2007 Cadillac CTS: So Close to GOOD, So Far from PERFECT!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Smooth, quiet ride in a SOLID large sedan...

Cons: Class-trailing ergonomics, performance, more...

The Bottom Line: 
If you never drive a 2008 Cadillac CTS, you might be perfectly happy with the 2007. It's a decent car. Read on to see why...

Author's Review
One of the cars I'm most familiar with happens to also be a car that I've never really wanted to review up til now. The reason is simple: it's a car that I always had mixed opinions about. On some levels, the Cadillac CTS is an absolutely wonderful car to drive, yet the car constantly frustrates me with its inability to "wow" me with excellence in any particular area. It's a car that ostensibly competes against more refined and more performance-oriented vehicles from Germany and Japan, but that always manages to bring nothing special to the table. It's a good car, it's just never been either great enough to keep my interest for long, nor bad enough to incur my wrath for long.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to drive a different Cadillac CTS: the newly introduced 2008 Cadillac CTS. It's a car that pushed me over the edge. It caught my attention like no other CTS before has managed to do. It's a car that is truly "across the board" excellent. It's a car whose outstanding improvements starkly illuminate the myriad "almost good enough" shortcomings that existed in the 2007 model. I alluded to those in my review of the '08 CTS, but it's here that I'll really talk about the 2007 CTS in all its "almost" glory. So buckle up, because the road might get a bit rocky!


Great Body, But No Fashion Sense...
Fundamentally, I like the looks of the Cadillac CTS. It's crisply defined, angular sharp lines give it a bold and thoroughly muscular look. I think the basic looks of the CTS are "spot on" because they don't go for imitating the look of Euro sedans. I've always felt that one of the big shortcomings of Lexus is their inability to think for themselves: their designs just ape whatever Mercedes-Benz happens to be doing. The CTS is distinctive with a mood and attitude that's more "macho" than "svelte" or "sleek". In that respect, it probably has more in common with the attitude of the Chrysler 300 than any other sedan on the market. I've also always liked that the CTS doesn't share a platform with any of the mainline GM vehicles. It's nowhere close to being a rebadge effort, which has, I think, degraded Cadillac's image with some earlier entry-level models. The CTS avoids that sticky tar trap --- and that's a good thing.

The single biggest flaw in the styling of the 2007 Cadillac CTS has got to be the front end. The grill looks cheap and low class, more befitting a brand like Chevrolet Cavalier than anything with a Cadillac badge on it. Fix that one problem, and the curb appeal of the car leaps skyward.

Aside from that, the wheels on the base model could use improvement. I'd suggest that Cadillac take a long hard look at the kind of alloy wheels you get on sedans from Acura and Infiniti, and then try to come up with something that suggests performance while at the same time retaining the Cadillac image for gentility and grace. Though of course, Cadillac knew this all along, since they've fixed all these things. The devil really was "in the details".


An Excellent Cruising Car...
There's really two factors that I think make the Cadillac CTS an attractive option for anyone in the entry-level luxury sedan market:
* it has more interior space and more coddled comfort than just about anything in its class
* it is a remarkably smooth and quiet car for highway driving

I doubt either of these points are a surprise to anybody, but they bear repeating lest someone overlook the CTS and end up with a car that really doesn't meet their needs. That's easy to do if you're a really big guy or a family man with non-little kids. If that sounds like you, I would never consider cars with ridiculous back seats (like the Lexus IS), and I would seriously think twice about the somewhat "cozy" feel that you get with cars like the BMW 3-series, Acura TSX, or Mercedes-Benz C-Class. They're all fine cars, but it's a mistake to think any of them are for everyone.

