Hi Y'all,
I haven't been keeping up with the threads in here so I know I risk posting old news, but I wanted to get down my impressions and the little I was able to glean from the product specialists here.
First, the aesthetics: this car is just f u c k i n g beautiful, full stop. I knew from comparing the pics of the new CTS to the in-person car that pictures really lie, and that's true here as well. For starters, don't worry about the underbite in the splitter in front... I thought it was ugly in the pictures but in person it doesn't look bad at all. The front grill, which looks way too big in pics, is in fact gorgeous. It's not mesh like ours; instead, it's more structured and less dense; it looks cast.
The chrome trim doesn't bother me as much as I thought it might, either. I think about all I might do is !CTS and !littleGMsquares and then roll.
I haven't yet been able to sweet talk the presentation girl into letting me onto the platform to see the interior more closely, but I remain hopeful.
Info from the product people:
- Fall of '09. Manual transmission will be standard; auto with paddles behind the steering wheel will be optional. They're "guessing" the base MSRP will be "somewhere in the 60's."
- They're claiming 550 torque and 550 "plus" horsepower because the engineers are still trying to tweak more out of the engine.
- 183 MPH ungoverned top speed. Zero to sixty in under four seconds.
- The engineers are working on all wheel drive as a future option.
- The CTS coupe will come out in 2010, and there will be a V version of the coupe in 2011.
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