Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

This CTS-V is virtually stock. The only non-production items being the bolt-in harness bar (GM says it's attached in a way that doesn't improve rigidity), race seats, test equipment, and fire system. In all, about 20 pounds extra. It's also equipped with a rear differential cooler, a dealer-installed accessory that's unnecessary for the street but recommended for track use.

Auto Club Speedway's 1.4-mile infield road course is no Nurburgring. It's not even the "Lutzring" at GM's Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan on which Motor City Blogman Todd Lassa got his laps with John Heinricy behind the wheel. But it is not a bad track, either, with a few good curveball corners and a pair of straights on which to pick up speed. The pilot for the ride was Andy Pilgrim, who drives the Cadillac CTS-V R in the Speed World Challenge series.

Despite having never driven the course or a '09 CTS-V before that morning, the veteran Brit was putting in scorcher laps, topping out at around 130 mph on the track's main straight. The car never stepped out on him, kept its balance, and compliantly transitioned from corner to corner. And this is a two-ton luxury sedan, not a sports car.

Pilgrim commended the car for its balance, quietness, phenomenal power, and superb brakes. He said that when he got into the driver's seat, he "felt immediately like a part of the car" and that overall, it was a "great place to work." He said it compared favorably to competing German offerings, its key advantage being its balance.

The passenger's thoughts? Two thumbs up and a stupid grin.

As a mere passenger (an intentional passenger, that is), I couldn't find anything wrong with the CTS-V's behavior around the technical, twisty, hilly circuit. What can I say? Heinricy is an accomplished driver. He keeps accelerating into the turns well past the point most of us would have braked. How much is the car and how much is him? The answer seems to be "yes."

Why not a six-speed manual, which will top out at 191 mph, 16 mph better than the automatic? "I'd been driving this car for days," he says and felt more familiar with it when his time came up at the Nordschleife. You only get one lap's chance to set the record.

There's no record at the Lutzring; even unfettered by a member of the press in the front passenger seat, the CTS-V ought to be playing second-fiddle to the two Corvette ZR-1s being tested around the Milford Proving Grounds, including a bright-yellow one with the carbon-fiber roof making the car look a bit retro with a kind of two-tone paint job.

For the record, Cadillac says it believes Heinricy's 7.59.32 is a record for a production sedan on street tires at the 'Ring.

"We hit about 142" mph on my Lutzring ride, Heinricy tells me. The other roll-caged CTS-V, the manual-gearbox one we pass as it limps along during our second lap, the hot one, is not so lucky. It blows a tire and gently biffs the Armco before it comes to a stop.

The good news is that in the Caddy, it doesn't feel as fast as 142. It's smooth and a bit quieter than a Mercedes AMG. After the Heinricy drive, I get to sample another CTS-V, again only as a passenger, this one a black automatic, around the Milford Proving Grounds' handling course and on acceleration runs. A few observations:

• The new, faster-reacting Magnetic Ride Control has two driver-controlled settings, "touring" and "sport." Because each setting was tuned separately, it's softer than the previous car in the touring setting, and stiffer in sport.
• This becomes obvious on the rough roads of Milford's handling course, where the v doesn't feel much stiffer than the quotidian CTS. When the driver switches to "sport," the suspension gets busier on the most uneven parts of the road, but it's not beyond the level of comfort. You could forget to switch it back in Detroit or Manhattan and not think anything was wrong.
• The V has a Getrag limited-slip differential, and uneven-thickness half-shafts, 55mm (hollow) left and 35mm (hollow) right to prevent the rear torsional stiffness to act like a spring. This is to limit axle-hop at launch, perhaps the most serious problem with the last CTS-V.
• It works: the driver brake-torques on acceleration runs, the tires chirp-chirp-chirp and they take hold of the road as my head compresses, hard, into the headrest.
• Traction/stability control has four settings: 1) Normal. 2) Click the steering-wheel button once, and you cancel the traction control. This is for winter driving. My designated driver says the car works fine in Michigan winters with all-season tires. 3) Click it twice, and traction control is off, with stability control on, but tuned for competition driving. 4) Hold the button for five seconds, and traction control and stability control are off completely. Completely.
• The pushrod V-8 burble is well-muffled, but noticeable under acceleration, with the supercharger whine threatening to drown it out. Cadillac is still tweaking the engine's sound, but otherwise the car is pretty much done.
• The driver swears there's no excessive understeer, the bane of any previous GM performance car going back to the days of the Chevy Corvair, and he does nothing that makes me doubt him. Has Bob Lutz finally expunged the fear of oversteer Ralph Nader caused GM 43 years ago? Another question that will have to wait for our first-hand drive (and yes, I know the C6 Corvette is pretty good on this issue, too).

It's not long before we can draw our own conclusions, but my designated driver
says the Cadillac balances off ride and handling, to be more of a road-carver than, say, typical Mercedes AMG sedans. Because of its size and weight, though, the CTS-V's direct competitor, handling-wise, is not the BMW M3, it's the M5.

