smk4565

The 5.5 liter AMG engine makes 660 lb=ft of torque, that is substantially better than the CTS-V's 6.2 liter engine can put out. As far as packaging size, the Merc engine is going to fit under the hood of the E-class, so I don't see how the future GM 5.5 liter pushrod taking up less space matters. And remember this isn't even Mercedes top end engine, they still have the BiTurbo V12.

Because GM will always chase volume over profitability and will chase short term sales to appease dealers rather than worry about the long term. Cadillac could put the CTS on the Malibu platform and sell it for $28,000 and sell tons of cars, then where will Cadillac be in 5-10 years? So my worry is that GM will push Cadillac down market to Lincoln level or even below in order to stir up sales. The only positive in that is that it would signal the end of Buick.

Scary that with all that bad press, they were only down 10% and Lexus went up. 6 months from now people will forget about Toyota's troubles and they'll go right back to how they were.

It annoys me that the front drive SRX sells. But new GM products often sell well out of the gate while they are heavily advertised, then sales drop off a year or two later. CTS was a hot seller in 2008, now it struggles. CTS has been around 2600-2900 units a month for several months in a row. STS and DTS are about dead, might as well put them out of production now. I think the whole year sales of the 4 core brands will be up, since many would be Pontiac or Saturn buyers will probably go to a remaining GM brand, and 2009 was so miserable, it is hard to do worse.

15/22 mpg? The V8, rear drive SRX could manage that. 35% US/Canadian parts content? Since when did Cadillac become a V6, front drive foreign car?

Why doesn't the LS3 have direct injection, VVT, cylinder deactivation now? If it were so easy to add it, and so beneficial, it seems that they would have done it already. A big displacement pushrod won't match the Germans in refinement. Cadillac is already at a disadvantage in perception, they have to go above and beyond with the product.

Problem with the XTS being a showcase of hybrid technology, is this car already did that back in 2007, and no one cares or buys it. Big time luxury cars need V8s driving the rear wheels. Look at how Lincoln dealers are upset that they struggle since Ford has the same car, or how Acura sales have been dropping. Cadillac needs a DOHC V8, Chevrolet may not, but having it can only help them.

I don't see the point of bringing him back, if he was great, they wouldn't have gotten rid of him in the first place. And why pay him nearly $3,000 an hour?

Personally, I like to see GM double up on the 2.0 turbo and turn that into a 4.0 liter twin turbo V8. That could produce 400-450 hp and lb-ft and produce peak torque around 2,000 rpm where it is most usable. A larger 4.6-4.8 liter turbo V8 could be used for high performance cars. GM already acknowledged they are worried about Hyundai (Honda has as well), Hyundai has a DOHC V8 that is one of the world's 10 best engines. Really Honda is the one that should worry the most, at least GM has a V8, Honda has nothing to give Acura. Hyundai was a joke 10 years ago, now they are the brand everyone fears, where will they be in 10 years? What is Hyundai attacks the luxury segment with full force, what if they make a full size pickup? Hyundai is making profit on small cars and family sedans/crossovers, they aren't even in the luxury and truck business that most automakers rely on for profit. In time, Hyundai is going to move into the high profit margin segments. GM better be prepared.

The Ford 5.0 V8 gets 17/25 mpg in the Mustang.

You are right on economies of scale. So it makes sense that the 4, 6, and 8 cylinder engines are all of the same design and architecture. Hyundai obviously gets it, they have 4, 6, and 8 cylinders all sharing technology. The Tau V8 still cost over $200 million to develop, it isn't something they just threw together. It probably isn't an accident that BMW makes a 3.0 straight six and a 6.0 V12 either, or that they use the same double vanos, direct injection and turbo technology across the board. Economies of scale are used by others better than GM, the LS3 doesn't have the same features that the 3.0 or 3.6 V6 have.

Is the hood/engine bay in a Corvette or Silverado small? Packaging shouldn't really matter. They can fit a V12 in an SL roadster, they could fit a DOHC V8 in a Corvette, especially since they already did it back in 1991. E-class and 5-series fit DOHC V8s just fine, the CTS is the same size. The only reason GM sticks with the pushrods is because they don't have the money to make something new. All the arguments for the pushrod V8 were made for the pushrod V6 5-10 years ago, yet the high feature V6 replaced them because that is what the market demands. In time, the market will demand a switch of V8s as well.

A pushrod is not superior on performance, given equal displacement, the DOHC engine will make more power. For example, 426 hp from an 6.2 liter LS3 and 518 hp from the AMG 6.2 liter. Or 315 hp from the 5.3 V8 and 412 hp from the Ford 5.0 V8. Then you have the 7.0 liter Z06 with 500 hp, but he 4.5 liter Ferrari 458 makes 562 hp. Even take the LS9, the most powerful pushrod with 638 hp and 604 lb-ft. The Koenigsegg 4.7 liter V8 makes 806 hp and 678 lb-ft (on E100 it makes 1,018 hp). The Jag XFR gets getter mileage than the CTS-V.

The Italians, Swedish, Japanese, South Koreans, and British use DOHC also. Ford, the best performing American auto maker only uses OHC, and is phasing out SOHC for DOHC. Chances are, that massive group is right, and GM and Chrysler (the only 2 to go bankrupt) are doing it wrong.

