In part one of my auto show coverage, I lamented the relatively spartan interiors of the 2020 Ford Escape and 2020 Toyota Rav4. Speaking of interiors that aren’t terribly acceptable, here is the “all-new” Cadillac CT5.
Basically, it’s a heavily refreshed CTS. Exterior styling is very good, which surprised me, because I initially revolted at the sight of them upon their initial reveal. Maybe it’s the lovely blue, which is apparently just called “Wave Metallic.” But I do like the design.
And I will give Cadillac credit for finally making an aesthetically pleasing interior.
What I cannot accept is the appearance of button blanks on a roughly $51,000 luxury vehicle. It’s a Sport model, which means it comes equipped with fancier exterior bits and some suspension upgrades and such. Other CT5 trims prioritize actual luxury. Cadillac is not alone in splitting the performance trims from the more luxurious models, but regardless, the blanks are unacceptable. Especially in a car that costs over $50k and only has 237 horsepower when running on regular 87.
Surprisingly, I am done dunking on Cadillac. The XT6 may be a relatively safe and uninspired vehicle for Cadillac, but it’s at least filling an important role for the division. And it is pretty nice looking.
It actually does stand apart from its Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC platform mates. The red helps.
And the interior does seem acceptably nice. Notice the lack of button blanks on the center stack?
That being said, any Cadillac dealer would be wise to prevent a prospective XT6 buyer from checking out the Aviator. A brand-agnostic shopper will most likely choose the Lincoln every time. Unless GM puts substantial discounts on the XT6. But given the amount of parts the Aviator shares with the Explorer and the F-150, Ford can probably make similar moves too. It’ll be interesting to see how this battle plays out in 2020.
I initially thought this Encore GX was just a plain Encore. Aside from sporting similar looks, it really didn’t seem to me like the GX was appreciably bigger than its smaller sibling.
Looking at the dimensions of both vehicles, it seems like the GX is meant to boast a bit more cargo room and a slightly more refined ride based on wheelbase. Otherwise, interior dimensions, especially leg and hip room, seem pretty much the same.
The interior felt like an Encore. This is will probably sell pretty well because people seem to like its appearance and performance.
What I can confidently tell you is that it shouldn’t have four buttons blanks on its center stack. This is ostensibly a premium subcompact crossover. Even at its $26,000 asking price, this is absurd. Unless size is a huge issue, buyers should instead just go for a mainstream compact crossover for the same price.
Or they could just opt for the Mazda CX-30 instead, which is a far more convincing luxury vehicle than the Encore GX. This is basically a raised Mazda 3 hatchback. But that’s certainly not a demerit against it. Like other vehicles in the modern lineup, it is very attractive.
It’s also a bit of a sleeper. Mazda opted to put the 3’s 2.5 liter four cylinder in the CX-30, which has 186 horsepower and 186 Ib-ft. of torque. That makes it one of the faster entries in the segment.
And that two tone roof makes it look pretty sporty too. But it doesn’t actually come from the factory like that.
Yup! It’s a dealer installed add-on. I asked a dealer employee why they call it the “Rover Package,” and he replied it’s because they got the idea from…Land Rover. Overall, it does make the Mazda look good…
…but I’m left wondering if this crossover is going to have extremely slim margins. At least in regards to the CX-30. In combination with the Rover Package, the Brake Plus installation seems a bit gratuitous. I actually had to look up Brake Plus. Thanks to CC’s own Daniel Stern, I know that these pulsing 3rd brake light systems are not terribly effective. Additionally, I was told during my selling days that anything like the aforementioned items are solely designed to at worst get the negotiations down to sticker, so the dealer could profit as much as they possibly can.
That being said, I personally know several people who have purchased vehicles from this dealer, including my sister. They all recommended the sales department and said they would buy from them again, so who knows what’s going on.
Either way, despite the somewhat odd aesthetics, the CX-30 has a genuinely luxurious exterior. I know it doesn’t necessarily look like that from this picture, but the materials are top notch. I have a theory about modern car interiors. Why are so many automakers equipping their products with black interiors? Because their digital displays are filled with color and can pick up the slack in that department.
Last but definitely not least is the Kia Seltos. This could conceivably be a competitor to the CX-30. It’s not as premium, but it’s close. Now that I think about it, the Koreans have essentially become a budget Mazda competitor. Their products have a bit more verve than they used to. And reviewers have noticed that newer models have sportier driving dynamics than older products.
The Mazda guy said they got the idea for a two tone roof from Land Rover. But I’m thinking they really wanted to emulate the Koreans. Or maybe Nissan. You wouldn’t buy a Mazda with a “Nissan Package,” right?
Anyway, the Kia’s interior gets the job done and looks and feels better than the comparable Buick. With the available 1.6 liter turbo, this thing probably scoots just as well as the Mazda too. They’re both worth a look if you’re in the market. And if you know someone who is considering an Encore, have them look at one of these instead.
Cadillac could (could have?)own the luxury car market with any of their recent concept cars. But like always at GM…………lets just see how much more misery we can apply to what was once the car i aspired to own:(
If the badges were swapped between the Cadillac’s and the Kia’s, would anyone notice?
