Being a Petrol head means that you want to own every single cool car out there. Don’t’ care if you have to take out a mortgage to build a 1,256-car garage, it’s worth it. Jay Leno’s garage is arguably the best garage there is. Fortunately, he has plenty of money to have the coolest garage.
Now, when someone says GM, one can think of many things good and bad. I have my issues with GM and their actions in history. However, we must all put the bad stuff aside and consider just the automobile past and future.
In doing so, remember the old slogan “Not your father’s Oldsmobile anymore!” where Olds changed their cars a bit, tried to get you to think that it was cool again, but then put you back in a slushmobile, and your kids refused to ride in it and your wife bought you a cane to match the car? Well, same rolled for Caddy.
Remember the heady days of the El Dorado. 1000 feet long, 500 feet wide, could seat 70 adults in the front seat alone, had foam rubber for shock absorbers, head lights that were as bright as wax candles, and people of a geriatric nature would drive them at INSANE speeds and swerve in/out of lanes at a rate that would make you wince just looking at it. Cadillac was short for “Old and insane”.
Nowadays, there is a new Caddy in town. It has four letters and that is all that matters. Ready folks, break out your alphabet chart, here we go…..C…….T……S…..V! Yep, those letters spell out the word “FREAKINGAWESOMEHORSEPOWER!”, all one word.
First, to go back to my original point, I can’t buy every car I want. So sometimes, I have to ride right-seat in a beast, just to enjoy it. Hey, if someone wants to offer you some GForce, you cheerfully accept. I do well enough with 325hp in a smaller car. However, for some people, like my fantastic dentist, who is the greatest dentist on Earth (LITERALLY, don’t get me started, he is better than Harvard dentists, and I actually know this because I lived it), they can afford the true horsepower beasts. For him, he just bought the most powerful American-made gasoline sedan in America, the CTS-V.
Another wonderful set of alphabetical letters is LS, which is the engine. Multiple versions of this engine, with each becoming more and more powerful, make many wonderful cars. If you want “Fast & Loud” on TV, those guys love to slap a brand new LS engine into a classic or antique beauty, and really make it shine. The LS engine in this Caddy produces 640 supercharged horsies, 630LB of torque, can achieve 200hp, and of course 0-60 in 3.7 seconds. That’s not shabby at all. That’s darn right respectable.
So, I was just over to my dentist for a cleaning. It takes a while, it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world to me. Dental picks, scraping, drooling all over myself, I’m not a happy camper. So, as a treat for getting through with it, the Doc has to show me his new toy.
First off, he is a Petrol head, yet another reason why he is THE GREATEST DENTIST ON EARTH! Secondly, he has had a Raptor for a while. It is a beast of a truck, and one day I will write about it. However, for this example, he said that he went to go buy a new model of it, since he had 80,000 miles on his current truck. The dealership slapped a $15,000 “Premium Price” on it which means “Hey, we can bend you over, steal your wallet, steal your child’s lollipop and you will pay it just to get your car”. Thankfully, my dentist knows better. Plus, they probably said the infamous words “Do you want to buy today?” So, he bounced over to the Caddy dealership and bought his new toy.
So, walking up to the car, you have to notice the big fat rotors that look like dinner platters, and of course 6-piston calipers in a red housing…..hey, big horsepower requires big brakes to stop. Jeremy Clarkson once said “Speed never killed anyone. It’s stopping suddenly that gets you!” Quite right. Carbon fiber hood and other parts from the Carbon Fiber Package, nice and lightweight.
The car is definitely high tech. Dashboard and center console are primarily video screens. Looking at the main console, I was getting worried that as we were driving along that Ms Pacman might come out and start eating the tachometer.
Did I happen to mention that to we car guys, when you say music and musical notes, we think “Exhaust Notes”? Yup, I can identify many cars just from their sound. Well, the CTS-V is no different. It has a sound, and the sound is pure joy. Digital tach so that it can keep up with the high rev’s, and plenty of readouts on various conditions of the vehicle, it will take you a couple years to read the automobile instruction manual to learn all of them. The car is a total computer married to an engine and four tires. Seats are big and comfy but firm and tight.
Get ready for this, it has the Rear View Camera that will blow you away! On the rear side, instead of a mirror, it is a viewscreen of the rear of the car, displayed in HD. On the front side, it has a video-recording camera that will let you record different sessions of your driving. So, he showed me a video of him doing a Launch Control run (yes, of course it has Launch Control, duh). But then, he said “Hey, let’s go for a drive.”. Ok, for the second time today, I wiped the drool off my chin, and said “YES PLEASE”, and off we went.
We drove over to a local road that has no houses and had few cars on it. Oh yea, you know what that means. It’s Go Time! Set up Launch Control, Race Mode, line everything up, hit the accelerator pedal and brake at the same time, rev it up to the max, and release….ok, let’s take a moment to breathe as we think about that happy place.
Now, the rush is immediate and strong. The car is stable, no squirrely drifting or out-of-control moves, traction control gives us grip, our line is straight and true. I look over at the dash, not even a speedometer showing, it is just the tach. Now that is the way it should be. Screw the speedo, I just want engine. More engine!! We do two runs, hit a nice high speed of ……….45mph, just 45mph, that’s it, 45mph (hey, some cops could be reading this, not getting my dentist in trouble!!!) So, after we coasted back down from……45mph….. a couple times, we headed back to the office.
So, back to reality, I can’t afford this toy yet. In the $80’s just to start, I will have to wait. However, the ride was pure joy. GForce is always a good feeling.
By the way, my dentist is Ernie Soto in Plantation Florida. Check him out. Plus, if you have a cool ride, make sure to drive it over. Maybe he will take you for a ride as well, if you have a late afternoon appointment and he doesn’t have anyone else on his schedule. Otherwise, please don’t drool on his car, it costs a lot to detail down here.