2009 Cadillac CTS-V - Road Test

Seen here is what is likely the Camaro SS!! It was spotted by one of our members with his cellphone in Mesa, AZ, outside the GM proving grounds. It is being tested concurrently with other similarly configured Camaros in the GM proving grounds. From what we can see, the car's distinguishing body work includes the black hood stripe and hockey stripes running down the sides of the car.Wow. Very wow. With enough treatment they can even make white tolerable. Whistling? Is someone inferring forced induction on the only V8 option available at launch? I'd be pretty surprised....

Camaros have always had striping / decals available as far as I know. I hope they take their time and don't make them tremendously cheesy like some of the new MOPAR flat black / hugely orange peel textured Stang ones (how did they mess up stickers......). I like the placement so far at least. Woulda gone with red or hugger orange on the white car but we'll wait and see. Looks great
V for Vendetta: Cadillac makes the jump from knuckle dragger to sophisticate in one leap.



You knew GM had finally gotten serious in 2004 when it offered a Cadillac that only came with a manual transmission.

In a move that probably cost the company quite a few sales to the gridlock-challenged and performance poseurs, the first-generation CTS-V (2004–07) came exclusively with a six-speed stick. Think about that for a minute. The last time a Caddy was offered without an automatic option was in 1942.

What had Cadillac wrought? In our initial road test [March 2004], we informally pitted that first-generation CTS-V against the contemporary BMW M3 and M5. Although that CTS-V lacked refinement and had its share of warts, we were suitably impressed with the GM luxury division’s first serious attempt at building a bona-fide Bavarian-style supersedan. A later comparison [“Executive Adrenalators,” November 2004] placed the CTS-V ahead of a Mercedes-Benz C55 AMG but behind an Audi S4.

Since that first CTS-V, Cadillac has rolled out other V-series products, and each one has solidified and legitimized the future of the very young performance brand. As the first of the V-series products to enter its second generation, the 2009 CTS-V is 4292 pounds of proof that the days of GM letting ordinary cars languish for years and discontinuing performance models just as they achieve a whiff of greatness seem to be in the past. The General now appears committed to evolving product, amellorating flaws, and creating competitive vehicles.



Built upon an evolution of the same Sigma architecture as the original, the CTS-V rides on the same 113.4-inch wheelbase but is fractionally larger in track, width, and length. Despite a couple of weight-saving measures—an aluminum hood and forged aluminum wheels—curb weight is up by a considerable 385 pounds, to a grand total of 4292 for our giant-sunroof-equipped, fully loaded manual-transmission test vehicle. (Fun fact: That’s a mere 109 pounds lighter than the Toyota Highlander in this issue’s SUV comparo.) And yet, like the nearly 4000-pound Nissan GT-R, the Cadillac somehow suspends the laws of gravity.

A big part of the Newtonian bitch slap is the 556-hp, supercharged 6.2-liter V-8. Dubbed LSA, the Caddy engine could be considered a slightly detuned version of the ZR1’s 638-hp LS9, but its titanium-free valvetrain and connecting rods and its conventional wet-sump oil system actually make it more akin to a supercharged version of the standard Corvette 6.2-liter.
Transmitting the power to the road is a Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual gearbox that exhibits crisp low-effort shifts and rights the wrongs of the previous generation’s shifter that had the grace of a shoulder popping in and out of its socket. The two-disc clutch offers excellent modulation and light effort that escaped the previous CTS-V. For those who’d rather let the car do the work, there is now an optional six-speed automatic with steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters.

2010 Honda Insight Official Photos and Info - Car News

Honda all-new hybrid takes direct aim at the Toyota Prius.

Honda was the first automaker to put a hybrid on the road with the original Insight in December 1999 and it wants to reclaim its place at the big kids table with the resurrection of the name on an all-new hybrid.

The automaker provides this first official look at the five-door hatch that will be formally unveiled in October at the 2008 Paris auto show. It will technically be a concept, but appears more than production-ready.

The Insight rides on an all-new platform as a bespoke hybrid, as opposed to offering a hybrid version of an existing vehicle as is the case with the current Honda Civic hybrid and the Honda Fit hybrid planned by 2015.

The Insight will be smaller than a Civic and CEO Takeo Fukui says it will be priced significantly below current hybrids. We expect it to start about $19,000, in keeping with the automakers goal of pricing it competitively against conventional small vehicles in its segment. This new Insight will break new ground as an affordable hybrid within the reach of customers who want great fuel economy and great value,” Fukui says in a statement.

The on-sale date for the Insight is April 22”Earth Day”and the automaker is projecting global annual sales of 200,000, half of which are for the North American market. But Honda is known for erring on the conservative side, and given that it will go head-to-head with the Toyota Prius, which has sold almost 120,000 in the first eight months of this year in the U.S. alone, we would not be surprised to see Honda exceed these modest forecasts.

