[JEM]

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.

Cadillac's got pretty much everything right on paper, but it'll be another six months before we get our hands on them.

The current M5 is a five-year-old (MY1999 in Europe) product based on a car that's been in production for nearly eight years (MY1996 5-series, US a year later.) It's got its strengths and weaknesses and the new blower Benzes will eat its lunch in 100-150mph acceleration but it's still a tremendous car.

The industry is not standing still - you take your shot and put your product out and by the time it's going to production you better have the next one on the boards. Think back to the mid '70s when the press and the governments seemed so sure we'd never see 200HP again, that breaking 10 seconds 0-60 was the measure of a real performance car.

There's been some tremendous landmark cars over the past fifty, sixty, 100 years - but what's out there now - what's hit the market over the past ten years, and what's coming out now - whether you're into Mini Cooper S's, Mitsubishi Evos, or Z06 Vettes, or M5s, or Lotus Elises, or Ferrari Enzos, or McLaren F1s, or Radical SR3s - these are the Golden Years. We'll see if it gets better (750 ft/lb diesel M5d's, anyone?) or worse (Toyota Prius Type R) from here. Even if you're not in a position to walk into the dealership and throw a deposit check on the sales manager's desk for a new CTSv, you look at that list of hardware that's out there now or soon will be and thank God that they're showing up on the used lots (well, maybe not the Enzo or the F1) too.

I don't think anyone's going to buy the CTSv because it's absolutely the fastest car around, because it won't be. There's always something faster somewhere for some purpose if money's no object, and if you're looking for autobahn-blitzing triple-digit acceleration the turbo Benz V12s are going to do it, and just staying within sedans the Scooby STi will be a better pure back-road carver.

But the CTSv should (if the pudding tastes as good as it looks on paper) be a very fast and usable car for a very attractive price.

 

[JEM]

The thread on that board is annoying the hell outta me. What the "F" is with the "Spec-V" crap?! It's not a damn Nissan F'ing Sentra! I signed up - WAITED A DAMN DAY to get my account activation email - activated and NOW I have to wait to be approved by somebody before I can post. What a damn hassle! How do they have ANY members?! I wanna get in there and let it be known that it's not a Spec-V for Christ's sake..

With all due respect, my response would be that when the car is on the road, and can legitimately claim to be quicker than either of the two aforementioned Nissans, then perhaps one can afford to be somewhat anal about what it's called.

The CAR article used the term 'V-spec'. I believe the official GM PR nomenclature right now is 'V-series', which isn't a whole long way off from 'V-spec', particularly for a car that isn't in public hands yet.

For my part, GM could call it a Cimarron, and if it's fast enough and doesn't fall apart or have hard plastic all over the door panels, I'd be fine with that.

Wasn't aware that Gustav was moderating board signups over there now. That must be new, must have too many Honda-types trying to poop on the boards.

 

[JEM]

Cars of similar complexity will cost similar amounts of money to fix. In my experience BMW's parts pricing generally isn't any higher than GM's for comparable stuff (though don't even THINK about pricing an M5's S62 engine, complete...) and parts for some Fords are ridiculous ($1000 Taurus C-pillar window, anyone?) if you can even get them (they're starting to obsolete stuff 5-7 years out of production.)

The LS6 in the CTS-V isn't too costly (LS6 crate motors are, what, $7500?) and the T56 transmission is becoming a commodity but those Brembo calipers certainly aren't cheap.

 

[JEM]

Case study - 1991 Ford Taurus, Atlanta-build. All the plastic moldings are Canadian, all the upholstery and all the Ford-branded electronics are from Mexico (the German-branded ABS electronics are made in the US.)

Now for the rest. The window track assemblies are French (the Chicago-build cars used different window tracks which I believe were US-sourced), the steering intermediate shaft comes from Luxembourg, the window motors and their drivetrains are Japanese. The wheels came from Italy. The brake calipers are Brazilian. And this goes on and on.

The moral to this story is that you can't assume your 'American' car is all that 'American'. We know the CTS is similar in its sourcing (the two biggest chunks, engine and transmission, are Euro-sourced right now, the 3.6 will be built in North America - and Australia, though maybe not for CTS use) while the CTS-V powertrain is North American but I'd expect stuff like the brakes are Euro hardware and wouldn't be surprised if the diff were Australian.

I'd love to see a shop labor rate of CDN$65 around here, in the SF Bay Area dealer shops start at about US$85 and go up from there. The local BMW dealer gets US$99 and they're nowhere near the most expensive.

I was driving around in a BMW service loaner yesterday, in fact. A nice base-model 325i. The 325i's sold in the US are assembled in South Africa now. Looked, smelled, felt, and drove just like a German 325i.