In times past, Caddy was well known for building luxurious full-size highway cruisers with smooth, powerful V8s, luxurious interior appointments and impressive styling that made its owner proud to own a Cadillac. Caddy, by virtue of GM Corporate and external forces beyond their control, squandered that image with piss-poor quality control, weak/disastrous/destructive engine choices, and lackadaisical product decisions that’ve contributed to Caddy being considered second- or even third-tier in the luxury leagues.

Now Caddy can take a cue from Hyundai and go to work on a superb V8 highway cruiser with a V6 option to sooth the worry-warts jonesing for fuel efficiency at a price low enough to bring curious car-shoppers in and invite others to change their perceptions. Build that for 3 to 5 years with a unprecedented level of quality control and rock-solid reliability. Then you can focus on a mid-sized companion with the same attributes. Then an even smaller companion with an engine choice no lower (i.e. cruder) than a V6. Or even an I6, since the inherent smoothness of one can net brownie points.

A I4 (turbo or not) will only have people smirking in their frappachinos. Plus it’ll not only bring Caddy down to Lincoln’s level in their constant pursuit of some lowest-common-denominator ideal of “Lexus”, but painfully remind people of why they never considered looking at a Caddy in the first place.

No they’d have an Alfa Romeo! (Except for #2 perhaps, and lately #4. Oh, well.)

Let it go, man. The last Cimarron rolled off the assembly line back when we had a President who’s last name wasn’t Clinton or Bush, and a rapper from Oakland made parachute pants a popular fad.

I, for one, support the idea of a four-cylinder Cadillac. It’ll be more fuel efficient, and that’s what everybody wants these days.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a hybrid Caddy.

I think we in the US are going to have to go through a change of how we define luxury in our cars, as in, more lux on the inside with smaller, more frugal, yet still powerful engines under the hood.

As well, your argument about mid-range power could be made for almost any V6 VVT engine today, nothing down low, a mid-range kick, and peters out at the top.

Have you tried that engine? It’s utterly unsuited for a luxury car. It has nothing down low or up high; it’s just a massive mid-RPM torque hump that sounds for all the world like a blender. Every FI 4-pot with more than a token amount of boost is the same way. I like fuel economy, but I’m with Michael Karesh: when I can get a 270HP V6 in a 24K Camry that’ll do 28 MPG, why should I settle for anything less in a Cadillac?

Actually, our Mazda3 5-door comes in at about 2950 lbs and its 4-cylinder is more than adequate to pull that weight around. My 3100 lb GTI pulls like an ox w/ its turbo 4.

In this case, we’re talking about Caddy, so the 4 pot will HAVE to be forced induction, if only to get Caddy-like power figures.

I say the 2L turbo Ecotec in the Sky Red Line/Cobalt SS/Solstice GXP would be perfect in this new Alpha Caddy at current or even just slightly higher power levels (think 260 to 285 hp, w/ similar torque). Power would be great, fuel economy would be amazing, weight would be low, and luxury intenders who want to be seen as “green” wouldn’t feel guilty.

I say go for it, GM.

A turbo 4, but 4 cylinders none the less. My point was GM’s management loves to alienate buyers that don’t fall in line with their stupid thinking. Just because we don’t buy their lousy products just because they don’t know how to make anything we like doesn’t make us un-American. These guys are clueless to what a majority of customers want, and it shows in their falling market share.

I totally agree about the Camry, ugly as sin(at least GM can make the outside look nice) and their 4 cylinder is just as noisey and unenjoyable as GM’s.

The point a lot of you are missing about making a small Caddy is where it would be priced. Sure the idea has validity if Caddy was an upscale luxury brand, but they have all but destroyed that image. This BLS will end up competing with Pontiac, Buick and Saabs in price and possibly content. GM branding is going to be the death of them, it’s clear they have no clue how to manage their brands, or products, or marketing, or R&D, but they are great at the executive pay scales.

A better option would be to, well, sell Saabs. From Cadillac stores. A lot of GM’s problems could be solved if any dealer could buy any GM product without being restricted to a particular brand.

Of course, GM, being GM, will probably just sell the Saab 9-3Cadillac BLS stateside and, when it fails, declare that luxury buyers don’t want four-cylinder cars and bail on Saab and a low-end Caddy. Meanwhile, Audi will probably have moved a number of A3 and A4 2.0Ts.

The Cimarron was such an incredible mess it nearly single-handedly destroyed Cadillac’s prestige. But the Cimarron was nothing more than a tarted-up Cavalier, another casualty of GM’s J-Car fiasco. Later, Cadillac tried again with the Catera, which was nothing more than a rebadged Opel. And, despite two rebadged failures, they want to try again with the Cadillac BLS (which is based off the Saab 9-3). I say, no dice!

[In all fairness, the original Cadillac Seville (‘75 - ‘79) was a success and heavily derived from the Nova]

Granted, the a Saab 9-3 derived Cadillac isn’t as bad as say, a Chevrolet Aveo-based Cadillac (maybe that can be GM’s next [mis]step!), but still, with all the bad karma the Cimarron’s left behind, do you think people are honestly willing to trust another badge-engineered Cadillac product?

I don’t buy in that Saab/Pontiac/Buick should prevent Cadillac from having an affordable luxurious small car. Saab should be Saab, and should really have its own R&D, design, and engineering teams that source very little from mainstream GM vehicles. Pontiac should be sporty and aimed at a younger buyer, not competing with the luxury/refinement side of Cadillac, and Buick should be big, soft, boring but reliable, ergonomic, and safe cars for old people, ala Lexus.

Oh and there had better be a turbo, regardless of diesel or gasoline. And NO FRONT WHEEL DRIVE for Christ’s sake. Just because the dumbasses at Audi and Acura still do it, that doesn’t mean Caddy should stoop to the same level.

Those who yearn for a wrong-wheel-drive luxury car, well, there’s more than enough used examples to choose from.

I hope GM can do this, and do it well like the CTS.

On the other hand, a 4-cylinder Cadillac had better have a 4-cylinder that matches the NVH of the excellent 3.6 l direct-injection V6, or it will be an abject failure. Their 2.4 l four makes every GM car equipped with this engine feel like it was sourced with an engine from a third-world supplier.

Finally, no 4-cylinder will be effective as long as a small sedan weighs in at 3000 pounds.

Also another thing about US. What is the reasoning of using a V-8 car with automatic transmission in a town!

In my opinion, a city car is a 1.4/1.6 L 80 to 120 HP automatic car for convenience in traffic; and a highway car is a small engined (2.0 to 3.0 L) 200HP manuel car with +250Nm torque for fuel efficiency.

Why should I burn one more liter of gas by driving an automatic car on a highway? I’ll just change the gear 5 or 6 times until I reach to 120mph, and let the engine torque do its trick!

The new A4 doesn’t have the same engine as the GTI. The A4 has the all-new engine with the Valvelift system.