Drew Dowdell

Yet you do not comment on one very IMPORTANT Fact! Most people are terrible at driving manual transmissions. I know for a fact. While I required both my son and daughter to learn and drive in Highschool a Manual Pickup truck. This limited having to many people due to it being a standard cab so 3 tight, but really only 2 people drive and 1 passenger plus their bags, books etc. My son is a terrible driver and never could get the feel for shifting compared to my daughter who would get EPA rated MPG on the Manual, My son always got 10-15% less or more depending on highway versus city driving. My wife and I could always exceed EPA MPG. The reason I believe Automatics do better for people is most people do not want to have to think about how they drive, the sweet spot for shifting and dealing with a clutch plus break and gas. Add hills and people fear the roll back and freak out. Manuals have their place but in limited applications due to human nature. Consumer Pickup trucks should just stay automatic as it would be best for everyone as is most auto's. Performance and econobox auto's can have a manual option but I still believe most people will go with an automatic. I am not saying your wrong about Manual being better than automatic, but the electronics today are faster than human response time and I think it does end up with most automatic auto's out performing manual transmission auto's. Very good points, sir. There is so much more room for error with a manual that if you really don't know how to drive it correctly you will be wasting even more fuel just out of pure ignorance. You could slip the clutch too much on every launch and never get city mpg because of it or conversely, slip it perfect and put it in neutral and coast to a stop and blow the ratings out of the water. This. I had an acquaintance with a 5-speed manual Civic Hybrid who thought he was a hyper-miler.. He argued with me till I just had to drop it.... he insisted that the best way to get the best fuel economy in his car was to floor it all the time while accelerating because that's when you used the most battery assist. I don't know how he was calculating his numbers but he insisted he was always getting 50+ mpg........ no... not in Pittsburgh you're not.

I've seen the Sentra 1.8L/CVT brought up more than once because it fails to achieve it's lofty mpg rating. I'm curious about DCTs though, since they're mechanical operation makes them similar to manual transmissions. Even with CVTs, who makes the unit determine how well it performs. The Altima and Accord do really well with their CVTs. The Caliber and Patriot not so much. Subaru's CVTs seem to consistently do better than their EPA rating.

On the interior, this is definitely true. I wonder if the new ownership is going to be upgrading that at all. They do drive fantastic though, and the sound they make is like a UFO.

So here's an issue I have.... Why wouldn't it be launching on a Lincoln? Lincoln, being the premium brand in the portfolio, should get it first.... not the bottom car in the "people's brand". I fixed the topic title.

That interior below is no Escape or Focus. And meh on the article. They picked apart not having enough power and an interior like a Lexus or Audi, yet reviewed a FWD 2.0L, not the much more powerful 2.3L with AWD and certainly not the Black Label trim, which is much more luxurious than the picture below. I think that the MKC is priced a little high for the segment it wants to compete in, but I wouldn't rate the interior as bad. The thing that completely kills the MKC for me is the Sync system.... I find it so terrible to use that I won't even rent Fords with it anymore. It's unfortunate, because my partner and I are the target customer for the MKC as we currently have an Encore and want to move up in size just a little with the next vehicle.

Actually, it's because the Escape is so good, especially at its price point, that it makes an excellent starting point for the lux model. So, why not start with a tune that already punches above its weight and gets nearly universal great reviews? I don't have a problem with it.

Automatic v. Manual transmission efficiency is highly dependent on the units you are comparing. There are inefficient manuals out there poorly matched to their engines and there are really efficient automatics. CVTs and Dual clutches also come into the mix.

The pictures also don't show how large the car really is.... it's really long.

That is the biggest question out there for Americans. If I get hit by a self-driving car, who do I sue?

I don't find the styling to be old at all. So few people have actually seen one that it doesn't matter the age.

The Mercedes system doesn't work for anything more then gentle curves. It doesn't always let you take off again from a stop without pressing resume (the older versions did, they seem to have removed that ability)

That's why Cadillac's is only going to work in stop-and-go traffic and at highway speeds. It won't run in suburban situations.

I just drove a distronic plus car for a week. It is guided steering but not autonomous steering. Take your hand off the wheel for too long and the system alerts you and shuts down. The Cadillac system is to be completely hands free.

Yes they use 7th gear, but they default to starting in 2nd. Every time i started the CLS it would bump back to comfort even if I left it in sport.

I wonder if it will use all 9-speeds.... I doubt it... the 7-speed models don't use all their gears.