On the other hand, the CTS is an outstanding choice in this class if you do appreciate a larger feeling car with a wider front seat or if you're a particularly tall person who values a lot of leg room and head room. I'm 6 feet tall, and when I put the front seat of the 2007 CTS all the way back, my foot cannot reach the pedals. If I cannot drive the car with the seat pushed back, then I know darn well that this is a car that can really handle a giant among men. The closest competitor to the CTS when it comes to interior cabin space is the Infiniti G35, and if the prices were similar, I would probably prefer the G35 for the 2007 model year, but I'd prefer the CTS for the 2008 model year.

The leather seats have a good feel to them and are comfortable for even very long road trips. They have considerably less lateral support than seats on more performance-oriented sedans, but they're also more spacious, and feel more inviting --- like sinking down into your living room's La-Z-Boy recliner, ready to be unmoved til the Game of the Week is over and done with.

Rear leg room too is more than ample, and this is a sedan that can truly seat five passengers --- even with adults sitting in back. There's child seat latches here, and the center seat panel folds down for an armrest with cup holders, revealing a trunk pass-through area as well. The trunk looks deep and spacious to me, and the opening is wide and high enough to fit even fairly large objects into it with ease. It's a 12-1/2 cubic foot area, and I've heard people say you can get two sets of golf clubs into it. I don't know why anybody would want to do that though....where would they put their beer cooler??

While I personally prefer my cars with a stiffer feeling suspension than the CTS has, I have to admit that on the highway, there's few cars that right as utterly smooth as a Cadillac. The CTS, while a touch more aggressive feeling than your larger STS or DTS, is still no slouch for the kind of quiet, smooth ride that people expect in a Cadillac.

There's really only two areas where I feel this car can be improved upon as a "road trip" car:
* rear A/C vents would be nice
* I'd like the 8-way electronic seat controls on the passenger side as well as the driver side


Power vs. Potential...
The CTS is a very pleasant car to drive, though it suffers from one of the least exciting engines in its class. Although even the most basic V6 powerplant you can get on the car kicks 210 horsepower, the CTS is also a large and very heavy car, and the end result is that it feels slower than the more nimble athletes against which it competes. The problem is really that, for the same base MSRP sticker price, you can get 300 horsepower on smaller, more agile cars.

Buyers can read the spec sheets. They read reviews. And they usually go for the more powerful car. Cadillac offers a more powerful 6 cylinder, and they have a monster 400-horsepower engine available in the CTS-V, but the base model is a 2.8 liter, non-turbocharged 6-cylinder kicking 210 horses with 194 foot-pounds torque. It moves a whole lot better than your basic econobox, and it's a whole lot smoother and quieter to boot, but when push comes to shove, most folks would rather have the 300 horsepower engine (or at least the on-demand power of a turbo boost).

Again, this is no news to Cadillac who now use the 255-horsepower 3.6 litre V6 as the bare minimum for the '08 model year. But for '07, its the competent but uninspired 2.8 litre that underperforms the pack in this market segment. It's kind of a shame that Cadillac didn't move off the 2.8 litre a year earlier....the car would have been more competitive against Infiniti, Lexus, and BMW.

And while lower horsepower often translates to better fuel economy performance, the 2007 Cadillac CTS was still unremarkable at a fairly poor 16 MPG city and 25 MPG highway. But then again, I doubt if anybody who buys Cadillacs actually cares about fuel economy numbers.

Although Cadillac offers a 6-speed manual transmission as standard equipment on the CTS, the only CTS I've ever driven with one was a CTS-V, which is a totally different animal (a very sleek, powerful, and refined kind of animal). If you drive the CTS as a company car or a rental, it will most certainly come with the 5-speed automatic transmission. I like the feel of the CTS automatic. It's got an easy, precise movement to it and the car shifts smoothly in all driving situations I've put it through (never so much as a hint of jolt or lurch even on very fast accelerations). There's no true low-range on it, but these days, nobody seems to care, and it does make for a simpler driving situation for the more genteel driver.


Flexibility vs. Refinement...
My biggest complaint with previous-gen CTS models has always been the interior ergonomics. I have never been wowed by sitting in a CTS. The primary cluster always struck me as clean and intuitive (though I don't care for speedometers without km/h markings because I regularly drive my cars into Mexico, where speed limits are not marked in MPH).

