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What's the point of the ats v?

10K views 57 replies 17 participants last post by  Guy.Seminerio 
#1 ·
I mean it's gorgeous. I was just wondering why somebody would but a 2015 atsv when it is smaller and costs the same as a 09 ctsv with 100 less hp?
 
#2 ·
Many people want the smaller car. I like the look of the ATS-V more than the CTS-V which looks dated to me now with the new CTS model out. ATS-V also has a great interior and has more features. 100 less HP yet will probably outperform (or be right on par with) the CTS-V.

Maybe people would rather have the CTS-V, I'm not one of them though for the reasons above.
 
#4 ·
Comparing a new car to purchasing one that is six years old I find generally to be an apples to oranges comparison. A tougher call is that the 2014 CTS-V is $64k (base) and thus is priced near the ATS-V. Maybe a few them are still around on dealer lots. The 2015 CTS V coupe is over $70k, so that is a step-up in price.

I like the ATS size and would lean that way, but would want to drive both if I were in the market.
 
#5 ·
If you have to ask it's not for you

At 4400 pounds the CTS is a pig, a righteous wonderful pig, but still a pig at around 8 pounds per horsepower each the power to weight ratio is the same but with the ATS being around 700 pounds lighter it will stop better corner better basically do everything better

The CTS automatic tops out at 175mph and the ATS automatic will do 189mph, and with the more advanced aerodynamics and lower weight will probably reach top speed quicker jury is still out on the stick the CTS stick will do 191mph we don't know about ATS stick but with a 2mph difference that we know of right now the stick figures are practically moot

Better interior better MRC better LSD better electronics etc etc

If none of this registers with or matters to you ATS-V is not for you
 
#6 ·
If the ATS-V is to be the driver-oriented car, then it should have a better package: a V8 and TR6070. Who cares if the Germans have another buzz bomb in the M3/4; that's their problem and they have been gouging Americans for years. It's time for payback.
 
#7 ·
A V8 does not a driver's car make.....what makes a driver's car is a great driving and fun car.....any driving enthusiast worth their salt can name great drivers cars that have had wankel motors, 4 cylinder, 5 cylinder, 6 cylinder, 8 cylinder, 10 cylinder, or 12 cylinder engines and have come in Boxer,V,W, and inline configurations.

It is just folly to suggest there is only one way to a driver's car......and why it must be a Mexican transmission instead of a kickass one regardless of make is puzzling too.....this just smacks of religious extremism
 
#8 ·
The V8 is appreciated by more enthusiasts as potentially superior to a turbocharged inline 6. But what engine snob would prefer the Cadillac V6?

The point of the ATS-V is to beat the stuffing out of the M3/M4. I will always believe GM's best engine is better suited to that task.
 
#9 ·
this is a better argument, and i agree, GMs best vs the world would be awesome......now to play devils advocate, what is GMs best?, what we think might be different from someone else maybe GM engineers know something we do not, or could this be broader picture product decision...remember when the M3 had a v8 its bigger brother had a v10 now its 6 cylinder (M3) and 8 cylinder (M5) and we're probably looking at the same thing with ATS-V/CTS-V

here's another wrinkle.....GM might not think the LT1 is their best anymore, i recently read that they had a flat plane high revving motor they planned to use but it did not make their emissions targets so they went back to old faithful.

all this said in my personal view i prefer naturally aspirated engines to blown ones AND i prefer high revvers so to me a flat plane LT* would be the ultimate....if an engine is to be blown i prefer supercharging to turbo charging....seeing a theme here?.....throttle response, immediate gratification is what i like in an engine...i do feel (not positive, just a feeling) the LT series engines days are numbered and i suspect some sort of blown hybrid gas electric power unit is in our futures as well as electric blowers and turbo generators
 
#10 ·
The LT1 may not actually be the motor that GM Powertrain engineers would anonymously vote as the strongest powertrain, but the Smallblock V8 has a better rep as a performance engine than anything else they have. And an ATS-V with that engine is an easy marketing proposition against the BMW. The turbo V6 is a tougher sell. They obviously believe they can make it work. And they probably believe it's a better story for Cadillac. For the brand's sake I hope they can pull it off. Put another way, I hope the midrange torque and distancing the car from the street-brawler pushrod V8 is worth the challenge of marketing a car with an engine that will be perceived as less ideal than its competition. If they mop the floor with the M on performance and feel, the engine's pedigree won't hurt, but if the race is close, will it get the benefit of the doubt?

BTW, BMW's M3 and M5 engine moves aren't the same kind of risk as GM's ATS-V turbo V6 play. The BMW straight six is unassailable as a performance icon and object of fan lust, and BMW made sure to establish trust with turbocharging it on other models first. As for the M5, BMW took the V8 cred established in the M3 and prior M5s and vetted turbocharging it on other models first.