What makes you think Cadillac doesn't have a lot of stuff in store? Cadillac has SuperCruise coming very soon, I've spotted the cars testing in Pittsburgh (there has been a semi-camoflaged XTS wandering around downtown). Cadillac just released a fantastic new 8-speed automatic that performs equal or better than some of the best DCTs. There's the 3.0TT due out later this year, the updated 3.6, the updated 3.6TT, the coming V8TT, 4-wheel steering, a vastly upgraded CUE system, and more "added vehicle lightness". But Mercedes has super cruise or self driving already, The E-class is getting it, which means the 5-series do it, so the CTS will have to have it, they can't hold it as an CT6 exclusive and trickle down later. All the Germans have TT V8s already, nothing new there. Mercedes has the 9-speed transmission now, which like the 7-speed has 2 reverse gears, so you can do 50 mph in reverse. We'll see what happens, but the CTS isn't competing well with an old E-class. Once the new one arrives they could be in trouble. Same goes for Lexus wit that tired GS they have. That 3.5 liter V6 is from like 2006, they might want to upgrade that. What do you mean Mercedes "has it already"? Can I go to a Benz dealer tomorrow and buy it? If not, then Benz does not have it already. The CTS is getting SuperCruise and it is also getting V2V. CT6 and CTS both get it for the 2017 model year which means it's 13 months away. Cadillac is doing much more frequent updates to their vehicles going forward. They're not putting them all into the 3rd year MCE like has been done in the past. They'll get more of a Tesla style rolling upgrade from year to year. If the new transmissions and engines are ready, they go in... no waiting around for the next MCE. We're seeing that for 2016 with the new 8-speed and 3.6 V6 going in all of the RWD cars.

Another thing... the biggest 4-cylinders tend to be around 2.5 liters (the biggest in recent memory is the 2.9 Atlas from GM). If you need more power than that, you go to a V6 or you drop the displacement a bit and turbo charge it (I.e, the 2.0T). It is beneficial in two ways - the 2.0T and 2.5 can share the same block with different bore sizes, and the 2.0T gets extra reinforcement around the cylinder walls with the smaller bore. You wouldn't want to de-bore a 2.5 block down to 1.8 because that is an excessive amount of "extra" engine for a car that is light on power to lug around

What do you mean? gm has a 1.8L, toyota has one, nissan has one, VW has one,.....others? I think there is some mathematics and technical stuff behind it. You'll notice that 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 are all getting really popular too. My guess: The 1.8 is part of an engine family that also has 1.3, 1.5, 1.6 displacements available. The 1.8 is the biggest they can go without needing to go to the bigger block 4-cylinder... at nissan that is the engine block that the 2.0 and 2.5 use. Smaller block = less weight. GM does the same thing - the 1.4T, and 1.8 are the same engine family. The old 2.0T and 2.4 were the same engine family. The new 2.0T and new 2.5 are the same engine family. In the 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 case, those engines can all share the same piston and connecting rod design.

The only part I disagree with is ^ AMG care are completely redone, suspension ->engine. They are gaining "AMG sport" or something stupid like that to compee with the "M Sport" packaged cars which I think is pretty stupid. Other than that.. Completely agree , man. I feel like it is just going to take time.. Like somebody else said in here they they can't just whip out 4 variations within the first model year like BMW/MB do, they need to though. It's the AMG-Sport thing that he's talking about. Mercedes is successfully diluting the brand by offering AMG appearance models without the performance upgrades the full AMG models get. Cadillac at least gives the V-Sport models a substantial performance boost even if they're not the full power V-Series model.

What do you mean?

I do like the new XJ also, but it needed more than the refresh it got. I wish Jaguar had worked on the 3.0 V6 NHV, it feels buzzy and not premium at all.

Buick exists for China, Opel and some Holden. Chevy has already proven they can't sell in Europe because European tastes are different than American tastes. Europeans tend to demand more premium feeling vehicles even in their base models. A Verano and Cruze overlap only slightly at the Cruze's high end and the Verano's low end. The Regal and Malibu hardly overlap at all.

What makes you think Cadillac doesn't have a lot of stuff in store? Cadillac has SuperCruise coming very soon, I've spotted the cars testing in Pittsburgh (there has been a semi-camoflaged XTS wandering around downtown). Cadillac just released a fantastic new 8-speed automatic that performs equal or better than some of the best DCTs. There's the 3.0TT due out later this year, the updated 3.6, the updated 3.6TT, the coming V8TT, 4-wheel steering, a vastly upgraded CUE system, and more "added vehicle lightness".

If there was direct overlap, sure that would be an issue... but GM is pretty well segmented now. Buick buyers won't generally consider a Chevy nor a Cadillac, and vice versa.

Yeah, that. After putting this article up, I poked around on Autotrader and found one of those in LWB Portfolio trim for very reasonable money. very sharp car