Posted on Friday 28 September 2007
The 2008 Cadillac CTS is being hailed as the best American car in 40 years by automotive journalists across the nation. Now GM is looking to take that success overseas.
This week’s UAW strike threatened to cut into production of the new right-hand drive CTS, which is being built at GM’s plant in Lansing, Michigan. Domestic models had already met production targets the week before the walkout. Now that workers have returned, GM expects to meet its goal of selling 60,000 CTS sedans worldwide in the next year, and has capacity to build more.
Markets being targeted for the right-hand drive Caddy include Australia and South Africa, both new markets for the CTS. It has been a long time since Cadillac has produced a car worthy of competing on a global scale, but GM believes it has a winner in the CTS.
Good to hear.
Now, the question is this, will it be priced fairly to compete with BMW’s and Audi’s? I’m sure most in England wouldn’t buy it, unless- unless it costs $10,000 less than the same sized, and similarly equipped German car. That is where the American cars should be able to compete (over there), in price.
Pricing is difficult to predict. I think the people considering buying the CTS are after something different to the usual fare so they would be willing to pay a little extra for exclusivity and uniqueness. On the other hand, isn’t the CTS larger than a 3-series? It’s almost in between a BMW 3 and 5 series so even if they matched the pricing of a 3-series it would be competitive.
The clincher for me as to how it will do overseas is what those finicky blokes at Top Gear say about it.
Oh they’ll hate it just because it’s American…