Dial V At Any Time For Immediate Assistance

Of course, Cadillac doesn’t expect you to go it alone out there with such a potent weapon sitting underneath your right foot. In addition to reducing the weight of the redesigned CTS-V by close to 150 kilos, thus improving its willingness to change direction at speed, the company’s engineers have also installed the latest and greatest performance technologies that bridge the gap between driver ability and a fast lap time. Gone are the days when the most ferocious Cadillac money could buy presented a clear and present danger to anyone unwilling to approach its limits with respect, as the new model replaces the early car’s rawness with a surprisingly amiable personality that simply wants to ‘go fast, bro.’

Sure, you could completely turn off the car’s five-stage Performance Traction Management system and fly without a net, but why would you want to when even the third-most-aggressive setting allows you to hang the CTS-V’s tail out during a constant-radius turn without so much as a chiming tongue-lashing from Cadillac’s safety nannies. Doing away with PTM’s ‘Track’ mode would also nix the sedan’s launch control feature, which allows you to leap to 100 km/h from a standing start in a mere 3.7 seconds.

Aiding and abetting, as local law enforcement would term it, are an electronic limited-slip differential that works its own traction magic, as well as Cadillac’s by-now famous magnetically adaptive suspension system. The latter feature has the uncanny effect of pointing a shrink-ray at the CTS-V, making me feel like I was piloting a seven-tenths scale model of the car. It’s also worth mentioning that unlike the (expensive) optional carbon ceramic stoppers available from the usual cast of characters, the Cadillac CTS-V’s brakes offer easy modulation and excellent feedback at any operating temperature.

Special Inside And Out

Despite its fierce body work and equally aggressive performance envelope, the Cadillac ATS-V lost marks with me earlier this year for a cabin that didn’t elevate itself above that of the standard version of the car – especially in the gauge department. The 2016 Cadillac CTS-V doesn’t make the same mistake. A fully customizable, and unique-to-the-V Series LCD driver display panel offers a full range of vehicle data readouts, digital representations of analog dials, and exciting graphics erase any thought that this is any kind of standard four-door luxury apparatus. Optional Recaro race seats with more adjustability than a Gumby doll can also be added to the car, and of course, the usual raft of premium features and next-level advanced safety equipment is also in the cards for the Cadillac.

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