Drew Dowdell

I think the Passat needs more than a new front clip and new tail lights to be less boring.

Also, I think the 500X is smaller than the 500L

I haven't noticed any turbo-lag in my tester, and yes newer 500Ls do have a six-speed automatic. Although I have found that the programming is somewhat screwy as the transmission tends to hold onto gears much longer that I think it should. I have an update tomorrow on some first impressions. How is road/engine/wind noise at speed? The Fiats I've driven have been loud.

So Benz is going to throw a ton of aluminum at the E-class just to get it to be ~50 lighter than the still mostly steel CTS?

I was really hoping for more from the XF.... the look really doesn't do much for me.

I'd like to see them do a Jeep Grand Cherokee style competitor before they do a 7-seater. After they get that going, extend it to a 7-seater also if needed.

Well, I don't see anything about the transmission, so I don't think it is a 2-mode in that respect.

Good to hear that everything went well!

I just wish GM had something in the sport compact car arena period. Closest they get is the Verano Turbo... and that is more like a compact sports tourer than a sports car.

It's the same displacement, not the same engine. Had you actually read the article, you would know that.

The 3.0TT will be a lot torquier and have a broader torque band. The 3.0 has a 75 lb-ft advantage... that's nothing to sneeze at. Anecdote time: Before the original GLK came out, it wasn't originally going to be called that. What was it going to be called? Well think of M-B naming system at the time. There was the SL roadster, and then the smaller, cheaper roadster the SLK (K for Klein... as in smaller) They already had the ML, so naturally, the smaller cheaper entry should be the MLK in natural German logic. It took 6 months of pleading to Stuttgart by Mercedes-Benz USA to convince them that naming a car MLK would be a bad idea in the US.

I doubt Tesla minds for now either way. Their customers would drive from Water Gap to Cape May if they needed to.

So are you saying the N/A 3.6L couls eventually not even make it to the CT6? No. I didn't say that at all. Keep in mind that if this 3.6 is the CT6's base engine, that means the CT6 will be bigger than a 5-series yet lighter and with a 95 horsepower advantage over the base 5-er.

You channeling a bit of SMK there? ... 3 of the competitors have Forced Induction... the rest are Naturally Aspirated. "At these power levels" Jaguar, BMW, and Audi have forced induction. Infiniti, Lexus, Acura, M-B, Hyundai Genesis, Kia K900, 300C V6... and if you want to be nice and include Lincoln are all naturally aspirated. The key is the "at these power levels". If you want more power, you need to go either to a V8 or a Turbo-6... which Cadillac will be offering as well. It should be noted that a number of these competitors offer less powerful base engines... So if Cadillac is offering this 3.6 as the base engine, it will instantly have a an advantage. May be I should I have said it better, "are or will be force induced". Yes, number of them offer less powerful base engines, but so will Cadillac in the form of 2.0T or 2.5 depending on the application. So let's get back to your list. M-B does/will too with the 400 and 450 or whatever the heck they are going to name the 3.0L on one bright morning. Infiniti has forced induction lying in the wings as you saw at the Detroit release. Lincoln/Ford has the ecoboost 2.3, 2.7 and 3.5 engines. All the company has to do is plug one in a Lincoln. New - And Volvo is F-I too. So the only manufacturers remaining are Lexus and Acura, which to my understanding Lexus will have one soon. I do not consider Kia and Hyundai in this league because they do not offer multiple sausage lengths of "luxury" vehicles. Hence, non forced induced vehicles are or soon to be in minority. Back to my premise, GM has no F-I motor in 300 - 375 hp range like its competitors and to me that is a drawback especially since these engines started with clean slate. And no matter how much you look at the torque curve of a N/A motor producing 80% of torque of F-I motor, it will not match the F-I jolt. So no your perception of me being SMK is incorrect. I seldom make comments without looking at things comprehensively. Again, I go back to "at these power levels". The M-B 3.0TT will likely be more in line with the new Cadillac 3.0TT terms of power.. basically around 400 hp rather than 335 horsepower. The Infiniti turbo with be a Turbo-4 not a Turbo V6. Lincoln has Ecoboost, but is still offering the N/A V6. Lexus's turbo will be a Turbo-4. All of these will be either optional step up engines with the Turbo V6 or base engines with a Turbo-4. As nice as turbos are, a 335Hp N/A V6 is still > 240~280hp Turbo-4

It's going to be relatively low volume as is... Expect this engine to show up in the next Malibu... and possibly the next Terrain/Nox full redesign.