In looks, the new hatch bears a familial resemblance to Honda's other poster car for alternative fuels”the FCX Clarity fuel-cell vehicle, but the Insight also shares an aerodynamically raked front, stubby tail, and an overall profile with the Prius. Both offer five-passenger seating and plenty of cargo space inside a relatively small body. The Insight’s folding rear seats further accentuate the cargo hold.

In terms of propulsion, the Insight gets a smaller, lighter”and less-expensive”version of Honda's Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system that is in the Civic. The smaller pack of nickel-metal-hydride batteries is stored under the trunk floor. Honda says lithium-ion batteries aren't yet a viable option.

Honda officials in the U.K. have been quoted as saying the new hybrid will achieve 60 mpg, but that is on the higher-yield Euro cycle.

The Insight will be built on a new assembly line at Honda's Suzuka, Japan, plant, which currently builds the Civic hybrid. It is the first of a hybrid onslaught that also calls for production of the CR-Z hybrid sports car concept shown at the 2007 Tokyo auto show, a new Honda Civic hybrid, and the addition of the Fit hybrid”all by 2015, at which point the automaker's goal is to be selling half a million hybrids per year globally.

Toyota will sell its next-generation Prius as a 2010 model, also with nickel-metal-hydride batteries. The successor is expected to be larger then the current model. Lexus likely will show a new hybrid, as well, at the Detroit auto show next January.

Honda used to have an Accord hybrid in its lineup, but it was dropped at the end of the 2007 model year due to slow sales, attributed partly to the fact that the hybrid didn't look much different than a regular Accord. The other problem was the hybrid wasn't much more fuel-efficient than a conventional Accord with a four-cylinder, making it hard to justify an extra $6000 for the electric motor.

Top 10 Most Beautiful Cars for 2009 (#2)

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5. 2009 Pontiac Solstice Coupe

Though most of the cars in this group are rather costly, beautiful cars are not the exclusive domain of the rich. For proof, we submit Pontiac’s upcoming Solstice coupe. Little more than a Solstice convertible with a bit more sheetmetal and cargo space, the Solstice coupe joins the Cayman in proving that more is indeed more when it comes to beauty. With well-integrated rear flanks, a radius-edged liftback window and a double-bubble targa top, the hardtop corrects the Solstice convertible’s greatest flaw: its wretched fabric roof, which neither fits nor looks right. Thus equipped, the Solstice is easy on the eye from any angle, and at an estimated $25K when it hits the market early next year, it’ll be pretty easy on the wallet, too.
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4. 2009 Aston Martin V-8 Vantage

It is entirely accurate to consider Aston Martin’s little V-8 Vantage a seven-eighths-scale DB9. Roughly the same size as a Nissan 350Z and only a little bit quicker, the V-8 Vantage is nonetheless much, much pricier. So how can Aston get away with charging $80,000 more for the V-8 Vantage? Simple: the V-8 Vantage is absolutely gorgeous. With the same long-hood, short-deck formula as its larger sibling, but with a slightly different styling edge in the form of large wheels and a ducktail tush, the V-8 Vantage offers a rarely achieved balance of beauty and sportiness, proving that classic GT proportions are indeed scalable.

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3. 2009 Maserati GranTurismo

Few brand names in the automobile business—or any business, for that matter—can match the bitchy prosodic fabulousness of “Maserati.” And few cars in the world can match the voluptuous regality of Maserati’s GranTurismo. In other words, it’s beautiful whether you’re saying it or seeing it. Compared with the similarly designed (long hood, front-midship engine layout) Aston Martin DBS, the GranTurismo succeeds not with ornamentation but through the emotional, almost whimsical curvature of its plus-sized body. The fact that a raucous, Ferrari-derived V-8 resides under the long hood is just icing on one helluva beautiful cake.
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2. 2009 Aston Martin DBS


Short of poaching the entire design staff from BMW, Aston Martin couldn’t design an ugly car if it put the wheels on the roof. And its newest flagship, the DB9-based DBS, is one of the most beautiful Astons yet. At more than $260,000, it’s just about the most expensive, too, until the million-dollar One-77 is unveiled, anyway. Carbon fiber is the dominant material for the body of this quintessential gentleman’s grand-tourer, and its brilliant, classical proportions are blessed with better curves than a Bond girl and a more chiseled jaw than Double-O himself. Embellishing those big hips and shoulders are details to die for (another day, presumably), including lacy 20-inch wheels, upward-swinging doors, and perfectly situated, fully functional ducts and grilles. The DBS blends form and function at the highest level. And you don’t have to be Q to appreciate that.

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1. 2009 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione


Purity of form—billowing fenders, teardrop windows, and almondine headlamps, among other things—and the perfect positioning of details are what makes the 8C so sexy. Its wheels, for example, are already regarded by our staff as among the 10 hottest, and its lower air intakes could quite possibly bring the moustache back in vogue. Given the shapely sheetmetal, it hardly even matters, but what’s underhood is nearly as splendid as the wrapper: a sonorous 4.7-liter V-8 that is closely related to that found in another car on this list, the Maserati GranTurismo, as well as several Ferraris.

