hi I'm Kelsey mays for cars.com here with the redesigned cadillac CTS car
that General Motors luxury division hopes to move closer into the crosshairs
for BMW and mercedes-benz shoppers
that's a tall order and it's something that Cadillac has been trying to do with
the cts for two generations of the car now let's see how gen3 does so it better
compete with cars like the BMW 5-series the mercedes e-class the cts grew
significantly overall length is up about five inches over the prior generation
now
like before it continues to stand out cadillac says there are a hundred ninety
eight leds front and rear along the car the front ones
cascade kind of down nearly touching the ground
this is probably the most direct interpretation we've seen so far of
Cadillacs ciel concept shown at the auto shows a few years back
cabin materials are pretty handsome overall with padding where your knees
your elbows fall consistent materials all the way down to foot level in our
test car leather wrap steering wheel even extend stitching to the center of
the steering wheel hub that's a cute taken from very high end luxury sedans
speaking of cute it's here Cadillac user experience the new multimedia system
from cadillac with capacitive touch buttons here in place of regular
controls over things like your climate control your heated seats
the screen up top here takes a few cues from smartphones things like swiping to
change screens on the menu on the navigation system you can zoom in or
zoom out by pinching and pulling like you can on
maybe your iPad or your iPhone still queue is a little bit slow to react some
of the menus take a while to kind of loan really don't like these capacitive
buttons in terms of how long they take to react
I really wish Cadillac we just queue up regular buttons and knobs over again
another issue several editors noticed was visibility
not a ton of it here looking at the side mirrors which are kind of small and the
rear window which is kind of small little bit narrow as well
headroom better than in the cadillac ats which is relaxnews small sports sedan
rear room in the back seat there a little bit snug much like BMW 5-series
not as
spacious as mercedes e-class the same goes for the trunk situation
II class has nearly 16 cubic feet of cargo on the cts has less than 14 cubic
feet and available 3.6 liter v6 makes 321 horsepower
it's a smoother drive train with equal parts refinement and punching us it
teems with an eight-speed automatic transmission that's more decisive than
the six feet in the 2-liter turbo
finally a twin-turbo v6 makes a stout 420 horsepower in the cts vsport that
thing really pushes you back in your seat with the power of a v8 especially
because the new cts loses a couple hundred pounds thanks to extensive
aluminum construction in place of steel
it's that much lighter than both its predecessor and the competitive set this
car here is a 2-liter turbo cts but we've driven the vsport around a
racetrack
it handles very well handles a lot like the BMW 5-series you can rotate the tail
bring it around with just your right foot
the cts has three suspension setups a sport suspension and adaptive sports
suspension and an adaptive performance suspension on the cts vsport our test
car here has the middle option makes for a pretty composed ride the sort of
premium underpinnings that you would expect in a midsize luxury car in the
new cts compete with the Germans
that's a question Cadillacs been asking for two generations of this car now
along with the new smaller 80s sports then
aside from some multimedia and a few visibility issues though I think that
this new cts the third generation is a pretty compelling choice
it should raise Cadillacs profile among all those imports shoppers
yeah