The real problems with the CTS are 2-fold:
* cheesy quality materials
* terrible center stack design

The two negatives team up to give the dashboard a feel that I think is more appropriate to a 5- or 10-year old Pontiac GrandAm than to a Cadillac. The electronic displays are hokey and outmoded, not to mention extremely hard to use. Part of the problem is that GM makes this car do freakin' everything, and it's all customizable. If the car senses that it's my key in the ignition, all the settings reflect my preferences, while they're totally different if my wife uses her key. We can toggle between having the displays appear in English or Spanish, and can set a whole variety of personal preferences ranging from favorite XM radio stations to OnStar prefs.

In my review of the 2008 Cadillac CTS, I poked fun at a series of buttons on the steering wheel labeled "1", "2", "3" and "4". My jokes may have been mistaken for ignorance since I know perfectly well what these things do. I firmly believe they are idiotic features designed by idiots, but they do have a function, and that function is just one of the things that can also be programmed. It's not at all easy to do so....and it will require far more work to read the manual and figure out how to make them work than it will ever save you in effort, but you can program them. An intelligent car designer would have thrown out such a patently stupid "feature" and replaced it with something that made some sense....like getting the cruise control function off the overloaded turn signal stalk and onto the wheel where simple, hands-free operation could happen.

These are some of the things that have never ceased to irritate me with the 2007 Cadillac CTS. Basically, every feature that you'd operate via the center stalk is poorly implemented with bad interface designs and inappropriate underlying paradigms. And again, Cadillac knew this, and they get it all right with the 2008 model. The 2007 CTS was infinitely customizable with its chronic case of featuritis. It's been cured, but the nasty symptoms are still there for all drivers of the 2007 CTS to see.

Aside from usability issues, the center stack also displayed amazing cheapness for a car that's supposed to appeal to a more upscale client. Soft, cheap plastics dominate the center console with unattractive labeling that again, bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Grand Am. A lot of people detested the Grand Am. Cheesy interior quality was part of the reason. Fortunately for us though, GM dumped the Grand Am altogether, and even better for us, they again opened their eyes, saw where the car needed work, and got it right for 2008.

There are people who love all kinds of whizz-bang electronic customizations, and there are probably even people who liked the looks of the 2007 Cadillac CTS dashboard. I've never been one of either, and I really appreciate the dignity and refinement that Cadillac's given the CTS for the 2008 model year. Driving the 2007 model makes you appreciate it all that much more...


Reliability...
Predicting how reliable a car is going to be for you can sometimes be as frustrating as guessing if the weather will cooperate with your weekend picnic plans. There are a lot of sources of information, and they measure different things. I'm a huge believer in long-term statistics based on large sample populations, which is why I always refer to Consumer Reports when I want a clear picture of how well a car has performed over a period of years. Nobody, but nobody, has the kind of population size and the long-term baseline data that Consumer Reports has. JD Powers has a big base too, but their focus is on initial quality assessment, not long-term reliability: a car can look and feel solid when it's delivered, but still break down with frequent expensive repairs as it matures. Hence, Consumer Reports, baby!

The Cadillac CTS performs somewhat better than average for long-term reliability, and the editors say its got an average repair frequency. When I look at their tables with all the red and black dots, I see no serious trouble spots for past model years. In fact, the most important aspects of the car's reliability (major engine problems, transmission, electrical system) all get top ratings (noticeably better, overall, than most American cars). The stats indicate that the Cadillac CTS will likely deliver good dependability over the long haul.

As a young car, buyers should expect somewhat better than average quality from the CTS. JD Power uses a 1-5 scale to rate cars, with 3 representing the statistical average. The 2007 Cadillac CTS scored 3-1/2, making it somewhat better than average (though with ample room for improvement). For overal performance and quality, the car got a 4-star rating, putting it at "better than most".