An Auto Show just with boring SUVs….. Miss the old times.
We’ll see what the lessees do, but I don’t personally find anything tempting about the Cadillac CT5. Reviews seem to converge on a good chassis ruined by a perplexingly mild engine and nothing else to distinguish it. A product released into an immediately decaying orbit.
The XT6 may be a nice Traverse, but the Lincolns outshine it so thoroughly that directing showroom traffic into the Cadillac dealer would seem to be a challenge.
I’m afraid I’ve missed the peak of Mazda sedans and hatchbacks. The outgoing generation had nice interior materials, better NVH than in the past, and widespread manual transmission availability. I liked the direction they were headed. Now they’ve pivoted to aspirational near-lux and manuals are gone from the 6 and limited to select upper trims on the 3. The 2.5 + 6spd auto is good as far as that format goes, but it is neither sporty nor luxurious. The turbo in the 6 and CX-5 sounds like a nice upgrade, but now you’re spending a lot for a ‘fun’ powertrain. Now that I think about it, they’ve filled the niche VW used to occupy, but without some of the appalling quality lapses.
Cadillac calls the XT6 a Traverse/Enclave analog, but it shares the shorter WB of the XT5/Blazer/Acadia.
I bought a 2019 CX-9; it has the turbo 2.5 liter 4. It’s a good motor and adequate (so long as one hits the “sport mode” button before, say, going to pass). That said, the car is so pretty and handles so nicely, that it begs for a hot V6. The idle is so clearly that of a 4, that it ruins something of the experience. Going upscale is about selling the sizzle AND some steak, too.
As to the “button blanks” on the Buick, am I missing something or would this have been far less noticeable if they had gathered the functional ones around the center, leaving the corners to be more like space fillers than button blanks?
It’s much worse than that: despite what the pushers of these illegal devices tout as “common sense” that a flashing light is obvs better, these illegal flash/blink/pulse devices actually degrade the speed and accuracy of following drivers’ reaction to your stepping on the brake—the opposite of what’s claimed. Vehicle light functions are uniform (with a few minor exceptions, like parking lights and rear turn signals can be either of two colors) for the very sound reason that this standardization makes the message unambiguous. Fool with the operation of the brake light and you force other drivers to spend extra time interpreting the nonstandard light before they can start to react. Maybe not a lot of extra time, but any slowdown in reaction to the brake light is not good.
Illegal? Yes, making the central brake light operate in anything but a steady-lit manner spoils the vehicle’s compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard № 108, and almost anyone doing so is violating federal law and exposing the owner of the car to ruinous liability if a crash goes to court and the car’s noncompliant, nonstandard brake light is even arguably a factor.
(“Almost anyone” means the private owner of a car after its first sale is not violating federal law by monkeying with their car’s safety equipment, because at that point cars are regulated by the state, not the feds. But it’s still super extra unwise to degrade the car’s safety And open a can of liability like this.)
I feel the same way about motorcycles with flashing headlights. They are annoying and probably not legal.
Formally known as “motorcycle headlamp modulators”. They’re legal; there are provisions in FMVSS 108 saying so. Not because they offer any crash avoidance benefit—they don’t—but because the world is run by those who show up and make noise, and motorcyclists tend to be better than average at making noise.
It’s tough to blame them; for decades, motorcycles got thrown table scraps: at best, they got half of a not-very-good car lighting system. Motorcyclists, legitimately sick to damn death of being mown down in the streets, had to go it alone with only guesses, assumptions, and fatuous marketeering as a guide. Thus did a lot of bad ideas get amplified in the echo chamber into received wisdom and, via advocacy groups doing their thing, baked into regulations. Blinking brake lights and headlamp “modulators”, for example; there are many more.
Now finally we are at a point where research is yielding good intelligence on what really works for effective motorcycle conspicuity, and technology now exists to make the lights to realize it. But North America doesn’t care a feather or a fig for vehicle lighting, so good ideas die of old age waiting to be implemented while bad ones make cash registers ring and the responsible(?!) agency goes “Tut tut…looks like it might rain”.
The button blanks are there so they don’t have to design and produce a different shaped panel for every iteration of ordered options. If the dealers at this show had provided fully loaded examples there presumably wouldn’t be anything to “blank” off. The tradeoff would be to either not offer options or to raise the cost and thus the price of the car. Or put literally everything on the touchscreen which everybody here claims to hate so…
Mercedes used to create different versions of the wood trim in their cars depending on which buttons were included so that there wouldn’t be any blanks. I can’t even imagine the costs and inventory issues this creates for the dozens of iterations. They don’t do that anymore for good reason as people already complain about the cost.
$26,000 (as in the case of the Buick I think) is no longer a large amount for a new car and hasn’t been for some time. At least not as long as enough people are willing to pay it to reach the manufacturer’s sales goals. It’s just like houses, if someone doesn’t want to pay it, I guess they’ll be in something else. But everyone always seems to have enough money for beer, tattoos, and the full cable TV package. 🙂
Looked at another way, what does any other car/CUV that costs more than $26,000 really do that the $26k Buick doesn’t? (No, I’m not really looking for an answer).
