Cadillac CTS Coupe Wins Top Honors in The Detroit News Readers Choice Awards

Two Cadillacs and a Chevrolet won three of The Detroit News Readers Choice Awards on January 15, including the top honor of Best in Show for the Cadillac CTS Coupe.

"Each year, the Detroit News takes 100 readers to the North American International Auto Show at Cobo and then asks them to pick their favorites in a variety of 11 categories along with Best in Show, according Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor of The Detroit News," GM said.

The CTS Coupe and the other award winners were announced today during a Detroit Economic Club luncheon. The dramatic CTS Coupe is slated to arrive in Cadillac showrooms in the spring of 2010.

Cadillac also claimed the Best Future Fantasy Award for the Cadillac Platinum XTS Concept car. Finley said that each of the categories were close calls with the exception of the Future Fantasy/Concept award. "Our readers overwhelmingly voted for the Cadillac XTS as best Concept. They were really impressed by the vehicle," he said.

2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe: Up Close

The CTS coupe, a car GM placed on hiatus during its bankruptcy, joins a sedan and wagon to give the CTS nameplate as many variants as a typical BMW or Audi might offer. True to the CTS coupe concept shown at last year’s Detroit auto show, this is no watered-down production version — the arcing taillights, central exhaust pipes and brash C-pillars are the stuff of concept cars and will make it to driveways.

GM went that direction with the Chevrolet Camaro, and owners paid a price for it in visibility, backseat room and trunk space. I’m glad to see that isn’t the case for the CTS coupe. The car’s sightlines are decent, though I could only gauge this in the auto show's static setting. The C-pillars are small enough and the rear head restraints are also tiny, keeping blind spots minimal; sizable side mirrors should keep adjacent traffic on your radar. The front seat belts need no device that keeps them within reach; they’re easy to grab, which is unusual in a two-door car.

I’m not wild about the coupe’s electronic door handles. Like in the Chevy Corvette, you reach into a crevice to press a button that unlatches it. That’s fine, but it also means the cabin swaps the CTS sedan’s tasteful door handles for plastic buttons. It may be high-tech, but it feels low-rent.

The backseat is a squeeze to get into, but adults should find legroom manageable. I’m 5 feet 11 inches tall and my head mashed the headliner. If I leaned back, I wouldn’t quite reach the rear glass — a more tenable position, at least until the road got bumpy.

At 10.5 cubic feet, the trunk is small. Granted, buying a luxury coupe for the trunk room is like getting a Whopper for the fiber. Like fast food, the CTS coupe is a guilty pleasure.

Cadillac Previews CTS Coupe Ahead of Los Angeles Auto Show

Cadillac CTS Coupe will come with a 3.6-liter V-6 engine, rated at 304 horsepower. A higher horsepower V-Series will is also planned.

The on-again, off-again Cadillac CTS Coupe is back on again. Cadillac officially announced the 2011 model Monday morning, promising to show the car publicly — for sure, this time — next week at the Los Angeles auto show.

The two-door version of the popular CTS sedan was to have been unveiled at last year’s Los Angeles show, but a high-power coupe was deemed politically incorrect, as well as economically questionable as General Motors edged toward financial collapse. The introduction was rescheduled for the Detroit auto show last January, but it didn’t surface there either.

The concept version of the coupe was first shown at the 2008 Detroit auto show, and green-lighted for production soon after in response to positive public reaction to its sharp-edged, origami-like styling.

Cadillac says the coupe will now arrive in dealerships next spring and a high-performance, 550-plus horsepower V-Series edition of the coupe is also expected.

The coupe will come in rear-wheel and all-wheel-drive versions. A 6-speed manual transmission will come standard, but only available with the rear-wheel-drive configuration. The base engine is a 3.6-liter V-6, rated at 304 horsepower. Cadillac says the CTS Coupe will be capable of 27 miles per gallon on the highway, using regular unleaded.

2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe

The first Cadillac coupe in almost two decades features a classic 2+2 seating layout and is slated to arrive in U.S. showrooms in the spring of 2010. The most obvious rivals for the 2011 CTS Coupe are the BMW 3-Series Coupe along with the new Audi A5 Coupe, Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe and the Infiniti G37 Coupe.

The coupe has the same wheelbase as the CTS, but an overall height that is approximately two inches (51 mm) lower and an overall length that is two inches (51 mm) shorter.

According to Cadillac, even though the Coupe is based on the CTS sedan, it shares only the instrument panel, console, headlamps, front fenders and grille with four-door model.

At launch, the 2011 CTS Coupe will be offered with GM’s direct injected 3.6-liter V6 engine that produces 304 horsepower and offers an EPA-estimated fuel economy of 27 mpg on the highway.

The V6 engine is coupled to a standard 6-speed manual gearbox with an automatic transmission with Driver Shift Control and available steering wheel mounted shift buttons offered as an option. It will also come with rear- or all-wheel drive.

According to a previous announcement from GM, the CTS Coupe V6 will be joined in the near future by a range topping “V” model boasting the same 556-horsepower 6.2-liter supercharged V8 found on the CTS-V Sedan.