Cadillac says times are too close to delineate between the six-speed automatic with sport-shift programming and paddle-shifters and the full six-speed manual. There's much more to tell, but I'm posting this quickly...more on the car to come.

Manufacturers' numbers typically are a tad conservative. Our testers will have their hands full trying to beat a 12-sec quarter-mile, though. How do the CTS-V's chief rivals measure up? These are numbers from Art St. Antoine's February 2007 comparison, "The Terminators":

2006 BMW M5
500-hp, 383 lb-ft. DOHC 5.0L V-10, 7-speed auto-clutch manual
0-60 mph in 4.4 sec.
1/4-mile in 12.7 sec. @ 114.6 mph

2007 Audi S6
435-hp, 398 lb-ft. DOHC 5.2L V-10, six-speed automatic
0-60 mph in 5.1 sec.
1/4-mile in 13.6 sec @ 104.4 mph

2007 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG
507-hp, 465 lb-ft. DOHC 6.2L V-8
0-60 mph in 4.3 sec.
1/4-mile in 12.7 sec @ 113.0 mph

If we can replicate Cadillac's numbers, the CTS-V will rival these smaller, lighter cars, as tested in Matt Stone's "There Will Be Blood" comparison for the May 2008 issue:

2008 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG
451-hp, 443 lb-ft. DOHC 6.2L V-8, 7-speed automatic
0-60 mph in 4.1 sec.
1/4-mile in 12.5 sec. @ 113.5 mph

2008 BMW M3
414-hp, 295 lb-ft. DOHC 4.0L V-8, 6-speed manual
0-60 mph in 4.3 sec.
1/4-mile in 12.7 sec @ 111.3 mph

2008 Lexus IS F
416-hp, 371 lb-ft. DOHC 5.0L V-8
0-60 mph in 4.3 sec.
1/4-mile in 12.7 sec. @ 113.4 mph

The 2009 BMW 750Li is a bit like that: It carefully airbrushes away everything that made its predecessor, the E65, one of the most confronting BMWs ever built. The "Bangle Butt"? Psssht! The tank-like proportions? Psssht! The dash that looks like a piece of furniture; the column-mounted shifter; the odd-ball seat controls: Psssht! Psssht! Psssht! All gone. Walk around the new 7 Series, and it's as if the E65 had never existed. (Note: the new 2009 7 Series is pictured at left, the E65 7 Series is pictured below)

The irony is the E65 has been the most successful 7 Series in BMW's history. Despite continual carping from the world's automotive media over the car's uncompromising aesthetic, BMW has sold over 344,000 units worldwide. America liked the E65 a lot -- the U.S. accounted for 35.7% of total sales, more than twice the number of the second most popular market, China. Germany? BMW's home market accounted for just 13% of total sales.

BMW is clearly hoping the new 7 Series will build on that momentum -- and win over buyers put off by the E65's confrontational design and counterintuitive user interfaces.

If that's the case, first impressions suggest BMW is on target with the new 7 Series. Everywhere we went with the car during our drive in and around Dresden, Germany, the locals expressed their approval of the new design. They all knew about the old one; they all agreed this one looked better.

The final signoff of the E65's design happened amid huge turmoil at BMW in early 1999. First, chairman Bernd Pischetsrieder was forced to resign over the alarming losses at Rover Group, the ailing British automaker whose purchase he'd largely engineered. Within hours, product chief Wolfgang Reitzle, Pischetsrieder's logical successor, had blown his chance for the top job with an unbelievably ham-fisted attempt to secure the unquestioning support of the board. He, too, was shown the door. Joachim Millberg, a bureaucrat barely known outside BMW's iconic headquarters building in Munich, was made chairman.

The mercurial Reitzle, long regarded as one of the best car guys in the business, has always insisted privately he only approved the E65's design as an interim measure; that he always intended to go back and fix the 7 Series once Pischetsrieder was gone. "They have given my car sad eyes," was all he'd say on the record, referring to the E65's hooded headlight design. But most critics would argue the E65 needed a lot more than happier headlights.

Maybe Reitzle -- and the rest of the BMW board -- meant for the E65 to be deeply controversial; meant it to be a like-it-or-loathe-it design that no one could mistake for anything else. Why? Because they realized BMW had become one of the world's most successful and profitable automakers using a fairly singular design language and that they had run out of adjectives.

The turning point was the E46 3 Series. While the revisionists among my colleagues later lauded this car as one of the best-looking BMWs ever, that certainly wasn't the chatter around the dinner tables at the car's launch in Spain in 1998. Basically, the media view was the E46 was a ho-hum car to look at, just another cookie-cutter BMW and not enough of a step-change from the previous-generation model. For a company whose reliance on the 3 Series was total -- it still accounts for over half of total BMW sales -- the notion folks might be getting bored with it must have been worrying. Chris Bangle, the relatively new BMW design chief, was at the launch. He certainly heard the chatter.

