SAmadei

Have to disagree with that. After seeing many of them, its probably the ugliest, more ungraceful thing GM has ever designed. Sure, its got machismo, but like a ugly dumptruck. When I saw that the ugly fender bulges actually cut INTO the quarters, I wanted to cry. Looks for looks, I'd rather have an Aztek. I don't think this GMC "look" will age well. No need to rebut, I realize most of you guys are gaga over these. Unfortunately, not all of us are.

I have my doubts. $2700 obo is awfully low for a 25K mile car. Makes me think it will look a bit more ragged in person... like 125K ragged. Remember, these odos only went up to 99,999... so its real easy for one of these to turn over, especially if their were few opportunities for the mileage to be documented... like title changes. Edit: Yeah, they do look like Olds wheels... also makes me doubt the mileage more. Also, you didn't realize Tamaqua was near Allentown by the Allentown.craigslist.org advert? ;-)

Isn't that a fairly late color?

If you have the torque wrench and a specific number, I'd torque it right... especially on something that is non-trivial (10 in-lbs? WTF, really GM?) and on a component that is going to take abuse. Edit: I'm surprised that Ford is using a permanently packed bearing (hence the high torque... packable bearings are usually fairly loose with a cotter pin), but didn't think enough to make the rotors removable without removing the spindle nut.

Are you watching TopGear?!? There is NO love for Opel or Vauxhaul with the exception of "Oliver" and Holden rebadges. Only the OPC seems to be getting true Opel respect... and thats a very recent development. Agreed. Clarkson's writers already have a book and a half XTS jokes written.

I've always been partial to doing a duet with a pretty lass... Ozzy/Lita "Close my eyes forever"

My only stick car actually has no tach. You shift by ear or by the little upshift ticks on the speedo. Thats minimalistic.

People collect Yugos, too... it don't mean they were great cars. I had TWO friends who had problems with them. I met the one who went through 3 of them shortly after he was rid of them. He never did anything to damage the Jags and his cars owned since have been pretty solid. I've driven with him enough to know he able to drive on some ice. He felt that the car reacted poorly... drove around a curve he'd driven a hundred times, he claimed under the speed limit... car in front jumped on the brake, he jumped off the gas and the rear came around, and the guardrail across the road tried to rip the rear suspension out of the car. As far as electronics in '80s cars go, I'm fully versed in that... But none of my '80s cars have been all that awful. The Allantes suffered from other quality control problems and drivetrain issues in addition to electrical issues, according to my friend... but I hardly remember exactly what it was, as it was 15 years ago when we discussed it. He wanted to like the cars, but they were just too flawed. But don't let the Allante being another black eye to Cadillac stop you from finding a survivor. Steer away from any red '93s from NJ with mismatched paint on the rear quarters.

If it wasn't a joke, it was an unmitigated disaster. Allante slammed the door on the Cadillac-only buying habits of two families I knew of. In one case, my friend had a new Caddy nearly every year in the '80s... had 3 Allantes in quick succession, each was a huge lemon... spending more time in the shop than in his driveway. Finally, on some icy roads, he blamed the car for spinning around while going around a curve. It was nearly totaled, but unfortunately, the insurance rebuilt it. He promptly got rid of it as it REALLY drove wrong. Sold it and got a SL500, and a few Jags (that also fell apart)... but no more Cadillacs.

A quieter sports car makes a better commuter car and long distance road trip car. The horrific seats (or so I've heard) probably limit the ZR-1s daily driver usability. Both are interesting cars, though..wouldn't kick either out of my garage.. I sure hope that Sat-Nav is top rate. Then you can quiet the engine by turning it off and just sit there and play with the Sat-Nav all day.

A decision 25 years too late. Its apparent that GM was thinking of returning to large car RWD for some time, otherwise the Sixteen concept wouldn't have been developed... and the Seville-STS line would not have switched back to RWD. However, its sad they can't pull the trigger. Cadillac wants to compete with Mercedes and BMW, yet can't compete with Chrysler's 300C. Blah blah blah... GM had no money, will be the same old retort. Right. No money to right the ship since 1985? Money to develop the XTS, a Cadillac rebadge of a LWB LaCrosse but not a Cadillac rebadge of the LWB Commodore.

LOL, it was a beautiful day for a drive in the convertible. I didn't have my camera handy, but in a quick moment, a white pearl Cadillac 2005-ish DeVille 4 door convertible blew by in the opposite direction. I had hardly recovered when a few cars later, a red Ferrari F430 Spider blew by.

Wow... its like 1981 all over again. Wonder if they stick with it this time. Wonder how long before GM porks up the weight lost and the net effect is still a heavier car.