Bolstering the prospects for long-term, problem-free driving is the fact that GM backs this car with the best warranty in the business. 5 years, 100,000 miles (6 years on body rust), with roadside assistance included.

Overall, the Cadillac CTS is a pretty good bet if you want a car you can depend on.


Safety...
When it comes to safety, the 2007 Cadillac CTS again demonstrates its uncanny ability to "almost" make the grade. It's got an impressive list of built-in safety features, but it comes up an ounce short of a full measure pour when it comes to crash test results. If you go by the IIHS tests (www.iihs.org), the CTS earns the highest ratings ("good") straight across the board, but when you take a gander at the NHTSA crash tests, it gets a 4-star rating on front impact when most cars in this class boast 5-star ratings. Kids in the back seat are well protected in the CTS, and indeed, the car does get a 5-star rating for rear passenger safety in side impact tests, but the front impact test gives Cadillac some space for improvement.

Among those safety features are antilock brakes, a veritable armada of front and side airbags, and daytime running lights. Although the 2007 models did not include electronic stability control or xenon headlights as standard equipment, they were available as options. There's more, but I'll leave the sales spiel to the salesmen who get paid to do it --- I just mention the things I consider most critical.


Dollars and Sense...
The magic "entry level" price for a luxury sedan is right around $30K. The 2007 Cadillac CTS would edge you into the game at that price, but with summer on its way into the history pages, the '07 models are headed the same way. Because the '08 is such a big improvement over the '07, Cadillac dealers have no choice but to seriously discount the 2007 models if they want to clear 'em out. There's also cash-back deals or 0% financing from GM right now, giving you the potential to land a nicely equipped 2007 CTS for a bottom line price in the low to mid 20s. The car is not as refined or powerful as the '08, but if you want an extremely nice highway cruiser --- the 2007 CTS warrants a look.

I'd also recommend this car as a candidate if you're shopping late model used cars. It's got better dependability than you probably expect from Cadillac, and with a transferrable warranty coupled with fairly steep first year depreciation values, it can spin as an outstanding value in the used car market for a careful buyer who really knows what they're doing. (Far better than the Japanese luxe rides, from a strictly "bang for the bucks" perspective -- but drive it yourself and spin the numbers you can to see if it works for you). I wouldn't buy the CTS from a dealer trying to get full KBB retail, but for the right price, yeah, I'd buy one.


Bottom Line...
The Cadillac CTS is a fundamentally solid, attractive, dependable, quality car. Although all the rough edges are smoothed to perfection with the 2008 model year, driving the 2007 CTS is an enlightening experience that can highlight just why it is that Cadillac has had so much trouble being taken seriously in the entry level luxury sedan marketplace. It's a car that did so many things so right, yet managed to get too many details so aggravatingly wrong. If you think the details aren't worth sweating though, the 2007 Cadillac CTS also can represent an outstanding value as an end-of-model-year closeout purchase, or it could make an excellent upscale used car purchase.

I like the CTS. I really like the 2008 CTS, but even the 2007 CTS is a decent car that I do recommend, albeit with reservations. Until next time, see you on the road!


References...
I consult a number of sources when I write any car review. I recommend that any serious car buyer consider these as well. For this review, I obtained information from...
* Opinionated insight: driving the car numerous times
* Vehicle features, warranty, incentives, etc.: www.cadillac.com
* Reliability: www.consumerreports.org, www.jdpower.com
* Safety: www.safercars.gov, www.iihs.org
* Mileage: www.fueleconomy.gov
* Pricing, model comparison, incentives: www.edmunds.com
* Pricing, depreciation: www.kbb.com
* Local pricing: Houston Chronicle (www.chron.com) and Austin American-Statesman (www.statesman.com)
* Scuttlebutt: water cooler, lunch, happy hour
* Chilly beer n stinky cigars: www.specsonline.com