More from Nurburgring

Last week, we told you about the 2009 CTS-V’s searing lap time at Germany’s famous Nurburgring test track. Here are a couple of photos of GM Performance Division executive – and racing driver – John Heinricy taking the CTS-V through it’s sub-eight-minute lap — believed to be the fastest ever by a production car. - Will Stewart, blog editor

2009 CTS- V Blisters Nurburgring

By Ed

In testing today at Germany’s Nurburgring, Cadillac’s upcoming new 2009 CTS- V completed a lap of the legendary Nordschleife in 7:59.32. This blistering time appears to be the fastest ever publicly documented for a production sedan.

Cadillac is nearing the completion of testing for the highly anticipated CTS- V , the limited-edition high-performance model based on the award-winning CTS sport sedan. John Heinricy, director of vehicle integration and an acclaimed racing driver, piloted the CTS- V through its sub-8 minute lap. The car itself had no performance modifications outside of those planned for consumer production, which is scheduled to begin this fall.

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!)

Professional

By Ed

We’ve been putting up all sorts of videos lately, as you know. And, I apologize. Most of them are distinctly amateur-level. I know this because the cameraman shooting many of these is not very good. In case you’re wondering, that cameraman normally is me.

Today, I thought we should really turn this over to a professional. This clip was done a few months ago by Cadillac for use at some of big auto shows around the world. I enjoy this because we had a good time hustling the car around our track the day this was filmed.

CTS-V Montage

Enjoy this short montage of footage from our recent Arizona test drives:

More Answers!

By Rob

Here are a few more answers to some of your recent queries. Thanks again for your thoughtful questions!

Answers!

By Rob

Thank you all for the many recent questions. We’ll answer these via a few posts, as there were so many good questions.

A couple of questions went into aspects we’ve covered a few times before, through no fault of your own. I’ll bypass some of those, if you don’t mind, and ask you to look through some of our previous posts. But by and large, lots of interesting questions. Here are some answers to some of them, with more to come soon. I’ll summarize the question (and where it came from) to provide a little context, as there were so many posts. Here goes . . .

What Now?

By Rob
Okay, the production launch is underway. So much energy and focus goes into preparing for the launch that it’s natural to ask, “What now?” Our “future” product is now a reality, that being the 08 CTS. But in the world of vehicle development and testing it’s all about the future.
Right now, several of our test cars are being reconditioned to test ideas and content that is being planned for the future. I can’t go into all of what those aspects are now, of course.
But here’s an example I can cite: one thing we’re on the record about is that we’re going to add a diesel engine to the car in the future. This diesel is primarily planned for Europe and other markets where diesel is prevalent. It will be a new engine planned for a future model year, but now is prime time in terms of its testing and development.

Monterey Days

By Liz
We apologize for the slow pace of our posts of late. But it’s launch time.
In addition to the ongoing development and launch process, we have been hosting some journalists and giving test drives in northern California in recent days. Here and here and here are some online accounts from some of the car experts and journalists we hosted that will give you an idea of how we conducted these previews.

Tough Stuff

By Rob

Some of our testing and driving is fine-tuning all the luxury and performance aspects we intend for Cadillac. But other stuff, quite frankly, involves beating the heck out of the cars. On an almost constant basis, we have cars on what we call a Durability Schedule. This means we take a few cars (right now we have three) and subject them to a rigorous series of driving exercises in an attempt to speed up the hands of time, putting them through two or three “lifetimes” in a compressed period.