Well, this is all fine and well known. And I'm in agreement with the STS and the lineup left. As someone else mentioned, I would have liked to see a reskinned STS/SLS, without the quality problems. Rebuilding a completely new car is time intensive and expensive. Building the XTS the sell, what? 80K over 5 years? GM didn't even want to put a Pontiac nose on the Commodore wagon or Ute and GM could have moved 40-60K a year. Sure, the XTS has better unit profit, but GM could have avoided dumping G8s on the market and kept its profit up, had they tried. GM is a company that STILL likes putting the big bets in the wrong places sometimes. The longer it takes, the longer the turn around. GM needs to get the foot back in this door before the window of opportunity slams shut.

Some people free "comfort" is a sculpted seat, which most near makes have. My rear is a size too large (and not cushy enough to make up for it) to work with the average sculpting. I like the one size fits all of bench seats. Also, you are riding a '71 decades after it came out... I imagine the seating materials' characteristics have changed over the years. As for the '76, well, not everything is a winner, regardless of size. Its been commented many times that the downsized '77-on B-bods actually had better space than the fuselage '71-'76 models. Well, you do have a big car. Think you can keep it forever? I mean, we're all optimistic that we can, but doing so it sometimes difficult. What will you replace it with if FIAT shrinks the Charger/300 further? GM has nothing to compare to the Chrysler LX cars. Personally, I felt the LH's were a tad tight... except the LHS/Concorde.

They could ride the bus... Sorry, buses in some areas just don't work. In the case of my friend, taking the bus required three transfers, with 1 hour layovers. Turned a 25 mile trip into a 6 hour round trip odyssey. Turned a 8 hour work day into 14 hours... that is not a step forward. In their case, the car was safe... but not obviously so to the layman... and it was ugly as sin. You know that horses and donkey carts are for all intents outlawed in most suburban areas. Also, people didn't need to work 25 miles from home years ago. If you lose your transportation, you can't just start farming in suburbia to support yourself.

Apparently more and more people as it is becoming more of a trend to ride with electronics and integration. I have been in small cars and im 6'4'' and I have never had my shoulder in somebody's face. (I had the same problem with a rental Grand Marquis.) Wow what a bunch of 95 pound weaklings. ;-) Simply quoting height and weight does nothing to illustrate automotive comfort. For the record, I'm 6'4" and 400 and change... not Andre by a longshot, but I'm closer than you guys apparently. I am very broad at the shoulder and have around 81" of reach. I'm more torso, with somewhat shorter legs (still long, though)... if my legs were in in a normal average ratio to my torso, I'd be roughly 6'9 6'10". I certainly can stand to lose some weight, but the gut disappears at roughly 325, so I'm husky, not super flabby. I'm also somewhat claustrophobic if I'm in a space which limits my limb movement. I don't consider myself to be freakishly large... cars USED to be designed for people my size. The problem here is unlike you guys, I was not conditioned on modern, small cars. My cars historically have been large '60s and '70s or '80s B-bods... which I fit in fine. I can move around in these cars... swing my arms around if need be, adjust my position, etc. Bonneville, DTS, Concorde, GP coupe are all tightish, but acceptable. Apparently, you guys are used to being in a tight car and considering it comfortable. I don't. "Comfort" to me is simply not fitting into the car. I "fit" in a Mini. I "fit" in a Corolla... but it usually entails sitting slouched, crooked or unable to belt myself without hanging out the door. However, simply fitting is not comfortable. Driving the Corolla involves having my right leg in a convoluted position that aggravates my right knee and ankle. Getting in and out of the car is a major project of folding arms, legs and torso. I have to sit so far reclined I cannot use the arm rest, instead I have to angle over the passenger due to the B-pillar protrusion. I'm getting too old to drive an car in a uncomfortable position for long periods. Also, its nice to be able to enjoy the luxury of having a passenger behind me... thats why I bought that seat, right? Few people can sit behind me in any car. Surprising cars: Mini. Passenger side wasn't bad... driver's side seat track is slightly more forward, which hurts the rearward travel... and crunches my legs painfully. Smart car. Fit fine. Its not that small of a car, because its a two-door and have no space wasting, useless rear seat. Sunfire coupe. Seat track and recline is awful, but at least climbing out of car is not a folding struggle. Problem cars: The F'ing Corolla. Looking forward to GF buying something else... but its better than similar sized domestics. Usually don't have to drive this abomination. I am currently looking into fabricating hardware to shift the seat tracks rearward. Since this car has no real trunk, anytime we have to put something large in the back seat, I no longer can recline and I have to tilt over towards the other front seat occupant... hence shoulder in their face. Focus. Got out and preferred the Corolla. G6 sedan. Dreadful. Repeatedly smashed controls while trying to reach around interior. Was most comfortable driving with the top of my head out the open sunroof. Malibu. Same as G6... returned to rental office for DTS. Solstice. Got wedged after being egged on and required 3-4 people to help get me out. Will not retry that. Grand Prix, Impala. Have to sit canted towards center of car due to lack of seat travel, B pillar and forced height. G8. Driver's seat painfully tight. Passenger seat, I could not occupy due to limited seat travel. GTO had similar problems. This is simply bad engineering, just like the Impala/GP. M3. Damaged steering wheel tilt mechanism while trying to get leg under wheel while not smashing head on roof. Hit rev limiter trying to get out. Unable to steer car at 10 and 2 without hitting elbows into window/door/passenger... this was a problem, as it was enforced by the instructor. I recall there being some other major issues, though. Camaro. Major headroom problems. Adjusting seat still required reclining... and was not comfortable with regard to the steering wheel distance. Mustang. Had to sit somewhat sideways, which drove knees into center console, due to me being a passenger in a stick car. Professional race driver didn't like me encroaching on his space due high speed maneuvers on the track. I complain about car sizing only because we have LOST the luxury of space, and soon NO car will be comfortable to me. Cars have gotten taller and, longer in wheelbase, and yet still headroom has shrunk, seat tracks don't go back far enough, and back seats have become a joke. My feeling is that cars are being designed to women's proportions... who like to sit higher and closer to the wheel... unfortunately, its easier for a small person to fit in a large car than the opposite.

