2005 Cadillac Sts V8 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Cadillac toned down ATS Coupe design due to customer feedback [w/poll]

Automakers always face a difficult decision when it comes to styling their cars. Design them too blandly and nobody will get excited about them. But style them too aggressively and they'll often end up turning off potential buyers.
Cadillac, for its part, is no stranger to aggressive design, but when it came to the new ATS Coupe, it elected to tone things down a bit. Speaking with The Detroit News in a wide-ranging interview, Cadillac design director Bob Boniface revealed that the original design for its compact coupe was edgier - closer to that of the CTS Coupe - with a wedgier profile, a more steeply raked beltline and a more severe grille. But potential customers surveyed in clinics apparently didn't like it. They found it looked heavy, inefficient and not fun to drive. So Boniface and his team literally went back to the drawing board and "took as much visual mass out of the car as [they] could." The resulting coupe, while handsome, looks far more similar to its four-door companion than did Cadillac's CTS.
What do you think, does the new ATS Coupe look just right, or is it too conservative? Voice your opinion in our quick online poll.

First Cadillac ELR rolls off the line

Gearing up for the Belle Isle Grand Prix this weekend, General Motors invited some of the Chevrolet and Cadillac racecar drivers out to its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. While there, the racers - including IndyCar Driver and Chevrolet Volt owner, Simona De Silvestro - witnessed the very first 2014 Cadillac ELR to roll off the assembly line.
These vehicles are not destined for customers, however, but instead pre-production units will be used by engineers for testing purposes. Actual production of ELR consumer models is expected to commence closer to the end of this year. As a refresher, this range-extended electric Cadillac shares much of its powertrain with the Volt but will have a sportier coupe design inspired by the Converj Concept. De Silvestro manged to snap a few images of here own, which you can see in the gallery below.

Jeep Twitter account hacked, bad language, poor grammar and some hilarity ensue

Just a day after Burger King's Twitter account was compromised by "unauthorized users," Jeep's social media feed has been similarly hacked. Both instances of digital incursion share some similarities - the BK hackers changed the company's logo for McDonald's familiar golden arches, saying a sale had occurred, while the Jeep miscreants have replaced Jeep's branding with that of General Motors property Cadillac.
The resulting tweets from the damaged Jeep account have been a pretty brutal, to put it bluntly. Most of the content coming from the hacked account is unpublishable here, using language that is peppered with racial epithets, and poorly worded "shout outs."
In addition to the defamatory tweets themselves, the hackers have significantly altered the layout of the page. Jeep's header image now features a picture of the Cadillac ATS to go along with the Wreath and Crest, some language calling out that car as winning the 2013 North American Car of the Year award, and this gem: "The official Twitter handle for the Jeep(R) - Just Empty Every Pocket, Sold To Cadillac =[" Also, perhaps in an ode to yesterday's Burger King heist, the background image for the page now features a McDonald's-themed donk. The devil's in the details, we guess.