Cadillac designs a sleek, compact luxury car
In the past, the Cadillac brand was associated with elegant cars with elongated silhouettes. But Cadillac's designers and strategists are now betting that a compact auto will appeal to a new generation of drivers who don't associate beautiful, but perhaps cumbersome, tail fins with the company's offerings. At the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, Cadillac unveiled a glossy, lipstick-red model of the 2013 ATS, a compact luxury vehicle, on January 9 (reviewed on CNET's Crave blog by Tim Hornyak here).
Some of the design highlights of the car, which weighs less than 3,400 pounds and should achieve more than 30 MPG on the highway:
- a super-efficient magnetic ride control damping system that allows for a less bumpy ride
- a five-link independent rear suspension, made of lightweight steel
- an info and entertainment control system that will work with up to 10 Bluetooth-enabled devices
- a new 2-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder engine, rated at 270 horsepower, and the 3.6L V-6, rated at 320 horsepower
- a silhouette with slightly rounded corners, but with just a touch of angular details that subtly appear to hark back to the traditional Cadillac lines
The car, which Cadillac product director Hampden Tener said is "an all-new architecture" for the company, is scheduled to go on sale this summer, and hopes to compete with other compact offerings from Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.
Image: Tim Hornyak/CNET
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com