Granted, the "love affair" is under assault from all sides. But having cookie-cutter, interchangeable appliance-mobiles is not helping getting people into a more enthusiastic relationship with their car or car manufacturer. Hardly anybody drives today "to just go for a ride". In fact, there is something fun about just getting lost, sometimes. The car used to be a form of freedom... a destination... not just a device to take you to the destination. It was about discovering the things and people along the way... and your car became almost a member of the travel group, because it had personality. Nowadays, parents drive their kids wherever the kids want... and half the time, they watch movies or play video games instead of enjoy the trip. I guess your "love affair" can be whatever you want. But sitting in traffic and playing with a Sat-Nav is not one of them, to me. People are spending more time in their cars because the HAVE to. Nobody drives 80 miles round trip to work everyday if they can avoid it. I've never used my air-bags... and I survived every major accident I had with my non-airbag equipped cars without a bruise, so I feel we don't need 80 of them in the car. And stop hawking this better fuel economy... it topped out in 1987 during a time when cars, on average, had MUCH more space. Actually, they are. GM is trying to push the average sales transaction price up... so you are stuck buying these stuff. Where can I buy a stripped down G8? You couldn't. Personally, I feel some of this stuff is already boring commodity stuff. I had a MP3 head unit in my '88 Safari wagon in 2001... why didn't GM? I didn't love my Safari because it had a had a MP3 player. I loved it because nobody had anything like it... NOS infused 403 putting the beat down on Mustangs and Camaros with 4x8 sheets of plywood in the back.

I've never advocated that every car EVAR needs to be RWD. But lets have a few. GM has a cheap and expensive RWD sports cars. Lets have a cheap and expensive large RWD car... maybe even a coupe. Its based on EpII, which is notorious for being narrow. If EpII can have infinite flexibility in width and length, why is there a Delta, Gamma, etc. Engineering has limits. They put the subway trains on the edges of the Manhattan bridge... and, doh!, the bridge started to fail and had to be completely reengineered. Historically, making a big car out of a small platform is a disappointment. So, that just proves that Cadillac has been bass-ackwards for decades. The Escalade is a joke as a flagship, IMHO, and makes Cadillac look like something tailored to country bumpkins. The big Merc has class and elegance that Cadillac used to have. Escalade is gaudy and crass, especially when rappers stick every piece of cheap chrome JC Whitney crap on it... but you know that money can't buy taste. So its not your idea of legit, so everyone else is wrong? We all look for different things in a new car. Sorry, to me, its not legitimate to moan about 10% better sized seams or 10% better fabric when its got 25% less space than it should and is 100% Buick wannabe. My money buys cars as well as yours... and it pains me that if I was buying right now, I'd have to take the big Merc "taxicab" over the XTS as it has so far been revealed to us. Then Cadillac should start selling Cruzes and Sonics. Cadillacs historically sold in lesser numbers than Buick (2.5:1) and Chevy (10:1). They are supposed to be somewhat premium. I agree... right now the CTS-V is the defacto flagship. Its my feeling that Cadillac should be putting effort to a larger version (as Big Ed has dictated), and give the XTS to Buick to replace the Lucerne... which saw its sales perk up last month. I'd love to see a civilian version of this. I'm starting to feel A&S is passe. I have a hard time telling new A&S Caddys from old A&S Caddys sometimes unless I really think about it.