Of course, on a long enough timeline, internal combustion will probably go the way of the manual transmission. In the meantime let's keep the feelgood stuff going as long as our wallets allow :)
 
#11 ·
i raise my glass to the feel good stuff...:shiner:

and i think you misunderstand me i am suggesting both BMW and cadillac are maintaining a hi/lo relationship with engines vs models to establish a hierarchy...meaning if GM had bigger badder options to the small block V8 ready to put in the CTS then it would be a lot easier for them to go V8 in the ATS ...any petrol head knows you can do just about anything with any motor type BMWs 4 cylinder in the first M3 having a 1200 HP variant is a good example.....i have the feeling that on the dealers lot when an ATS-V is sitting next to the CTS-V, when the customer asks why would i go one way or the other i'm sure Cadillac wants on of the answers to be this one has a v8
 
#12 ·
One thing I'm sure of -- Cadillac did not put a turbo V6 in the ATS-V in order to be able to differentiate the CTS-V by the number of cylinders.

And have you been living in a cave? GM does have a bigger badder engine above the LT1. It's called the LT4.
 
#13 · (Edited)
Lol....dude an lt4 in the CTS would be scary over the top bordering on outrageous the thought makes me smile.....Johan has said he wants Cadillac to have its own motors and if any sharing happens it's GM borrowing from Cadillac so my 2 cents is let Chevy keep the LT series and Cadillac develop a flat plane series of v6 and v8 engines freevalve with electric blowers so there's no parasitic loss instant throttle response and nothing in the exhaust to block the wailing noise when I wind that sucker up to its 10,000 redline it needs DI, cylinder deactivation, and laser igniters instead of spark plugs, basically a high tech wonder
 
#19 ·
You're way, way off there.

The Northstar has no cooling issues whatsoever. They stay well within operating temp range no matter the ambient temp or how hard you push them.

No, overheating one will not cause a head gasket to fail, nor will it warp a head. In fact, they were designed and tested to run for 50 miles, with no coolant whatsoever.

No, the head bolts were not weak.

No, there is no top end rebuild required to fix the issue. The engine/transmission/cradle do have to be dropped, which is expensive, then the block needs to be inserted or studded. This costs ~$2,000-$2,500, not $5000.

The earlier Northstars had too short a head bolt with too fine a thread. Improvements/changes over the years solved this by '04. Granted, it took way too long to resolve, but the issue was simply head bolt hole threads pulling, not all the other internet myths.
 
#20 ·
you might be the first i heard say there is no problem, that's fine...what i know is i have friends who who are in two of the four Cadillac Dealer service departments where i live and they laugh at the sheer number of these they have to rebuild, they even have a name for it they call it northstaritis....bottom line is, it has a problem whether cooling is the cause (possible what's seen here and not in your region it gets HOT here) the gasket or the bolts, but Buick after Buick and Cadillac after Cadillac with this engine fail prematurely
 
#21 ·
You specifically said it had a "fatal cooling flaw". Neither head bolt hole threads or head gaskets are "cooling" flaws. A cooling flaw, as in a poorly designed or inadequate cooling system, are NOT one of the Northstars problems.

And I never said it (the head bolt thread issue) wasn't a problem, it was. I also said that it took way too long for GM to fix it. After 04, the FWD Northstar head bolt threads were no longer an issue. The RWD Northstar never had an issue.

Northstaritis? I have another term, internetiris.....
 
#22 ·
yes i did, and for your information this was relayed to me by like i said multiple experts on the subject at multiple locations...not the internet....to add to this it was relayed to me that there is a combination of issues related to the bolts, head, and gasket and these issue are often set off by an overheating event, heat is the fuse that lights the bomb if you will...again not internet, technicians, funny thing, were i to take your word for it HERE, that would be internet-itis, ironic..lol:)
 
#23 ·
Overheating is the RESULT of failed HG bolts, not the cause. Read through the FWD/ Northstar forums for actual accounts, from the beginning symptoms onward, of Northstar HG/bolt failure. Read all about how many overheat multiple times due to simple issues, and are driven long after that with no HG issues.

GM made changes to the block casting process and head bolt dimensions, because that's where the problem lied, and it fixed the issue. If the issue was failure after overheating, because these engines were somehow probe to overheating, then that's what would have been addressed. It was not, because no such issue existed.

FWIW, a dealer tech, a lot of which weren't even alive during the Northstars development, aren't necessarily experts. Another thing we see more than enough of in the FWD/Northstar forums is dealerships attempting, and sometimes succeeding in performing unnecessary repairs on an engine that's overheating.

Want an expert? Get in touch with Jake, or one of a couple of others that have repaired multiple Northstars with HG issues. In Jakes case, hundreds. I'd like to see a tech, or even a couple combined, with that much experience with this particular issue on this particular engine.
 
#24 ·
Right, what is the point of an ATS-V Sport?
This car makes me give up on Cadillac, as they are not even trying anymore.

