Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Take advantage of exciting vehicle incentives at Capital Cadillac
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Cadillac XTS Safety Seat Alerts Drivers to Dangers
[[posterous-content:pid___0]]When the all-new Cadillac XTS luxury sedan begins production this spring, it will be the industry’s first car to use directional tactile sensation – vibrations of the driver’s seat bottom – to warn of crash threats while driving and parking.
The patented Cadillac Safety Alert Seat generates vibrating pulse patterns on the left and/or right side of the lower bolster to alert the driver of potential dangers, such as drifting from a traffic lane or toward nearby objects while parking. Threats from the front and rear trigger pulses on both sides of the seat.
“It’s good to see automakers experimenting with new technology to help communicate to drivers when their driving is about to get them into trouble,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “We commend GM for their innovative use of haptic feedback and hope that drivers find it helpful.”
The system works in tandem with other visual alerts, and research shows that it can quickly and accurately focus driver attention to the direction of potential dangers.
“It’s akin to someone tapping on your shoulder in a crowd to get your attention,” said, General Motors Active Safety Technical Fellow Raymond Kiefer. “Using the tactile sense to communicate crash threat direction provides an effective and intuitive way to cut through the clutter of visual and auditory sensory information that drivers routinely experience.”
The seats are part of the Cadillac Driver Awareness and Driver Assist packages, a combination of active safety systems designed to help drivers avoid crashes. The Driver Awareness Package, available for the launch of the Cadillac XTS this spring, includes Forward Collision Alert, Lane Departure Warning, Side Blind Zone Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Alert.
The Driver Assist Package, available this fall, also uses the Safety Alert Seat and features Adaptive Cruise Control, Automatic Collision Preparation, and Front and Rear Automatic Braking Systems.
The Drive Assist Awareness and Driver Assist packages will also be available this year in the Cadillac ATS luxury sedan and SRX luxury crossover.
According to Kiefer, GM research shows that the seat may direct driver attention to the location of a crash threat more quickly and accurately than beeping alerts.
“Vibrating alerts also may help drivers who do not hear beeping alerts due to hearing loss or competing noises, and may be preferred by drivers and passengers who might be annoyed by beeps and shut crash avoidance features off,” Kiefer said. “The last thing we want is for drivers to turn off features with safety benefits.”
The Safety Alert Seat works with a variety of sensors and cameras installed in the car that help “intelligently” decide when to activate warnings. For example, if a turn signal is on, lane departure warnings are not presented.
Safety Alert Seat vibrations can be selected by the driver, via an in-vehicle menu, to replace the audible beeping alerts used across much of the industry.
The seats also will be connected to the XTS Park Assist system and Rear Cross Traffic Alert system to help make parking in tight spaces easier.
Using exterior cameras, drivers can see the outside of the car along with dynamic parking guides on the eight-inch LCD screen, located on the center instrument panel. As the car backs up, the seat provides a few quick pulses to both sides of the seat when an object is first detected directly behind the car, and then provides repeated pulses when an object is closer. Meanwhile, the Rear Cross Traffic Alert system looks for approaching cross traffic behind the vehicle that is signaled with either left or right pulses to the driver.
“We feel customers will appreciate the intuitive elegance of the Safety Alert Seat, and more importantly, will appreciate the ‘good vibrations’ afforded by the features linked to this seat,” Kiefer said.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Enjoy the 2012 Cadillac SRX at Capital Cadillac
Friday, March 23, 2012
We would like to thank this customer for their five-star rating. It is greatly appreciated
"Both times that I have been to the dealer they have treated me like I was part of their family. I went in once for a recall and once for an oil change. On the recall they gave me a free loaner and on the oil change they gave me and my wife a ride to the near by mall and picked us up when the car was ready."
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Cadillac Named 2012 Customer Service Champion
To qualify for inclusion, a company must excel within its own industry and stand out among leading brands in 20 major industries evaluated by J.D. Power.