You channeling a bit of SMK there? ... 3 of the competitors have Forced Induction... the rest are Naturally Aspirated. "At these power levels" Jaguar, BMW, and Audi have forced induction. Infiniti, Lexus, Acura, M-B, Hyundai Genesis, Kia K900, 300C V6... and if you want to be nice and include Lincoln are all naturally aspirated. The key is the "at these power levels". If you want more power, you need to go either to a V8 or a Turbo-6... which Cadillac will be offering as well. It should be noted that a number of these competitors offer less powerful base engines... So if Cadillac is offering this 3.6 as the base engine, it will instantly have a an advantage.

Remember, these are Cadillac wide engines, not just CT6 engines. This 3.6 will go into everything at Cadillac that currently runs a 3.6 N/A. So you're looking at 3.6 N/A horsepower figures for the next CTS, ATS, SRX, and XTS refreshes (and I do expect XTS to survive a bit longer for fleet use). We also don't have torque curves yet... and I will be asking my contact at Cadillac for them... but apparently they've tuned this engine for better off the line punch. Yes you still have to rev the engine to get to the peak, but that's true of all DOHC N/A 6es (see what you've done SMK? we could have had torquey pushrods in there... but noooo.)

It took BMW 35 years to get where they are today. In 1980, they were selling really expensive, RWD VW Jettas that rusted into nothing at the first sight of snow.

I am Ecoboosted for the next two weeks. Anyone care to guess which Ford or Lincoln I have in the C&G East Coast Garage?

I feel like #4 is Bentley, but don't know the model.

Everything in this class is virtually unhearable at speed. Even my old CRV can do that. Road and wind noise are bigger concerns

Initially, yes basically. While the price was not out of reach for those who wanted one, it was definitely a 1% solution. It was introduced in 2001 for $500. Sounds simple enough, right? Except you also had to have a Mac... and you also had to have a Mac with a Firewire port. The recently released iMac came with one, but only on certain versions. So the net result, if you wanted an iPod in 2001, you had to buy the iPod($500), and the certain iMac ($1500+) with the certain port, just so you could listen to 30 of your CDs (and no more) on a highly breakable device that wasn't compatible with anything else... including your car (almost no cars had Aux inputs at the time) So just like a Tesla today... a lot of people can technically afford one, but it is not a prudent financial move for the moment. But just like the iPod, the price of the technology behind tesla will come down... and the price behind a self driving car will come down too. As I've pointed out in other threads, a good amount of the technology to do it is already available in cars today.

Thought about it a bit more. In this class, it doesn't matter who Cadillac benchmarked. If they made it into the 37 dB - 38 db range, they will have just about maxed out. There is a lower limit to idle quietness and that limit is 35 db (A Lexus LS600h L which is powered on but without the gas motor running is 35.5 dB). There simply is no way to do better.

like all things, depends on the model. The Fiat based jeeps have been having some issues. The older stuff has been mostly okay.

#1 - I googled enough to find the answer. The term I googled for was "enclosed disk brake"... which is what it looked like to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausco_Lambert_disc_brake The Ausco-Lambert disc brake[1] is an unusual brake where an axially-expanding shoe assembly is sandwiched between two linked rotating discs. It may be thought of as an "inside out" disc brake: instead of pads pinching a disc, the pads expand inside a hollow disc. http://www.moparmax.com/columns/magnante/ix_3-7.html