Most Americans currently don’t know—nor care one way or another—about Alfa Romeo’s plans to return to the U.S. But anyone lucky enough to lay their eyes on the brilliant 8C Competizione that is leading the charge will be darn glad Alfa’s back. Why? Because this is beauty.

Top 10 Most Beautiful Cars for 2009 (#1)

Our 10 picks for the tastiest eye candy on sale in the U.S. today.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.” – John Keats

Beauty, indeed, is a powerful thing. Specific though it may be to the observer, to each one of us, beauty has an intoxicating power that affects our judgment, blinds us to shortcomings, and in many a case, provokes lust.

Troll the lawn of any major concours d’élégance and you’ll see that old Johnny was right on the money. A beautiful car is a thing to be savored, treasured, and preserved. Why else would people display their cars on the concours if not for the flowing beauty of their sheetmetal? Why else would we sink so much time, effort, and money into an inanimate object if it didn’t look back at us with such a wanton, animate gaze?

To a great many of us, a beautiful car planted the seeds for a lifelong addiction to all things automotive, and these 10 cars are bound to incite a few automotive addictions of their own. They are the leggy supermodels of the auto industry, cars that make their first impression with exceeding beauty (save the first pair, which are a different sort of lovely), and for the purposes of this story, that’s all that matters. Of course, there are many other cars that can be considered stunning, hot, cool, eye-catching, alluring, or any manner of highly suggestive descriptor, but few can be considered timelessly beautiful as Keats might define it. These 10 are.

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10. 2009 Lotus Elise/2009 Ariel Atom

Beauty is not always purely a matter of the aesthetic. To those more technically-minded (as are several of our editors—Csaba, VanderWerp, you know who you are), beauty can be a more cerebral, associative, objective factor. Although the eensy, insectile Lotus Elise and the skeletal Ariel Atom are not necessarily beautiful in the traditional sense, the fact that they weigh next to nothing yet offer more power than many sport-utilities can make a math-minded car enthusiast drool at the sight of their unconventional bodies like Pavlov’s dogs in a bell factory. We’re talking 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds for the 2000-lb Elise, and three seconds flat in the 1400-lb, 245-hp Atom (a 300-hp model is also available). You don’t have to be a spreadsheet to get turned on by that.

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9. 2009 Audi R8

Before the R8, the thought of Audi building a credible supercar was audacious enough. That it could make one that would be so arousingly beautiful was simply unfathomable. But with the R8, Audi has brought the world a car that both performs like a true supercar and is sculpted in double-take sheetmetal. Certainly helpful is the fact that Audi owns Lamborghini, and thus has proven supercar innards—in this instance, those of the Gallardo—at its disposal, as well as a number of excellent powertrains capable of launching the aluminum-bodied sexpot forward as if it was shot out of a cannon. All that was left, then, was to wrap it in something beautiful. And that, Audi did.

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8. 2009 Porsche Cayman

The Boxster is bitchin’, but the Cayman is beautiful. Yes, they’re more or less the same car, but the Cayman proves that there’s something about a well-rendered roof that takes a good-looking car and drops it off at the doorstep of gorgeous. In our book, it is just as purposeful but even more sexy than—dare we say it?—its big brother, the legend itself, the Porsche 911 Carrera.

Blessed as it is with balanced mid-engine proportions, roof contours that drip down into the swollen fenders, and a smart, determined gaze, the Cayman makes its driver look as good as he feels. And as we’ve said many times before, when you drive one, you feel pretty good.

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7. 2009 Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class

Beauty is seldom encountered among four-doors, since, in the car world, accumulating doors usually means subtracting style. But the Mercedes-Benz CLS-class proves that sedans can be beautiful, too. Sure, the CLS cheats a bit, achieving its captivating looks by incorporating some coupe-derived design elements such as a low, chopped roof and slim windows, and this translates into a cramped rear seat that only holds two people—short people. This car is best enjoyed from the outside, where light streaks over specular, arching body contours like shooting stars. It is at once delightfully simple yet wonderfully extravagant, and we celebrate it as an experiment in style that went very, very well. Fast forward to Pebble Beach 2058, and you can bet there will be a CLS or two on the lawn.

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6. 2009 Audi S5

Current Audi/Lamborghini/SEAT design chief Walter de'Silva has designed a lot of beautiful cars during his illustrious career. But even after designing the mouthwatering Audi R8, de'Silva himself called the Audi S5, along with its less-powerful, somewhat more subdued A5 twin, the most beautiful car he has ever penned.

One of the most passionate designs ever to come out of Germany, the S5 wears a perfect balance of masculine and feminine elements, mixing a strong, assertive gaze with elegantly flowing fenders and a thick fuselage offset with delicate brightwork. Sporty accents to the S5 include a squared-off chin, subtle sill extensions, a slightly longer decklid, and four wonderfully vocal tailpipes, all without detracting from the coupe’s innate beauty. Best of all, it sets the tone for the styling of Audi’s lineup henceforth. Lucky us.