If you watched the 2012 Winter Olympics, you have probably seen adds for the new 2013 Cadillac ATS. This is Cadillac’s answer to the BMW 3-series which has long been the best selling car in its class. With the 3-Series being one of the most successful and popular cars ever made, the brand new Cadillac has a lot of ground to make up before it even thinks about challenging the reigning champion for the past decade.
Performance
The ATS can be considered the little brother of the larger and more expensive CTS, which was introduced in 2004. It is priced at just under $34,000. This gets you a 202 horsepower four-cylinder engine, while the next level up gets you a turbo-charged four cylinder Ecotec engine, which produces a more significant 270 horsepower. The current top choice is a 3.6 liter V6 that produces 318 horsepower. This engine is powerful enough to take on any of the non-high-performance German cars in straight acceleration. The V6 is expected to achieve a 0 – 60 time of around 5 seconds which is pretty quick considering that the new 328i takes an extra second to do the same thing.
For those of us who know a significant amount about cars, we are familiar with what may be coming next, and can’t wait to see it. Cadillac provided the older CTS with a very, very extreme performance version called the CTS-V. This car costs more than $60,000 and Cadillac has made it no secret that it reaches 60 miles an hour from a standstill in 3.9 seconds. This is achievable from such a large car solely due to the enormous 556 horsepower supercharged engine under the hood. After the extreme success of taking down ultimate German machines like the BMW M3 and C63 AMG it is only natural to expect an ATS-V.
Considering the ATS is approximately 450 lbs lighter than the CTS-V, I think we can expect some very serious performance from the ATS-V. With the V6 ATS already moving from 0 – 60 in 5 seconds I think it is not unreasonable to see the ATS-V taking another second off of that time if not more.
Interior
Inside the ATS you will find a very elegant layout that we think is less aggressive than the CTS interior. Cadillac offers many different trims for the interior including three different wood grains, aluminum, and carbon fiber. Cadillac also impressed with a new top-level infotainment system; an 8.0-inch, haptic-feedback touch screen. If that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a reconfigurable 5.7 inch display in the main instrument cluster.
Conclusion
You can tell Cadillac put everything they had into this vehicle from the top of the line electronics, new lightweight aluminum chassis, and an engine that is easily able to compete with its German counterpart. Cadillac had one simple goal with this car; to dethrone the all-powerful BMW 3-series, and at this point, it is looking like they might actually have a chance.
