More from the Field

By Ed

Here’s a few more shots from the wrap-up of our winter tests. While we’re not shooting for the type of traction of an AWD car, we do want the V-Series to be capable across a range of conditions a bit wider than your typical high-performance car. These are important tests for dialing in our chassis controls (e.g. Stabilitrak.) And, by our fairly low amateur photography standards, this was very nicely shot by one of our chassis engineers (Thank you, Chuck!)

The Taming of the Snow

By Rob

The snow handling course is great for testing tires, StabiliTrak, AWD and Traction Control — all at the same time. This test confirmed that we’ve got the AWD torque transfer right where we want it. The key in designing the torque transfer is to get just the right amount of power to the front axle to keep the car on course.

These challenging conditions for cornering provide a good test for how robust the system is.

Stability Control

By Rob

We recently wrapped up our latest round of snow and winter testing and this photo captures one of the more memorable moments. Things do not always go as planned – particularly when testing handling on ice and snow.

Testing Stabilitrak (Cadillac’s fine electronic stability control system) means we do very thorough experiments with different settings and calibrations to make sure the version we take to production is the best it can be. This ensures we test right to the limit, and sometimes just a bit over that limit. This time, the laws of physics pushed the car off into the snow bank – but safely. Moral of the story: if you’re driving a car with Stabilitrak (or another form of ESC) use it, DON’T SHUT IT OFF!