Is this using the Roush V8 bolt-in kit? That would have made the most sense. But considering this is incomplete, I imagine its not. Roush has been making V8 Focii since 1999 or so. The kit is $5K.

I'm sure they don't like driving around in something like that, either. For all you know, some idiot in a SUV backed into the car and took off... and the victim got a parking ticket for being pushed into a bus loading zone, while getting hardly enough pay at work to feed/house their kids. (This happened to a co-worker, actually...) I guess the poor should just be marched into the Soylent Green factory, eh? If you don't like what some people are driving, leave them a check for a nicer car.

The GP being a generation newer puts it much higher on the list than any of those. Plus I would want it for the HUD, Tapshift as well as the horsepower bump the Generation III supercharged 3800 enjoyed.The seats are also some of the best seats from GM. I thought GM did a good job on the TapShift transmission programming. For the most part, it works as you direct it to, with good response. I can't say the same for the other flavors of Manumatic of the era. If you find one with a broken HUD, its usually a somewhat easy fix if you can stomach popping the dashboard apart. The spring that adjusts the height has a tendency to cut through the plastic hole. Some fix it by drilling a second hole or reinforcing the spot and redrilling.

Well, since anyone who complains about the FWD shortcomings is ridiculed here, I'll leave that out. Also its dreadful FWD proportions. I'll also not start about how it confusing that Cadillac's largest car is not a flagship and seems more like a overpriced, rebadged Buick. The single biggest disappointment to me is that its too narrow. The second biggest disappointment is that it everything we've seen about the XTS's design screams "would have been sweet in 2004".

Keep on Fappin' to your Sat-Nav. The rest of us will use things like memory and spatial reckoning. I can't imagine why you even use your windshield anymore. I haven't seen the average fuel economy numbers for 2010 yet, but otherwise, average fuel economy topped out in 1987. I haven't been physically comfortable in a car made since 1999. How does Sat-Nav enable people to spend a longer time driving? Gets them lost more? Parks them in longer traffic jams? Wait, since when do people want LONGER trips? This is the second stupidest things I've ever heard today. What compact car has the feature of space? Are you not following other threads where people lament the ability to put a one suitcase per passenger in the vehicle? "Oh, get a minivan" is NOT a viable retort. Even large cars today have hardly any space. Who gives a crap if you can play Angry Birds on your Sync system if your driver is smashing his shoulder into the passenger's face for two hours?!? Penny-wise but pound foolish. Here we go again. GM doesn't make a muscle car. And GM's current pony car is a thousand pounds fatter, is larger externally and SMALLER internally that its retro '67-'69 cousin, making for an ergonomic nightmare. This has nothing to do with anything. Some people don't want trucks. As I mentioned in the earlier post, Buick IS doing good... but they have to maintain that momentum even as those models age. That remains to be seen. GM does not have a good history of maintaining sales momentum. And a 3 way GM (Chevy, Cadillac, BPG) would be even stronger than the current one. With virtually no marketing, G8 sales were GM's sixth best selling when the ax fell and were only getting stronger. Of course not. They got all the interior seams to line up PERFECTLY! Who cares if you can't point the car with the throttle or drive it without having your knees on top of the dashboard. Its got Sat-Nav! It enables you to drive longer!

I only quote 1999, as it was the latest year GM profit was above 2010s. If Lutz would have gotten here earlier, I'm not sure much would have changed. Maybe GM would have developed the controversial 1999 GTO? A better Bonneville? I don't think he would have stuck around long enough to give us the Monaro based GTO, Solstice or G8, as the feeling was that GM could do no wrong with more and more SUVs. Years from now, we'll laugh at that. China has no respect for intellectual property... and I imagine at one point, they will dissolve the agreements with GM, seize factories and start building Buecks. GM imports into China will face a nasty tariff. Well, I'm trying to remain positive. But when I follow the negative side of this, I foresee the loss of the American love affair with the automobile as the first step in forcing people into public transportation and controlling our freedom of travel. Again, perhaps the death of the new automobile will be the best thing... I'll be perfectly fine driving/fixing yesterday's rides on the roads with the truckers and buses as the new automobile is litigated out of existence.