I remember making a pledge as a teenager that I would never buy a Cadillac.
I guess that little snot would be happy to know that I have in fact stayed true to that pledge so far, but Cadillac is making it more and more difficult. Back in the late 80's and early 90's Cadillac was about boats driven slowly by snowbirds wreaking havoc on our Phoenix streets. Or at least that is what they seemed to be.
Cadillac knew they had a perception problem, and were worried they would follow the path Oldsmobile would eventually fall victim to. So they tried to go young with that awful Catera, a car that proved that bland could actually be hideous.
So back to the drawing board they went, and somehow reemerged with a car that honestly looked like nothing else, the CTS. It debuted in the second Matrix, and may have been the best thing about that movie. Those same design queues infiltrated all of Cadillac design, and now it is hard to imagine Cadillac without the Escalade and a fleet of sleet cars.
So 16-year-old me, deal with the fact that I just might have to buy myself a CTS-V Coupe or Wagon, just to spite you. But it is ok, it would not have been easy to see that Cadillac would eventually make some of the best-looking American cars on the road like they did decades ago.
Which leads to the Hot Wheels version. A model I am quite fond of. And it comes to us again in Hot Wheels Batch G, this time in red. Hot Wheels treated us to four stock versions (3 colors of the First Edition and the white Holiday version) before getting a little creative with the design on the orange FTE last year. This new version also sports a custom design, which I like better than last year's, although the yellow-lipped PR5's might be a little too much.
Nonetheless, it is a CTS, and I happily will add all version of the CTS to the collection just to make 16-year-old me a little more uncomfortable...
Hot Wheels Cadillac CTS-V (2013 Mainline):
And for your review, the previous versions. Your fave? (I go with the white Holiday version.)