The 2012 Champions were identified based on customer feedback, opinions, and perceptions gathered primarily from J.D. Power’s syndicated research in 2011. The group of 50 represents the highest-performing U.S. companies that deliver service excellence – both within their specific industries and across all industries measured.
“We’re in the midst of a mission to enhance every interaction a consumer has with Cadillac,” said Kurt McNeil, vice president of Cadillac Sales and Service. “We are strongly committed to customer satisfaction, and appreciate this external confirmation of our efforts.”
Cadillac has instituted wide-ranging changes to enhance the luxury customer experience, conducting comprehensive customer experience training for dealership personnel and developing an improved suite of owner benefits called Cadillac Shield.
The Cadillac Escalade received highest honors in the Large Premium Crossover/SUV category of the J.D. Power 2011 Initial Quality StudySM (IQS), which measures the number of problems consumers experience during the first 90 days of ownership.
In February, Cadillac was named the most-desired automotive brand in the United States by men, according to results of a market research test by the global strategic neuro-insight firm Buyology Inc and uSamp, which measured personal and emotional connections to 220 well-known brands across 10 industries.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Jasmine Guy celebrates her 50th birthday with Capital Cadillac
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Join us for our Capital Cadillac Owner's Clinic
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Visit us at Capital Cadillac and drive away in the 2012 Capital Escalade
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Cadillac readies product blitz to catch Lexus
Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson is pushing the automaker to turn Cadillac into a global player with the scale to better compete with German leaders BMW, Volkswagen AG's Audi and Daimler AG's Mercedes- Benz.
Within 10 years, GM wants to be solidly in the fourth spot currently held by Lexus, said a person familiar with plan.
Cadillac, which peaked more than three decades ago, must choose the right new models to meet Akerson's goal, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private.
The U.S. luxury brand must find a way to reach younger buyers than Mitt Romney's wife, who drives two SRX sport-utility vehicles.
The median Cadillac customer last year was 63 years old -- the age Ann Romney turns in April -- according to J.D. Power and Associates.
"We are working on more new Cadillacs than at any point in the brand's history," Don Butler, GM vice president for Cadillac marketing, said last month in an interview in Chicago. "We're constantly talking about what's the best way to become this global player."
The automaker is weighing several vehicle options for Cadillac, Mark Reuss, president of GM North America, said in a recent interview.
Executives are considering a sedan larger than the XTS, a sport-utility vehicle smaller than the SRX and a new Escalade on the same vehicle architecture as the popular Buick Enclave, Reuss said.
Product decisions
"It's a question of what products they're offering," said Alan Baum, an independent auto-industry analyst based in West Bloomfield, Mich. "When they were offering the Escalades, they were unique products, certainly, but they were also products that had relatively modest demand."
David Caldwell, a GM spokesman, declined to comment on Cadillac's sales goals.
GM sold 199,000 Cadillac cars and SUVs last year, including 152,000 in the United States, the company said.
But the brand is in the middle of a U.S. sales skid amid a rising overall market.
Cadillac's U.S. sales have declined five consecutive months, including a 27-percent drop in February, when the overall market surged 16 percent.
IHS Automotive estimated that Cadillac finished 2011 as the sixth or seventh best-selling luxury brand in the world behind Volvo and possibly Land Rover.
The world leader is BMW followed by Audi, which overtook Daimler last year, when each brand sold more than 1 million units.
Lexus finished with an estimated 408,000 sales, more than double Cadillac's 2011 sales, IHS said.
Cadillac's best year was 1978, when it sold 350,000 cars.
Pre-Manning peak
That peak preceded the birth of Eli Manning, the pro football quarterback who received a Cadillac Escalade hybrid as a prize for being the most valuable player in the 2008 Super Bowl championship game.
Manning, 31, received a Chevrolet Corvette last month when he won the award again.
Akerson met with his senior leadership team at GM's design dome in Warren, Mich., outside Detroit in the middle of last year about the future of Cadillac and that's when the 10-year vision for the brand was outlined, a person familiar with the meeting said.
