The 2010 Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon is no excuses. The 2010 Cadillac SRX4 2.8T "crossover utility vehicle" is a symphony of compromises. At base prices of up to $40,000, I'll take no excuses.
I spent two weeks in two motorized variations on the theme of the wagon. I gained incredible insight. People loved the CTS Sport Wagon for its sharp styling inside and out, its precise road manners, its utility. But the younger they were, the less they liked it. Why? "Because my parents drove a wagon," was the usual response. So what? "I'm not my parents."
I heard that so much, I looked into it. It certainly was true they weren't their parents. But many of them were parents themselves, with young children they needed to cart about. They wanted to do the carting fashionably. Wagons, they said, weren't fashionable. They much preferred the Cadillac SRX4 2.8T, which had marginally better cargo space, but not more power, better road manners or better fuel economy than the CTS Sport Wagon.
What the SRX4 2.8T had, in their estimation, was what it lacked — the absence of anything that identified it as a wagon.
It was a matter of consumer self-image turned successful marketing hustle. Is there a chance that it will return to truth, to wagons? Much of the stuff people carry in midsize sport-utility vehicles can be carried in wagons — or "sport wagons" if that makes you feel better — with greater ease, better fuel economy, better
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