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.

The Wagon of Cadillacs

EURO HAULER The first regular-production wagon Cadillac has sold in the United States, the CTS Sport Wagon flaunts the division's rakish knife-edge styling.

FOR most of us, the classic American station wagon — with its acres of fake woodgrain siding, sticky vinyl bench seats and lazy-revving V-8 engine — is a fixture of our collective automotive consciousness. It is also extinct. The gas crises of the ’70s hobbled it, the minivans of the ’80s dealt a knockout blow and the S.U.V.’s that followed stomped on its grave.

Could the new Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon — the only American-brand station wagon now available in this country — be a green shoot that portends a revival of this American archetype?

Not a chance. Instead, this car’s inspiration comes from Europe.

On the Continent, station wagons never were the wallowing land arks we knew, so today’s European car buyers aren’t scarred by that memory. And with Europe’s sky-high gas prices and narrow streets, S.U.V.’s make even less sense there than they do here, so Europeans who are engaged in all those much-talked-about “active lifestyle” pursuits — or who just need to carry a lot of stuff — often drive station wagons.

They drive so many of them, in fact, that it’s not unusual for station wagons to outsell their sedan counterparts. That explains why European carmakers haven’t dropped the body style — their home market loves it. Thus, most of the wagons sold here are European makes: Volvo, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Cadillac ardently wants to be thought of as a legitimate competitor to those makes, and it would also like to increase its tiny business in Europe. “For us, with aspirations in Europe, it made sense to do a wagon,” said Steve Shannon, the Cadillac marketing director. “It’s a relatively inexpensive vehicle to do once you have the sedan. And we think that over time there will be some European-ization of the U.S. market as vehicles get smaller, with smaller-displacement engines. A greater interest in wagons may also be a result.”

Even if you knew nothing about European wagons, one look at the CTS Sport Wagon would dispel any notion that this is the second coming of the Country Squire. There’s nothing retro to it. Even more so than the CTS sedan, the wagon is a showcase for Cadillac’s faceted, angular design.

Cadillac unveils much anticipated CTS Coupe

The unveiling of the 2010 Cadillac CTS Coupe has topped a busy month for both the car, and the brand.

The 227kW/370Nm 3.6-litre V6 will be officially revealed at the Los Angeles Motor Show next month before a mid-2010 release in the US.

It comes around three weeks after Cadillac announced six finalists in its high profile search for an agency to handle its national creative account.

Cadillac will hold meetings with the agencies in Detroit before they make their final pitch in January.

But Cadillac’s vice chairman of marketing and communications, Bob Lutz, has been doing a reasonable job of marketing the brand himself.

The brand is aiming to attract a younger demographic of buyers through its “May the best car win” campaign, and it is having some success.

Most if not all of the challengers were under 50 and the majority of the non-journalist entrants heard about the race through blogs and YouTube.

And Lutz and Cadillac need something, with GM sales down 36 per cent year-to-date over the first three-quarters of 2009.

Cadillac unveils 2011 CTS coupe

The CTS coupe comes with a standard V-6 engine and an available V-8.

CAPTION

By GM

Cadillac today unveiled the 2011 CTS coupe, due to arrive in showrooms in spring.

The coupe joins the CTS sport sedan, the muscle-bound 556-horsepower CTS-V and new CTS Sport Wagon as the foundation of Cadillac's lineup.

The CTS coupe joins the sedan and the wagon in the lineup.

CAPTION

By GM

The CTS coupe's design carries over virtually unchanged from the concept car that was introduced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in 2008. It's a classic 2+2 with goodies like a rear-view camera and a performance-oriented suspension system coupled to rear-wheel or all-wheel drive.

"CTS coupe is the new focal point of Cadillac, expressing both our design and technical capabilities," said Bryan Nesbitt, Cadillac general manager. "It is intended to appeal to a new generation of car enthusiasts." And it's different than the sedan:

It has the same footprint as a CTS sedan but is two inches lower. The windshield is raked at a steeper angle. A touch pad replaces the need for standard door handles.

The CTS coupe's standard powertrain consists of a direct injected 3.6-liter V-6 and six-speed manual transmission. Among other things, direct injection helps the engine cut hydrocarbon emissions by 25% when its cold on startup. The 304-horsepower engine will offer EPA-estimated fuel economy of 27 miles per gallon on the highway. It also runs on less expensive regular unleaded gasoline.

Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon Confirmed

Up until today, you could not convince me that wagons, or what some of you call ‘station wagons’, are cool. I think they are hideous and plain butt ugly but lately my old-school perception has changes with the introduction and conformation of the new Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon coming out.

The new Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon is pretty bad-assed if you ask me. It has a rear-end that I would want to ahh-cough-cough, open and CLOSE. Not only does the CTS-V Sport Wagon look pleasing to the eye, it should do a number to your back when you press the gas pedal laying down 556 horsepower and 551 ft-lbs of torque. The big 6.2-liter V8 crammed into the CTS-V Sport Wagon is good for a run from 0 to 60mph in 4.1 seconds. Yea, beat that Clark Grisswald, let’s see your station wagon with wood on the side do that. I bet I could get the CTS-V airborne too buddy!

Cadillac Narrows Contenders List to Three

General Motors Co.'s Cadillac has cut the list of semi-finalists vying for the brand's national creative account in half.

The shops moving to the next round are two Publicis Groupe shops: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York, and Publicis, New York; along with Interpublic Group of Cos.' Martin Agency, Richmond, Va. Eliminated are Omnicom Group's DDB, Chicago; Interpublic's Gotham and independent McKinney, Durham, N.C. Cadillac confirmed that list.

The holidays will be a frenetic time for the finalists to put together their presentations, as the marketer has said it will hear pitches in January. A decision is expected soon afterward.

Prior experience
The three finalists have experience dealing with car brands.

Bartle Bogle was a finalist in Audi of America's review in 2006. The agency's London office handles Audi in the U.K., which created this TV spot for the Q5 early this year. In the Audi of America review, the agency pitched against incumbent McKinney, which had held the account from 1993 to 2006. The account is now with Venables, Bell & Partners.