Every time I tell someone I drive a Cadillac—I don’t even bother with adding CT4—I can see from the tilt of their brow that they expect my subsequent sentence to be something of an apology; about how I inherited it from my Dad, or worse, his Dad. Or maybe your family owns the local dealership? “Sure, this isn’t your father’s Cadillac, but surely, your dad had something to do with it.” I still get comments from my 66-year-old coworker who couples “I still can’t believe you drive a Cadillac,” with “I have to say that thing looks really sharp.”
I’m 27 years old. Early in my ownership, I was pulling out of work when I had to stop for a man standing in front of my car in the parking lot. Probably about 70 years old, he looked at my car, looked at me, back at my car, then back at me. With hair covering every plane of his head but the top, he grinned ear to ear and offered a somber two-thumbs up. That was when I realized that the old image of Cadillac had not yet faded.
To be honest, I’ve had a soft spot for the Cadillac CT4 since it was released. Something about the handsome American styling, the built-on-the-Camaro-platform provenance, and the size of the vehicle (smaller than all its competitors, save the Audi A3) just struck me as a compelling prospect. Yet despite my enthusiasm, the CT4 sells far worse than the ATS which it replaced, and far, far worse than the BMW 3 series which it purports to compete with. What gives?
The body feels like a billet piece (the ATS was benchmarked against the BMW E46), and the steering offers generous feedback and precision despite the comfortable, friendly-to-your-uncle suspension. The engine, while having the personality of your most recent Hinge date, has the torque of, well, a truck (because it’s shared with GM’s trucks), which makes low-rpm blasting around in traffic something of an Olympic sport. The 10-speed transmission, while clearly in need of a little fine-tuning, never hands you an uncomfortable shudder or buck, and answers your commands from the paddles with an eager cog swap. It’s no ZF8, but Donkey, it’ll do.
The truth is that the Cadillac CT4 is a car with a phenomenal chassis and exceptional features. Its interior, despite not having a pillar-to-pillar display like so many cars these days, just works without complaint while offering a gallery of all-physical buttons (looking at you Volkswagen GTI.) And Super Cruise allows me the luxury of “driving” to work every day without touching the wheel for 90% of my 50-mile commute; a pre, or post-work cigar is no longer out of the question at interstate speed.
It even has some sneaky and seriously cool features, like performance displays and data (such as knowing the temperature of your transmission fluid) and a Saab-style stealth mode which blacks out everything, even the HVAC controls, save a minimized gauge cluster when you dim the interior lights.
But the reality is that every morning when I go out to drive to work, the tragedy of this car slips into my head and whispers to me. Why isn’t a handsome, comfortable sedan with a good drivetrain, great handling characteristics, and most importantly, great value, selling? The answer is that the Cadillac CT4 is an example of our American automotive society writ large: in an age dominated by the all-wheel drive jelly bean soccer practice taxi, nobody wants to buy sedans. And nobody thinks a legacy American luxury car should be owned by anyone younger than 50.
When Ford killed the Crown Victoria in 2011, you could get past the nostalgia and see hope for better things to come. It was a relic in every sense of the word, kept alive only by police fleet demands. Since then, the American sedans dying off have largely deserved it—the Ford Fusion, Chevy Malibu and Impala, Buick Regal, and Chrysler 200 aren’t exactly lying in state. The Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 were tougher blows, but these were also long anticipated—both basically started production in the Bush administration.
But when—not if—Cadillac kills the CT4 and the bigger CT5, it will be like the story of a conquered Roman emperor who happened to be named Romulus. Or perhaps more acutely, Doc Hudson’s character in Cars: “The world just doesn’t want you anymore, old man.”
Last call for America’s last gas sedans brought a rowdy few back to the bar for one more round, though. (And yes, the Charger is also coming back with a straight-six, but we’ll wait to see how Dodge executes on its promises before counting it in.) The CT4-V Blackwing is legitimately better to drive than the BMW M3. Many well-respected journalists and drivers are claiming this. Even more heartily, the CT5-V Blackwing is the kind of absurdly good American car that fills one’s heart with vignettes of patriotism and pride: The Battle of Yorktown. The Miracle on Ice. The moon landing. The roar of a supercharged small block Chevy bolted into a rear-drive chariot, barking, snarling, and whining like an automobile made in the old world rarely does.
But the somber reality remains: the car market is changing, because the car market is not a meritocracy, and it honestly never was. The age of the good ol’ American sedans is long over; we’re in the aftermath now. A 27-year-old can drive a Cadillac only to the delight of senior citizens and the absolute indifference of a culture that’s moved on. While imported sedans still mean something, people really only buy Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys and Nissan Sentras because they’re cheap and reliable. People buy the BMW 5 Series and Audi A6s because, well, the neighbors have one, and… they’re German and we assume that means better-engineered (It does not). People buy Alfa Giulias because they want a divorce or have already gone through one.
Meanwhile, the value system that once supported Cadillac and recently poked and prodded it into making a car like the CT4 has melted away. We aren’t that country, we aren’t those people anymore. So why would someone buy a Cadillac sedan? If you’re not like me, and most aren’t, the answer is because you’re too old to care what others think. You believe Cadillac is the standard of the world, and you’re happier for it. But you know what? Even if the CT4 feels like an ending, I’m happy too.
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