I don't see who would want that car over a F80 M3 or W205 C63.
It's funny how the ATS being so bad is making me start appreciating the 3 Series.
Now that the ATS-V Sport is a pass, I'm waiting to see how the 8V RS3 turns out.
Would have jumped on an LT1.
 
#25 ·
Ok the entire service staff at Marvin K Brown Cadillac has more asc certified and asc master certified and GM certified and GM master certified techs than any dealer in Southern California other dealers in the LA region send cars here to be fixed its a store that has been in one family since the fifties now third generation and one of the most respected stores around from a service perspective San diego police fire and DHS trust them for their GM service needs including border patrol humvees ..these guys can go toe to toe with anybody in the country and are my friends and experts I call with questions like this....like I said its a very real possibility we get different blammos because of the climate, or how much more southern Californians drive die to lack of public transportatio

I'm not a tech but I'm the son of one and when my experts tell me something I generally understand and I understand what you are saying too im just sharing

----------

by the way this dealer goes even further back as it originally was a satelite DON LEE CADILLAC with LONG TIES to cadillac and the then Manager Mr. Brown turned it into his own franchise

i trust these guys not the internet
 
#29 · (Edited)
pissedoffwookiee's said:
northstar is not bad but had a fatal flaw in that it had fatal cooling flaw AND a weak and/or poorly designed head gaskets and/or heads, and way too soon for a modern car the cooling would overheat the northstar and blammo blown gasket, head lift from weakened head bolts and if really bad warped head....the end result is a new motor or a $5000 top engine rebuild....and because most of the time these were put in sh*tty FWD cars the whole front end and engine and transaxle needs removing to perform the service
Cadillac made a bad engineering choice? So what? As if it's competition is somehow immune to this? BMW's I6 used in practically everything they make likes to suck in their air baffles into the combustion chamber, as well as the VANOS and HPFP failures which plagued just about every car they used such items on from the 90s onward, HPFP excluded. VAG has had relentless problems with HPFP cam lobe failures on the 2.0TFSI(again, used in everything), as well as sludge problems with the 1.8T. There was a class-action against mercedes that plantiff's counsel baffooned through for camshaft excessive wear in the M156-- ie every AMG car that used the 6.2L V8.

I could go on..

Audi and VAG were especially brilliant at inventing new ways for things to fail during the late 90s and early 00s I have to say.
 
#31 ·
good point but this doesn't really say alot that we don't already know...most of us are aware of spotty german reliability....rolling the german dice is part of the experience IMO it's one reason Leasing is popular among those makes (no worries about engine if car is going back) and another reason the germans led the way with included maintenance again to alleviate the perception real or not...the northstar stood out as bad among GM's generally very reliable tried and true v8's
 
#35 ·
My uncle and cousins have owned and operated their own auto repair for over 40 years. We've discussed the N* on many occasions. In summary their opinion was that the engine was great in concept, but terrible in execution (or more accurately in build). As my cousin said once, "great engine if it could ever hold all its fluids". Oil leaks, head gasket failures resulting in leaks and overheating issues.

The current LSx engines are considered to be pretty stout, but that's because the design has evolved and improved over the past 45 years or so. My college car was a '78 Chevy Impala 2 door with the 305 cu in (5.0l) V8. My dad had a '79 Caprice Classic with the 350 cu in V8. The engines in both of those cars were ancestors to the OHV V8s in many of today's GM performance models and trucks, but I recall both of those engines having issues with the camshafts. The metal that was used for those cams was pretty soft and as the miles racked up, the lobes wore down.

The N* never went through the evolution to weed out the issues.
 
#41 ·
LOL

I could agree more with your previous post than this one! This one is full of rant...:D But I understand that as a salesman you went through a lot during that period of time and that transition. But WOW! Really? Are you calling the 2005+ STS a dog meat?! :histeric:

And just for the records, my hairs are not blue, and I am only 32 years old! :D And I myself chose the modern 2.0 liter turbo engine over the V-6 when I shopping for my ATS. So I get that the bigger is not necessarily the better. But I really don't get dropping of the V-8 engine from the Cadillac's lineup (excluding Escelade and V series). When you had many angry customers over the absence of the V-8 engine in Cadillac's line up, I would say someone had made a mistake, and it wasn't the blue haired people. Customer's are always right, and they want to get what they want for their hard earned money. The problem was the bunch of egomaniac executives, who seat around a table in a closed room, and believe that they can make the right call and decision for everyone! Back in 80s the same idiots sat around the same table and decided that Cadillac needs to use a FWD platform.

Ans yes, CTS 2 was a great car, and it brought many new customers for the Cadillac. But they could still keep the V-8 as an option. This is my point!

And today Cadillac is considering bringing back the V-8 engine to its line up. So that says something about Cadillac's decision in 2008 in replacing the V-8 with V6.
 
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