Red, Smooth and Car of the Year: My 2008 Cadillac CTS

In September 2010, three months after my Audi TT's last oil change, a red 2008 Cadillac CTS came home with me. My memory says the TT went out on a trade for a truck. My photo albums say a red Cadillac showed up right after it. I'm inclined to trust the photos.

The reason was simple. After two years folded into a roadster, I wanted a nicer car that was easier to live with, and the CTS was exactly that. It was gorgeous and smooth, the kind of car that makes a long drive feel shorter instead of longer. And that color: a deep, glossy red that looked different in every kind of light. I loved it.

The car that started Cadillac's comeback

I've always believed the CTS saved Cadillac. That turns out to be mostly true, with an asterisk.

Before the CTS, Cadillac's answer to the German sport sedans was the Catera, which was essentially a German Opel Omega wearing a Cadillac badge. Sales fell from about 25,000 in 1997 to about 15,000 in 1999, even with heavy incentives. GM decided to start over. It put roughly $4 billion into a new rear-wheel-drive car with sharp, creased "Art and Science" styling that looked like nothing Cadillac had built before. The CTS went on sale as a 2003 model in January 2002.

Cadillac's own brand chief later said, "The CTS was the vehicle that began the Cadillac renaissance." The asterisk: a 2013 Wall Street Journal assessment said it did more for Cadillac's image than for its sales, and it never pulled in as many young buyers as GM hoped. Still, it changed what people pictured when they heard the word Cadillac. Before it, they pictured their grandfather's car. After it, they pictured something sharp.

Car of the Year

My car was from the second generation, the one that really landed. Motor Trend named the 2008 CTS its 2008 Car of the Year, picking it over 17 other new cars, including the Honda Accord, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and the Audi A5. Motor Trend's editor-in-chief said it proved Detroit could build a world-class sedan whose looks, fit and finish, materials and performance rivaled the German and Japanese competition. It was GM's first win of that award in about a decade, and a nice bookend for Cadillac, which had won Motor Trend's very first Car of the Year back in 1949.

Mine had the 3.6-liter V6 and the automatic, which was plenty for a car that was more about gliding than lap times. The family got wilder from there: a coupe, a wagon and a supercharged V8 CTS-V with more than 550 horsepower that arrived in 2009.

The paper trail

As with the TT, I kept the receipts.

September 18, 2010, at 25,415 miles. A free recall visit to a dealer in Bentonville. One was for front door latches that could freeze, and the work order says it didn't apply to cars registered in Arkansas. Apparently our winters weren't considered a serious threat. The other recall removed the heated windshield-washer module, which could short-circuit.

December 2, 2011, at 44,500 miles. An inspection at the Cadillac dealer in Fayetteville turned up "premature timing chain wear," handled by reprogramming the engine computer. Timing chains on GM's 3.6-liter V6 from that era are a well-known sore spot. The same visit produced a quote for four new Michelin Pilot tires: $1,298.11, with someone's handwritten "$1150 + tax, 3–5 days" scrawled across it.

That's where my paperwork ends, with a name on that invoice that isn't mine. Whoever drove that red CTS next, I hope they loved the color as much as I did.

Where the CTS is now

Cadillac built its last CTS for the 2019 model year, at its Lansing Grand River plant in Michigan. The CT5 sedan, which arrived for 2020, took over its spot in the lineup, though car people still argue about whether the CT5 or the bigger CT6 was its true heir. Either way, the name that started Cadillac's comeback is gone.

Did you own a CTS? I'd love to hear what yours was like, whether the timing chain ever caught up with you, and if anyone remembers the official name of that red. I never did learn it.