, I believe, to get rid of that farty old reef they've had so long they inspired Caesar to wear one.
One.
As you work your way back you find more of that understated maturity continuing, but here's where it gets interesting.
Comparing a pair of similar all wheel drive BMW's to the CT6, with the middle T6.
The CT is much more car than a five series, yet at about the same weight.
It's closer to the length of the seven series but at a much lower cost.
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And it beats that seven on weight by quite a bit.
Even though the seven uses a lot of carbon fiber these days.
TM uses a lot of aluminum and high strength [INAUDIBLE].
The CT6 with the basic V6 [INAUDIBLE] the top of all of these in terms of horsepower.
But my real interest is in driving a CT with a two liter four.
We'll do that in a minute.
Now a lot of folks have griped about Cadillac CUE over the years.
GM's apparently heard them.
You'll recognize the layout However, the response is quite a bit different.
It used to be pretty sluggish.
Now, it's pretty quick.
Now just in recognizing your clicks, touches or taps but also in loading what it is you called upon.
Now, how you do that is that it include a touch screen like you just saw.
It's about ten inches now beautifully fared in to the bezel And the mounting area.
But you've also got a touchpad down here, which is used for one, two, or three finger multi-touch gestures, and it has haptic feedback.
But I'm remaining unconvinced about touchpads in general.
I just find these fiddly.
Now similar to the video theme here on the main head unit, you've also got an all LCD instrument panel.
Which allows them to have flexible content there, including a night vision display that can pick up pedestrians and animals.
I'm also rather unconvinced about those systems.
Because when they make you look down to avoid hitting something, that's possibly why you're gonna hit something.
Keep your damn eyes out the road I'm looking forward to those systems becoming more HUD driven.
Now Android auto and CarPlay are stocked on all these CT6's as they should be, as they should be on just about any car these days.
Now I've saved the best for last, the bell of the ball, the one they had to go to Washington and fight the feds for is this guy.
Well it looks like an old school mirror because it's got the old toggle down here.
But look what happens when you hit it.
It goes from being a mirror to being an ultra wide rear view display via video that erases the pillars, head rests and that high trunk back there.
This is what every car should have and in the future they will.
This is not your only rear camera by the way You also get this as well as another rear camera here on the screen.
It's a different camera by the way.
There's one last video trick I want to show you.
If you go here to the CUE system and hit RECORDER, you get a set of cameras that are invoked to look out and record like a built-in dash cam, except it's not mounted here in the dash, it's mounted front and rear of the body.
And it keeps clips for you up to the capacity of your SD card hidden back in the trunk.
It's a great event recorder for whatever may happen and it can be triggered by the car getting a proximity alert, or getting bumped, when it's parked.
I've done the Cooley test.
I can sit behind myself in this car, which is a pretty good feat because I'm 6'2".
Also, they got the head room right.
Big well up here that really carves out a place for your head.
Pretty nice.
Know that we're in a platinum, this is a high-end car with the reclining massage rear seats, not every CT6 will have these.
Now, in terms of the electronics back here they're doing a very interesting job of evangelizing technology that other car makers have kinda just said, well it's there, go do what you want with it.
Here is an HDMI connector, that's pretty unusual.
And next to that is a USB port.
What they've done is connected a Google Chromecast.
Now this Chromecast is picking up its data, pulling up its video content from the 4G hot spot in the car.
When I'm using the Chromecasting ability, in this case from YouTube To control this guy, its a thoroughly modern experience.
Pretty rock solid, I'm sitting here on local 4G in San Francisco.
This has not buffered once.
You can mirror the front head unit to either or both of these screen, if you just just want to watch the map go buy or something.
However, you cannot control the front head unit.
From these screens.
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As we mentioned a minute ago engines range from a 2.0L Turbo 4 to a 3.6L Natural V6 to a 3.0L Twin Turbo V6 all with direct injection and fancy valve timing.
The V6 is It also has cylinder shut-down, to run on just four pots when cruising, and the V6 cars are always all wheel drive, the 2 liter cars, never are.
If you want more, a twin turbo is widely expected, but they're not yet confirming it.
On high trail all wheel drive cars, you can get an intriguing active chassis package that'll have the magnetic ride control, 20-inch wheels, and rear wheel steering that'll make high speed lane changes more stable and low speed maneuvers tighter.
Three big points come across to me on the road in the CT6.
Number One, Two liter turbo and I'm loving it.
Sound of the two liter turbo, I'm not loving.
It is unseemly in a car of this stature and quality.
That's going to be a misfit for some folks.
I'd be okay with it.
Secondly, ride quality.
This guy is much more like a Lexus than a BMW or an Audi, without real firm.
Sporty teutonicness.
But it's different than a Lexus ride.
It's not sloppy at all and I've got the standard suspension.
With the magnetic ride control, you'd have a lot more adaptability, and the car would probably cut in better and certainly keep itself flatter.
Finally, there's a Bose audio system here that I didn't talk about when we were looking at other cabin tech.
It's called Panaray, it's 34 speakers around the cabin, most of them tiny.
Just a few inches, there's just one sub on the back deck.
Their idea is don't belabor any one speaker, spread it out around many, use digital signal processing to map the cabin.
That's not new, and they've got speakers in the headrest, like some other cars do.
But what they've done is to drive them in a way that you actually won't notice they're there, they simply fill in part of the overall sound scape.
CT 6 is available with all the usual active driver assists including fully automatic braking at low speeds around town.
What's not here yet is the long awaited super cruise.
That will take over speed management, distance management and lane control for you on the freeway for extended distances.
Doesn't arrive till calendar 2017.
And some I think Cadillac has a really good and expensive-looking car here, but not one that beats you over the head with its styling.
That's gonna work for some folks, not for others.
In terms of packaging, they package the hell out of it.
In its footprint, it does a lot of great stuff with space.
For front row, second row and trunk.
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More cars driven CNET style, standing by now at CNETOnCars.com, click On the Road.
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