[lawfive]

Ahhh, aesthetics. "It's gorgeous!!" "It's crap!!"

I can only speak for me. I was unsure about the new CTS based on the pictures I saw, but fell in love when I saw it in person in Dallas. I know two more things:

The V version is going to look different. V guys, remember that it's only small styling tweaks that make our current CTS-Vs look remarkably different from the standard CTS.

You can't believe anything, and I mean anything, that you see on a development mule. If you kept track of all the base CTS test cars, you saw that the lights, grills, door handles, etc. varied significantly between them. Same with the body panels: vent holes on some; not on others. For all we know, to get the test pig pictured above, maybe they attached a big ugly piece of aluminum to the hood at the last minute just to accomodate a blower kit that hasn't been optimized to fit with the new engine bay / hood. Our maggie kit for our current CTS-V came THIS CLOSE to requiring a custom hood.

I won't know nuttin bout no stylin until next year. I suspect I'll be at whichever auto show hosts the V debut.