You don't mess with success, however. Simply ripping up the 3 Series playbook would have been an unacceptable risk. The 7 Series was another issue, however. Here was a model that had always struggled in the shadow of Mercedes' all-conquering S-Class. Even the audacious 1987 launch of the 750i version, powered by the first German V-12 in more than 50 years, had failed to make a dent in the S-Class' blue-chip reputation and the world's best luxury sedan. Unveiling a bold, even shocking, new design language on its most expensive new model wasn't as counter-intuitive a move as it might have seemed: With the 7 Series BMW had nothing to lose.

The E65 7 Series changed the world's view of BMW and set in train the strategy to devolve BMW design away from the cookie-cutter system where each model range looked like a scaled version of the other, a strategy that would also allow BMW to move into new market segments such as SUVs. You can argue the relative merits of the various BMWs designed on Chris Bangle's watch -- some are way better than others -- but there is no doubt each is strikingly different from the other, while retaining a strong BMW design identity.

The E65 may have been a design too far, but you could argue it did precisely the job it was intended to do. The new 7 Series dials back the extremism and dials in some old-school BMW DNA, such as the long dash-to-axle ratio, stronger shoulders on the body side, lower H-point, and the center stack angled toward the driver. There's even an echo of the famed Hofmeister kink stamped into the C-pillar for emphasis. And this time, no one finds it boring.

Speculation for what will power the upcoming TSX has been rampant -- suggestions for its powerplant have included the RDX SUV's turbo four as well as a naturally-aspirated four producing around 220 horsepower.

With a new TSX and TL on the way as well as a badly needed RL refresh, better times appear to be ahead for Acura.

Would you go for an Acura TSX clean diesel? Tell us in comments below.

Rain greeted us as we departed San Diego for the twisting roads northeast of the city. As we climbed Highway 79 toward the small town of Julian, the rain transformed into sleet. By the time we'd reached Warner Springs (elevation: 3130 feet), it was snowing. Hard. We'd barely dug into lunch when it became evident the snow wasn't abating; in fact it was getting worse. Change of plans. Stop lunch. Get in cars. Back to sea level. Now.

I can hear the vast number of you laughing. Snow? Big deal. Get on with it. And you're right: The snowfall wasn't any worse that what I regularly encountered back when I lived through Michigan winters. But Michiganders are accustomed to driving through the white stuff. Most San Diego locals are used to . . . blue skies and 72 degrees. How are they supposed to know that snow and ice are, you know, cold and slippery?

We'd barely departed our lunch stop when we ran into our first accident. Or should I say, when it almost ran into us. Crawling along in a line of cars going 20 mph, I looked up to see two sheriff's Expeditions approaching rapidly in my rear-view mirror, sirens and lights ablaze. I pulled over. Just as I did, the lead Expedition suddenly skidded under power, rocketed up the opposite embankment, and flipped with a huge crash! back onto the highway -- landing on its side. Just as the first Ford stopped sliding, the second black-and-white Expedition flashed past doing more than 50 mph . . . the sheriff just managed to squeeze between me and her wrecked partner (another foot to the right, and she'd have wadded up my poor little TSX and me like a chewing-gum wrapper).

I carefully climbed out of the car, tip-toeing across the icy surface to the crashed Expedition. It looked like a wounded T-Rex: feet in the air, broken wipers flailing wildly like miniature claws, massive bulk cast cruelly across the road. I peered in the windshield, fearing the worst. The cop was sitting on the passenger window -- now the floor -- his foot hooked in the steering wheel and his expression dazed. "Are you okay?" I pounded on the windshield. He yelled back, "I'm fine!" As in, "leave me alone." He was in shock, but seemed coherent and more or less intact. By now his partner had stopped her Expedition and was running toward us, frantic. "He's okay," I yelled. "Did you call it in already?" She nodded. "Backup is on the way." By now the crashed sheriff had unwound himself and was standing on the passenger door, his head poking out the driver's window. "Boy, was than an E-ticket ride," he said, looking more sheepish than hurt.

With help already arriving, our caravan pressed on. Not fifteen minutes later we reached another wreck. This time, a car had spun across the two-lane mountain road, blocking both the northbound and our southbound lanes. We had to park and wait for an hour before a tow truck cleared our lane; the northbounders remained struck in the rapidly accumulating snow. We pressed on at a crawl.

Soon we reached yet another crash -- and another road blockage. After waiting about ten minutes, a few of us had had enough. We turned around, detoured onto a nearby side road, and headed downhill. Within 20 minutes, after we'd descended about 1000 feet, the snow had turned back into rain, and the road cleared. Ninety minutes later we reached base camp -- er, our hotel -- in San Diego.

I'm happy to report that all the TSX test cars arrived back safely and in one piece. Many on the mountain weren't so fortunate, though: In addition to the crashes we witnessed, news reports the next day confirmed that hundreds of motorists had been stranded on the mountain overnight.