If the pushrod was better, everyone else would be copying it. Automakers love to copy and jump on bandwagons. However, no one else, but bankrupt Chrysler has a pushrod. Mercedes has enough money to build any kind of engine they want, yet what do they make. The power similar power/efficiency argument of the LS3 and BMW 4.0 or 4.4Turbo is valid, but all your examples were performance applications. A Luxury car engine has to be refined and whisper quiet in everyday driving and on the highway, that is what the pushrod can't do. About the cost argument, on a Cadillac, cost cutting should not be an issue. Plastic fake wood costs less than real wood, epsilon would be cheaper than sigma, solid rear axle costs less than independent suspension and magnetic shocks. If GM had $30 billion sitting in the bank they would have a DOHC V8, the only reason they don't is because they are broke. So they have to justify why it is just as good as what the Germans and Japanese have. GM has lagged behind the imports in engineering for 30+ years, and it shows when they had 40% market share in the 1980s and about 17-18% market share now. They had cheap pushrods for all that time and half of their customers left, mostly going to DOHC imports. (and it goes beyond V8s, to all the 3100, 3400 and 3800 V6 cars that people traded in for Accords and Camrys)

Cobalt was up 170%, I guess Avis had a big order this month. Good performance from the new models. And it looks like Chevy/Buick/GMC have retained the would be buyers of the dead brands. With 4 brands they are doing better than they did with 8. Toyota falling apart also helps. I hope Toyota's misery lasts a few more months.

I wouldn't exactly call the 550i vanilla, it is a 400 hp car that will do 0-60 in 4.7 seconds. Plus the 2011 model is bursting with techno-gadgets. The M5 will have 578 hp, so a little extra pop over the X6/X5 M. But the M5 isn't just about the engine, it is about the aluminum body panels and carbon fiber roof as well. The BMW V8 shares a lot with the BMW/RR Ghost V12, plus double vanos, valvetronic, direct injection, etc are shared on every engine they make. Hyundai spent $300 million on a V8 to put in the Genesis and Equus, I know they didn't spend that much to just make 20,000 engines a year. That technology is going to spread to 4 and 6 cylinders. You can't just have high tech on one engine line, you need it on the 4, 6, and 8 cylinder engines.

Well the N62 V8 is dead, so all BMW V8s are the N63/S63 twin turbo moving forward (aside from the M3). It makes sense because it is one basic structure with 2 levels of tuning that can be used in any vehicle. Which makes more sense than 4.8, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 7.0 liter V8s, and 6.2L supercharged, and the Northstar (FWD and RWD versions). And BMW's V12 is similar in design to the V8, so they can spread that technology across multiple engines and product lines. GM can't spread pushrod V8 technology into a V6, because pushrod V6s are pretty much a thing of the past, I think only the Impala and Lucerne still use one.

This is how it's done. 400 hp @ 5600 rpm, 450 lb-ft @ 1800-4500 rpm or 555 hp @ 6000 rpm, 500 lb-ft @ 1500-5650 rpm

Sadly, somehow Toyota will claim they stopped selling cars in the interest of keeping their customers safe, and they'll spin it some how to look noble. Then the droids that buy Toyotas and drink the Toyo-aid will fall back in line and go buy another Toyota. It will hurt them this month, but people have short term memories, and Toyota will recover. Which is annoying because they don't deserve a free pass, any other car maker would get ridiculed left and right, especially an American one.

I am glad to see this, Toyota is the most over rated car company there is. Most of their products are class average, except for the Rav4 and Tacoma and their reliability/quality/dependability while above average is not the gold standard people make it out to be. Hopefully this makes people realize Toyota isn't all they are hyped to be. Toyota better be careful, otherwise Toyota of the 2010s could look like GM of the 1980s.

And a Cadillac shouldn't have compromises.

If the XTS was a car designed by Mercedes or BMW, all the GM fans here would rip it like crazy for being front drive, they'd claim Mercedes/BMW was selling out, or cheapening their brand, or that V6 only was weak for a big Mercedes. Or if Lexus was replacing the LS460 with the XTS, everyone would call it an Avalon in drag, or that Toyota is just making more hybrids that don't even give that much gain in fuel economy, or that it is another geezer-mobile Lexus. No one here would praise this car if it had an L or 3-point star on the front. If the car isn't worthy of wearing the 3-point star, it shouldn't wear the wreath and crest either. The Wreath and Crest used to mean something, it doesn't anymore, that is what is most disappointing to me.

World leaders, dictators, CEOs, etc like the S-class. The S600 Guard is not only bullet proof and impervious to small explosions (grenades, land mines), but it also has it's own air supply and a fire extinguisher system to put out fires under/around the car. That just makes is very versatile for a wide range of clients. The average age for a BMW buyer is 46, but for the 7-series it is low 50s. So that isn't that old for a car of that price. 7-series is probably close to the CTS and Enclave average buyer age, and obviously lower than the DTS, STS, Lucerne.

Weight balance. Most BMW cars are between 52/48 and 49/51. A DTS has 63% of weight over the front axle. A Lincoln MKS awd has 59% of weight over the front axle. The Audi A8 has 56% up front, a little better because of the longitudinal engine, but still not near the ideal 50-50. When people drive it, they'll feel the difference. And what of those that don't like AWD, personally, I'd rather have RWD over AWD.