For 2015, the Cadillac ATS and the rest of its siblings have abandoned the wreath surrounding the crest
Paraphrasing one of the last tag-lines from the now defunct Oldsmobile, “the 2015 ATS is absolutely not your father’s Cadillac, and that’s a very good thing.” In fact this ATS is the antithesis of what Cadillacs were when I was growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Back in those days, Caddies defined the term land yacht. Actually aircraft carrier might have been a more apt description. When I was high school in the early-1980s, a friend of our family stopped by our house one day to show off the new Caddie that he had bought himself as a retirement gift after putting in his 30 years in one of the local steel mills.
The hulking dark blue Brougham was festooned with chrome, faux wire wheel covers and a vinyl top. The wheels themselves seemed to be lost somewhere in the enormous wheel arches. Inside, the leather covered benches front and rear provided ample space for six and the skinning steering wheel could eventually induce some directional change with enough input. On the road, cars of this ilk tended to have an utterly disconnected feel from their surroundings.
Fast forward 35 years and the product of Cadillac’s more than decade-long transformation is a wholly different beast. The perception of what a premium automobile should be has changed dramatically over the last several decades from the floaty battleship to the buttoned down sports sedan of the type epitomized by BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
The proportions of the Cadillac ATS clearly communicate that this is a rear-wheel-drive machine with performance intentions
Approaching the ATS you begin to realize how compact it is. This is not the sort of Cadillac you see Don Draper driving in the 1960s or the manager of some working women driving in the 1970s. This is a car designed for the 21st century professional that is cross-shopping the 3 Series, C-Class and A4. In profile, the proportions clearly highlight the fact that is a rear-wheel-drive machine, not a re-badged derivative of a Malibu or Regal. The comparatively long hood and set-back cabin hint at fact that the architecture below has been optimized for superior driving dynamics rather optimum packaging.
For anyone that has been following Cadillac’s design evolution over the past dozen years, the ATS is clearly part of the family with its vertically stacked lighting at each corner and the trapezoidal grille. As with the rest of its siblings for 2015, the Cadillac crest on the face now sits alone, the long-time wreath having been banished earlier this year with the launch of the ATS coupe.
Inside, the now familiar Cadillac design themes continue with with cut and sewn leather covering most of the surfaces. A large touchscreen display topping the piano black and chrome center stack with capacitive touch controls dominates the center of the car. Controlling a phone or tablet by tapping and swiping on a flat, smooth sheet of glass is fine since I’m typically looking at the device while I’m doing it (and not doing it while I drive).
The chrome strips below the touch control surfaces help provide some guidance, but physical controls would be better
Unfortunately, I still don’t think such control surfaces belong in cars where you need to keep your eyes on the road. Fortunately several automakers seem to be moving back to physical controls with knobs and switches. Cadillac designers have tried to make things easier with slightly raised chrome strips on the otherwise smooth sheet of black to provide guidance for controls like volume and fan speed.
The Cadillac CUE infotainment system also has a couple of unique elements I haven’t seen anywhere else, haptic feedback and proximity sensors. Like your phone, the touchscreen and other controls in the ATS vibrates when your touches are registered. Since it doesn’t help to identify what you’re touching, it seems like more of a gimmick than a useful addition.
On the other hand, the proximity sensors just below the screen improve the overall functionality of the system by providing context awareness to the graphical interface. When you aren’t reaching for the screen, extraneous information fades away so that it only presents what is necessary when you glance at it. For example when listening to a podcast or song streaming from your phone, it shows the the metadata like artist and title and the progress bar. However, there is no reason to show play/pause/fast-forward/reverse buttons when your hand is nowhere near the screen. As soon as you reach for the screen though, the controls automatically slide up from the bottom and links to phone, navigation and climate controls drop down from the top.
While driving, ancillary information on the touch screen fades away leaving only the essentials
Best of all, there are separate proximity sensors angled to the left and right to detect if the driver or passenger is touching the screen which is handy when you are struggling with the voice recognition. When the car is in motion, the driver can’t tap addresses on the screen, but the passenger can.
The voice recognition is actually reasonably accurate, especially compared to a Nissan system I used recently. However, it still can’t really deal with natural language and the voice menus are cumbersome to use. The rest of the CUE interface is pretty responsive and not overly cluttered. Beginning with 2015 models, Cadillac and other GM vehicles with OnStar also have a built-in WiFi hotspot with an AT&T 4G LTE radio. While it doesn’t help the driver much, passengers can use the WiFi hotspot to stream media to tablets and laptops while on the go and speeds are reasonably fast, averaging about 4 mbps up and down in my neighborhood.