Is it really more than at most two iterations in this day and age? It’s not like there are several different climate controls available, and while a different plastic facia may add a penny of cost per unit, button blanks cost money too.
Really the whole necessity for button blanks is a failure of design unless they are deliberately used to shame buyers to purchase the option next time.
I have a 2015 Hyundai Sonata and there were about five different HVAC panels available that year. Manual control, Manual control with heated seats, automatic control, automatic control with heated seats, and automatic control with heated and cooled seats.
Yes and if you had heated and cooled seats and heated steering wheel then you had no blanks. No heated wheel then you got a blank. No wheel or cooled seats you’re up to three blanks. No heat or cool at all on the seats or wheel then that’s five blanks. It’s far easier and cheaper to add a universal blank than to create a separate panel that eliminates the space for the button.
Pardon me if I care more about what I spend my money on than the well-being of the company I generously gave it to.
Also I’ll never understand why the heated seat buttons aren’t located by the power seat controls. I find it very unintuitive having them located within the climate control unit.
What? C’mon. There’s nothing to gripe about here. It’s simple: with the car on but not running, the transmission in Park and your foot on the brake, you tap anywhere in the left 1/7 of the touch screen’s upper half, then navigate out of the Infotainment main menu, accept the terms and conditions, navigate to “Vehicle”, then “Vehicle Controls”, accept the warning, navigate to “Lifestyle and Comfort”, then a screen will come up telling you about the feature upgrade packages available to you on a subscribed, pay-per-use/pay-per-month basis. Don’t worry about those for now, scroll down to the bottom and tap “Maybe later”, then when the popup pops up asking if you’re sure, tap “Yes”. Then once the popup goes away, tap “Comfort”, then “Climate”, then “Heat and Cool”, then “Heat”, then “Seats”, then when the pictogram of the seats comes up, just tap which part of which front seat you want heated—tap once/yellow for low, twice/orange for medium, thrice/red for high—then tap “OK”, then when the popup comes up, tap how long you want the seats heated for (“7 minutes” or “Entire trip”) and tap “OK”. Your settings will take effect once you navigate back to the Infotainment main menu. Simple!
Excelent!
No blanks, different buttons. See pics. Heated seat only.
Heated and cooled seats. Both are auto climate.
Is it a rocker switch? Very cool. Or that’s hot! 🙂 What happens when you have auto climate but nothing in the seats? Are those then blanks? Or perhaps you always get something with auto climate. I guess I was thinking of the 2018 and newer perhaps, it looks completely different and does sometimes have blanks (buttons are silver, different format).
I was thinking that the age of ordered options was over. For that matter, isn’t the age of actual mechanical buttons over? It would almost be cheaper for buttons to be programmable on what they would operate. Any unused ones could be owner-programmed for things like a garage door or as a shortcut to a favored instrument display. Blank buttons could then be a feature and not a bug.
That’s the good thing about blanks. In many cars the blank can be replaced by a button that looks factory and controls a function. Or some people will re-use a button/switch from a different version in order to install an accessory.
I know it’s shallow but button blanks and fake quarter windows on a Cadillac are enough to call the whole thing hot garbage. That may pass on a Cruze but if Cadillac wants to ever be taken seriously again this isn’t it. The styling isn’t that bad but it’s dated looking(think 10 year old Infiniti) and anonymous. The only thing it has going for it is indeed the blue, I love seeing a modern car in not only a real color but in a color that isn’t of the pseudo-classy dark variety like midnight blue(or black with blue sparkles as I call it)
No comment on the emasculated SUVs
I am intrigued by the contrasting roof color phenomenon. It was last popular in, what, 1964? And will black vinyl be next? 🙂
Oh how perfect that would be, vinyl tops, luggage racks, aftermarket rear mounted spare tires… Starting to sound familiar?
Interestingly the Mazda’s black roof treatment is already looking like one of those awkward vinyl top treatments where the quarters don’t have prominent edges to terminate. It’s like a 71 Satellite with the full top.
I don’t get the ones in darker colors, but a white roof on a car or SUV in sunny climates makes sense and is practical as well. White reflects heat, keeping that black, heat retaining interior cooler on a summer day. Of course, with modern climate controls, it is not so much a needed item, but it does look good on some designs, and if one likes it, so be it.
After consulting the Cadillac owners manual for the CT5, I don’t see any button blanks. I think what you are calling a button blank are the silvery line of buttons with a line on it, which is actually identified by the symbol above it.
On the other hand, the Buick Encore’s control panel does not look anything like the owner’s manual.
Oh, that Kia interior is ugly! That screen, in fact any screen but that one especially, is over the top.
Teensy windows? Check.
Giant dash screen way up high? Check.
Ultra-Cringe® styling? Check.
Oh…wait.
Button blanks? Forget it.
That’s just tacky.
Or…
Oh, look.
More aggressive styling.
Yay.
Or…
Fine, we get the point!
Cars are bad.
We’ll take public transportation.
Could’ve just said so.
Now please make this stop.