The CTS sedan and SRX have helped improve Cadillac sales and image in recent years.
GM will begin selling a large sedan, the XTS, and a small sedan, the ATS, this year to help broaden its lineup. The ATS will be sold in the competitive segment that includes the BMW 3-Series and Mercedes C-Class.
The automaker has also said it will make a plug-in hybrid Cadillac called the ELR, using technology similar to the Chevrolet Volt. The company hasn't said when it will go on sale.
While considering a broader lineup, GM's Reuss said the company needs to make wise choices and doesn't want to add too many models to the brand.
Bad movie
"We've seen that movie; it's a bad one," Reuss said of over-expanding the Cadillac range. "Capital is not an endless bucket that we have access to."
Part of the discussion has involved changing the Escalade, which has been designed as a body-on-frame vehicle like a pickup, into a crossover model with a unibody structure to improve the mileage, Reuss said.
GM's Lambda platform is the basis of the Buick Enclave, which gets about 19 percent better mileage than an Escalade, and could be used for the Cadillac model.
U.S. fuel-economy requirements for those SUVs and other light trucks start increasing in 2016.
"If we were to do that, it would be something not like a Lambda today, but rather something that makes a different statement," Reuss said. "It could look bigger than that."
The debate also involves whether Cadillac should make a smaller SUV to compete against BMW's X3, which helped drive the German-brand's 13 percent sales increase in the U.S. to overtake Lexus as the nation's top-selling luxury brand last year.
'International' appeal
The SRX is too big for most global markets, as is the Buick Enclave that could serve as a basis for the next Escalade, said Baum, the analyst.
"They have to make products that are more compatible with what international drivers want," Baum said. "Some crossovers might do that."
While Cadillac will need aggressive growth to make fourth-place globally, the brand has an opportunity reach more customers as Baby Boomers are replaced in showrooms by a younger generation that may be open to a different take on luxury, said Rebecca Lindland, an industry analyst with IHS Automotive.
"The market is also changing in the next 10 years quite dramatically," she said. "We'll have the top of Gen Y coming into peak earning years while Gen X is in peak earning years."
Another key to growing globally will be establishing Cadillac as a legitimate luxury brand beyond North America, she said.
"Cadillac will have to get love from China," Lindland said. "They have a significantly harder road to go in Europe, and they know that."
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Cadillac XTS Named Connected Car of the Year
“Rather than just looking for power, speed, and performance, a connected car means turn-by-turn directions, voice-activated controls, and precollision systems,” says Peggy Smedley, editorial director, Connected World. “Car buyers now want it all under one hood and in the cabin.”
CUE, which stands for Cadillac User Experience, is a highly customizable user interfaces including a standard eight-inch (203 mm) screen in the “center stack." CUE features several auto industry firsts, including capacitive-touch control with proximity sensing, gesture recognition and natural voice recognition.
The intuitive touch interface used in CUE is the same technology employed by many of today's most popular handheld phones and tablets. Designed for both tech savvy and tech averse users, it allows consumers to securely store those mobile devices while channeling the information on those devices, along with navigation tools, weather maps with Doppler radar and AM/FM and XM radio.
In addition to CUE, the XTS will debut a network of safety cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors to bolster driver vision and awareness of road hazards and intervene to help avert potential crashes. In some cases, Cadillac’s enhanced vision and sensing systems will act without the driver, such as though automatic braking based on information indicating potential obstacles.
The Connected Car of the Year awards honor vehicles with technology that strike the right balance of safety, convenience, and infotainment. Chosen by the editorial team at Connected World magazine, the 2012 winners were named in small, mid-size, luxury, and ultra-luxury categories.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Mel, we appreciate your five-star review and recommendation
"Great service and help by Mike and great sales force and bought 2nd car from them and everything was perfect, highly recommend them. See mike for best deal."
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