I reserved a compact at Enterprise Car Rental, but when I arrived in Cincinnati, I noticed a 2008 Cadillac CTS sitting there, so I asked, "how much would it cost to upgrade?" It was an extra $14 a day--how could I pass up this opportunity?
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
It is not exactly beautiful, but you won't mistake it for anything else, that's for sure.
This was the standard engine, the 3.6L 263 horsepower version. It certainly had decent power for a rental sedan. I timed 0-60 in about eight seconds on a rural road in Kentucky, which is a bit weaker than the reviews that I have read suggested that I should see, but:
1. I didn't quite floor it coming off the line.
2. GM cars for some years have used a knock listener that retards engine timing so that you can use anything from regular to super unleaded--but lower octane means less power. When I filled up the car just before I returned it, I used regular unleaded, and I rather suspect that the previous customer did so as well.
Perhaps with super unleaded, and a little more skilled application of my lead foot, it might have done 0-60 in 7.5 seconds or even a little less.
The brakes were pretty respectable. I didn't really have a chance to find out how fade resistant they were--not even close to finding out (I am a responsible adult, mostly, when I rent cars), but they seemed quite sufficient for the power.
Handling wasn't Corvette-like, but compared to the last Cadillac I drove? Wow! Very, very little body roll, even on some pretty challenging windy roads in the back country of Kentucky. Very, very mild understeer at the cornering limits, completely predictable.
As several reviews that I had read observed, the steering is a bit too light. It is reasonably crisp, and manages to give you a little bit of road feel, but when you compare it to the Corvette, you can tell that someone at Cadillac was too focused on the drivers who want to steer with one finger. Still, it was a pleasant car to blast down rural windy two lane roads on, in a way that Cadillacs historically have not been. If Cadillac insisted on giving me one, I wouldn't turn my nose down at it, or trade it in on something else. (Hint, hint!)
I'm not sure the ride is going to satisfy the traditional Cadillac owner. It's a very controlled ride--not as harsh as the Corvette, of course, but where the Corvette lets you know--sometimes rather bluntly--that you have gone over a bad bump in the road, the CTS lets you know in a rather more civilized manner. But there's no floating, like the Cadillac Sedan de Ville I rented a few years ago. This is definitely a driver's car.
Gas mileage was pretty respectable. I don't know when the elapsed gas mileage meter was last reset--probably a long time ago, based on how little it budged even when I was driving it....energetically--but it stayed around 23.0 mpg until the last few miles of the trip, when I managed to knock it down to 22.9 mpg.
The instanteous mileage measure seemed roughly equivalent to the Corvette--maybe a bit worse. At 55 mph, it would stay in the range 28 mpg to 32 mpg. At 65 mpg, it was pretty consistently 23 to 25 mpg. The CTS is about 700 pounds heavier than the Corvette--but the CTS has a six speed automatic transmission, so there's a bit more efficient use of the engine RPMs.
The trunk is really, really tiny. The doors are also a bit lower than I would prefer. I kept brushing the top of my head into the frame as I entered the car. I'm only 5'11"--not exactly in the giant category. Aggravating the problem, GM seems to have abandoned the springloaded tilt steering wheel design that they have used for many years for something that requires you to manually lock and unlock it to move the wheel. This is clumsy, especially when getting in and out of the car, where the old design let you pull on a lever and have the whole assembly just pop up and out of the way of your knees.
Is this car worth $40,000 (what most of the rear drive Cadillac CTSs will go out the door for)? I must confess, an Impala SS gives you more interior room, comparable power, and I would say roughly equivalent handling, for $10,000 less. You could buy a lot of gasoline to make up for the slightly worse milage on the Impala SS. You could buy the Subaru Impreza WRX or MazdaSpeed 6, and tart them up all sorts of luxury options, and still have a pile of money left over.
The good news that the 2008 CTS will be available used from rental car companies in a year or two for probably $25,000--and then it will be reasonably priced, and not a bad little car.
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