CADZILLA 2016 Cadillac CTS-V A four-door

155 MPH This is not an electronic speed limiter. Rather, that’s as fast as we dared drive and record on Road America’s 0.57mile front straight. Cadillac says it logged a 201.8-mph top speed in pre-production testing, which puts the 2016 CTS-V in a very rare class of sedans.

Words Chris Walton Photographs Julia LaPalme

Z 6 S A S O S OUS STA FOUR-DOOR Z06 HAS ARRIVED, AND IT’S MONSTROUSLY FAST CADZILLA!

BIG TIME Brembo steel brakes match the awesome power and pace of the CTS-V. There is no carbon option.

In a fast car, there are six places on Road America’s 4-mile track where your speeds can exceed 100 mph—and twice they can reach more than 150 mph. Without any modifications or special procedures, the 2016 Cadillac CTS-V hammered the track at these triple-digit speeds, three or four hot laps at a time, until the tank was empty.

The car’s formula and specifications have been known for some time but warrant a brief review: Insert the driveline of a hardcore Corvette into a luxurious Cadillac sedan, make it corner and stop with authority, let enthusiasts “enthuse” themselves into a froth, and hope they mention it in the same breath as a Mercedes-AMG E63 or BMW M5. Under its standard carbon-fiber hood, puffed up to accommodate the supercharger, lurks a 640-hp version of the LT4 V-8 from the 650-hp Corvette Z06. Power goes through a paddle-shiftable eight-speed automatic on its way to an electronically controlled differential that sorts out when/if/how much to lock the wheels together so the engine’s available 630 lb-ft of torque gets to the ground. Cadillac says the new CTS-V will run to 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds, devour a quarter mile in 11.6 seconds at 126 mph, and reach an aero-limited top speed of just over 200 mph. On paper, those stats do indeed outgun the aforementioned bogeys, and our collective backside believes the brag.

The CTS-V’s structure is also fortified with a multitude of braces and a unique aluminum undercarriage shear panel. MacPherson-type struts and multilink rear suspension pair with the latest, quickest-reacting dual-coil, three-mode Magnetic Ride Control shocks for highly effective, adaptive damping. Changes to the rack-mounted electric-assist power steering have certainly improved response, precision, and feel. Monstrous Brembo brakes slow Cadzilla with offset six-piston calipers squeezing two-piece vented discs up front (almost identical in diameter to the CTS-V’s steering wheel) and four-piston calipers on vented discs in back. Bespoke Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires boast tricompound construction and wrap around light and stiff forged-aluminum wheels.

Now, there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, bravery and biting off more than you can chew. The all-new CTS-V is certainly a confident car that requires surprisingly little bravery to explore its lofty limits—even on an exceptionally fast racetrack. In fact, the nonchalance with which its supercharged V-8 gets up to ludicrous speeds and the ability of the suspension to iron out imperfections in a nanosecond are assets as well as liabilities. Simply stand on the go pedal, point the nose at the horizon, and aside from its staccato exhaust note, the new CTS-V remains startlingly poised and

If we had a nit to pick, this would be it: Everything is just too easy.

sedate while sustaining 1.00g corners at more than 75 mph with one hand on the steering wheel. If we had a nit to pick, this would be it: It’s just too easy. The painstaking, multiyear development of the CTS-V ensured it would lay down fierce, perhaps best-in-class laps at the Nürburgring, but it’s just so incongruous how it shrugs it all off with the serenity one would expect of a Cadillac. That’s by design.

Billed as two cars in one, Cadillac delivers on that assurance with a host of selectable integrated chassis controls with varying shades of performance and comfort. A driver can select Snow, Tour, Sport, or Track mode, each with tailored gauges plus suspension, steering, throttle, and transmission calibrations. What’s different here is that within Track, five more levels of Performance Traction Management (PTM) vary the amount of electronically controlled stability and traction control, including a launch mode.

For Road America, we sampled Sport and Track, then PTM-4, -5, and all systems off. Sport clearly held the reins too tightly, and the traction and stability control indicators blinked like amber strobe lights. The beauty of Race/PTM-5 mode is that while stability control is disabled, freeing the car to dance and slide, a very sophisticated traction control system waits in the shadows. A driver who runs out of talent could spin the car on corner entry or midway through, but on corner exit that same driver can whack the throttle to the floor without immolating the expensive Michelins or inducing throttle oversteer. It’s the kind of unfair advantage banned in many forms of racing, and PTM-5 is so adept at retarding spark (or eventually closing the throttle) that attempting to get the same confident drive out of a corner with all systems off proved next to impossible.

So it comes to this: Did Cadillac finally build the car with the correct ratio of elegance, power, and menace that the Germans refuse to? Just like the Corvette Z06 that donated its heart to the cause, the 2016 CTS-V has crushing performance, undeniable comfort, and a price that undercuts anything in its class by $10,000 to $15,000. Will enthusiasts flock or flee? The 2016 Cadillac CTS-V is about to draw everyone’s attention to the king’s new clothes and lay bare any doubt that this is the new benchmark in the supersedan class. Badges be damned. Q

Data, driven

THE $1,300 PERFORMANCE DATA

RECORDER (PDR) is a compelling option on the 2016 CTS-V order sheet. Developed with Cosworth, supplier of telemetry electronics for Corvette Racing, the PDR was introduced in 2015 as a Corvette option. Now available on V-Series Cadillacs, PDR integrates information from a 720p-resolution camera, a dedicated GPS receiver (gathering five times more location data than the in-dash navigation system), and the car’s Controller Area Network, or CAN, to access information on throttle position, engine speed, gear selection, braking force, and steering wheel angle. Combined data are recorded on a postage-stamp-size SD card for playback on the car’s high-res display or further analysis on a computer within Cosworth Toolbox. We plan to compare the PDR’s capabilities and precision against our industry-standard VBox very soon.

CW

NO HIDING You can’t escape your on-track (or off-track) mistakes with the optional onboard data and video recorder, which includes a high-def camera in the headliner.

2016 Cadillac CTS-V

BASE PRICE $85,990 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan ENGINE 6.2L/640-hp*/630-lb- * supercharged OHV 16-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT 4,150 lb (mfr) WHEELBASE 114.6 in L X W X H 197.6 x 72.2 x 57.2 in 0-60 MPH 3.7 sec (mfr est) EPA CITY/HWY/ Not yet rated COMB FUEL ECON ON SALE IN U.S. Currently *SAE certified