Last week my wife and I took our 01 Seville STS on it’s first road trip. We have had the car for about three months now and thought you all might like to know a little about how the car did on the trip.
We started the trip at Portland, Oregon and drove to San Jose, California and then back to Portland. We took three days to make the trip down and three days back or six days total. I had some work to do in San Jose for a few days so the trip was not all in one week. This was a total of 1688 miles, 815 going down and 873 on the return. We only had one problem with the car during the trip. The fuse for the turn signals burned out and I had to replace it. Under the rear seat seems like a strange place for the battery and fuse block but it was easy to get to and replace the fuse. I now have spare fuses under the rear seat. The car was very comfortable during long stretches between stops. The cruse works well and is easy to use. We went down on I-5 and returned coming up I-101.

Getting ready for the trip I changed the oil (5-30) and oil filter. I also checked the air filter but didn’t change it out. I set all the tire pressures to 35 PSI. Also two weeks ago I replaced both of the crankshaft sensors as the motor was starting to die at stops. I did this myself. I have not had a problem sense I replaced these sensors. We only used regular gas and only Chevron gas. The car is completely stock and I did all of the driving.

From Portland Oregon to Eugene Oregon is very flat and I had a chance to check gas mileage at several speeds. I did this by watching the instant MPG readings so it may be off some. I did watch it for about 30 miles at each speed I checked with the cruse on. The instant numbers didn’t change more than two or three MPG during each speed I checked it at. At 60 mph I was getting 29 mpg. At 65, 27 mpg and at 70, 26 mpg. When we got to the mountains at Shasta my average mileage, not instant mileage was 26 mpg. When I got to the top of Shasta (on I-5 about 4000ft not actually the top of the mountain) the average dropped to 23 mpg. This had some to do with the fact that while going up the mountain I was pulling away from a Mustang at 90 mph+ on an 8 percent uphill grade. This car is awesome.

By the time we got to San Jose the average mpg was back up to 24.2 for the trip down and the average speed during the trip down was 66.8 mph. The outside temperature going down was about 45° F. north of Shasta and 55° F. South of Shasta.

I reset the average mpg and mph display before starting back for home. On the way back up the coast on I-101 I only checked the mileage when we got home. We got 23.1 mpg on the way back with an average speed of 62.1 mph. We made a lot more stops along the coast and we got into slow traffic and highway work being done that slowed or stopped us at times. The outside temperature on the way back was about 40° F.

Overall it was a great trip and I look forward to taking more trips in this car.
After reading some of the posting on this site I had wondered if getting to far from home mite leave me stranded somewhere. This trip gave me confidence that this is not the case. The more I now about these cars the more comfortable I am with taking road trips in mine.
This car wants to be driven, fast, very fast!
I hope this info was helpful and get your Caddy on the road this summer.:thumbsup:

Cadillacs are reliable cars. There is no reason whatsoever not to trust a cadillac of any recent vintage on a road trip any less than you would any other car. I have taken my '01 STS on several long trips and each one has been incident-free.

I agree with InTheknow. These cars are GREAT. I drove mine from northern Michigan to Boulder, Colorado last summer, and then back home of course. It never even blinked an eye.

I even slept in the backseat for a few hours at the Illinois/Iowa border. :)

I agree as well. I'm not sure what posts you have been reading, but my previous cadillac showed me that I could put my trust in the name. It took anything I threw at it and never gave me any problems. I just purchased a 99 with 77k and I will be taking it 1600 miles to Florida in a week and a half for Spring Break. I have no worries about it.

I think most people think caddy's are unreliable because of the headgaskets.

And a headgasket problem alot of times is a problem youd already be aware of before you started a road trip, OR would be pretty progressive anyway.

Otherwise they are pretty reliable cars.

However the 750IL I just bought looks to have had some abuse, and is a 1995 model. It didnt bat an eye for 1000 miles from STL. I would NOT have trusted a caddy in similar condition to just jump in and drive 1000 miles without a major inspection first.

10 years ago I was GIVEN a '77 Fleetwood Brougham. It had well over 100,000 miles on it and the headliner was falling down in places. I had it stuck up with thumb-tacks. I drove that car on several long trips and didn't worry about a thing. On one trip I had to have the water pump replaced. MOST cars are reliabe, especially late-model cars (10 years or less). Cadillac is more reliable than most, and I haven't heard that BMW is rated as a remarkable reliable car.

On this forum, I think most of the posters are young and got their Sevilles used and at bargain prices. On top of that, afficionados are usually more apt to get a known clunker, thinking they can overcome the problems because of the deal they got on the price- hence a car with some problems. Consumer Reports has not come out and "naderized" Cadillacs.

That said, I would think that if a person thought that Cadillac was a problematic car, then that person should cut bait and go buy a Honda.

Wow I think I hit a nerve about Cadillac reliability.
Let me add a little more information by saying that this is my third Cadillac over the last 20 + years and I have trusted them in the past.
But I did have some reason for concern about a long road trip with this car. Before I purchased this car I read a lot of the posts on this forum. I feel I learned a lot about these cars and there is lots of info if you want to dig in and look. It’s a little scary at first. There are a lot of problems discussed here and seeing what are common problems and what are isolated problems is hard to sort out at first. I feel I did a good job of doing this before I purchased my Seville. This car was well maintained by the dealership and only has 40,000 miles on it. One of these items of concern is the engine crankshaft sensors. The previous owner ( I purechased the car from a private party) said they had been replaced at about 30,000 miles. After pulling all of the service records on me car I found out they had also been replaced at 7,000 miles. Several weeks before this trip the car started stalling at stops. No codes showed up. One time the car had to wait several minutes before it would start. Because of all the posts related to crankshaft sensors and their failings I assumed this was the problem. The dealership backed up this opinion and said they only last about 20,000 miles a lot of the time. I replaced the sensors one week before the trip and have had no stalling sense. When I left on my trip I wasn’t sure if this had fixed the problem because of no codes and only one week of driving the car after replacing them before the trip.
I hope this helps those concern understand my thinking on this.

For some reason '01 seems to have been a particularly bad year for the crank sensor thing. My first Seville was an 01 and it was a disaster from day one. The crank sensors had already been replaced once at 26k and I had to have them replaced again, then I had the intermediate steering shaft lubrication issue, service stability warnings, broken switchplates and on and on.

My 98 was much more reliable, and it had 100k on it.

I flew to Conneticut and drove a 10 year old Eldorado 2200+ miles to my house. Other than tire issues, for which I can't blame the car, it was great.