If you tap the chrome strip at the lower edge of the center control stack, the whole panel motors up to expose a storage bin behind. Inside is a USB port for charging devices and new for 2015 is a wireless charging pad. GM is the first automaker to offer a factory installed wireless charger that supports both the Qi and PowerMat charging standards. If you have a phone with either built-in inductive charging or a compatible case, you can just place it in the storage bin and close the panel to get the battery topped up.
Tapping the strip at the lower edge of the control panel triggers it to open, exposing a storage bin with a wireless charging pad for phones
Other than the touch controls, the rest of the cabin environment works great. Like other Cadillacs, the ATS seat has embedded vibration motors tied to the driver assist systems. When the parking assist sensors detect the car getting too close to an obstacle, or someone walking behind or in front of the car, the bolsters in the seat cushion vibrate to alert the driver. Similarly, the lane departure warning will vibrate one side or the other if the car is drifting out of the lane without an active turn signal. If the driver doesn’t respond, the electric steering will nudge the car back into the lane.
The front seats are very comfortable and supportive, holding the driver and passenger in place during brisk back road driving. As the smallest car in the current Cadillac lineup, the ATS back seat is somewhat more snug, especially for passengers over six feet tall like my son. Average size adults will fit just fine although they won’t have much stretch out room. The contoured seat cushion and relatively narrow width mean the center seatbelt is best left unused.
Other than its compact footprint, what really makes the ATS so vastly different from those lumbering boats of my younger years is the way it drives. The operative word here is precision. My tester was powered by the optional direct-injected 3.6-liter V6 with 321-horsepower and 275 lb.-ft. of torque with a six-speed automatic transmission.
Slide the shift lever back into drive and squeeze the right pedal and the ATS slips away smoothly but swiftly. At first, the sound is surprisingly quiet and subdued, but remember that this is after all a Cadillac, not a Dodge Charger Hellcat. Move the go pedal a bit further into its travel and the sound level builds with a voice that says “this is a high tech piece of machinery that you’re manipulating.” Put your boot into it and a pleasant growl comes to the fore. It’s nothing that says hooligan, rather “so you want to play, huh? Ok, let’s go for it.”
Fortunately, the ATS has the dynamic moves to take advantage of the powerplant. A solid structure keeps the four corners of the car from flexing away from their ideal positions so that the independent suspension linkages can do their job. Back in the day, you could swing a Caddie steering wheel a good 20-30 degrees in either direction without diverting the car from its inertia driven course. Conversely, holding the wheel steady didn’t necessarily prevent unintended directional changes.
Today, the steering does exactly what you tell it to and when you tell it too. As cornering forces build up at the front wheels, the resistance builds proportionately at your fingertips. On the backside of the thick, leather-wrapped steering wheel rim are a pair of magnesium shift paddles enabling you to take temporary or permanent control of the transmission. In drive mode, shifts don’t feel quite as quick as they do when console lever is moved into the sport position, but certainly up to eight-tenths, they are responsive enough, that you’re unlikely to ever get caught in the wrong gear.
Brembo brakes should be standard on all cars
When it’s time to dissipate kinetic energy, the stiff four-piston Brembo brakes on the ATS I drove hauled the car down with the same degree of precision found in all of its other dynamic attributes. The absence of compliance in those big aluminum calipers means there is no slop when applying or modulating the pedal, you get exactly as much braking force as you need when you need it.
The ATS Premium I drove was running on 18-inch Y-spoke alloys, that like the Chrysler 200C I had previously bore an uncanny resemblance to those frequently found on Audi R8s. The ride quality was firm enough that you were always aware of the road surface beneath the tires, but never bothered or shaken up by it. Bend the ATS into a corner and the body stays surprisingly parallel to the ground. This is absolutely a car that likes to get out and play or just cruise to a nice restaurant for dinner.
The ATS starts at about $34,000 for the base model with the 2.5-liter normally aspirated four-cylinder and lower quality brakes. Frankly if you are going spend in the mid-30 grand range, drop the extra $2,000 and step up to the 272-horsepower turbo 2.0-liter. It’s got nearly as much torque as the V6 and it’s spread over a broader rpm range. The turbo ATS also gets the Brembo brakes as standard and it’s even available with a real three-pedal manual transmission! The V6 premium I had pushes the price to $49,000 and the available all-wheel-drive can push the tab over the $50K mark. That’s a price comparable to the German incumbents in this class, but frankly I think the ATS is a perfectly viable competitor. It also bodes well for the next generation Chevy Camaro coming next year.
This is by no means the kind of Cadillac my father’s generation aspired too, but in the 21st century that’s a good thing. Now let’s bring on the long-awaited ATS-V!
