2009 Cadillac CTS-V: First Drive

Only a couple of minutes into the briefing and already things are going bad. “The supercharged engine doesn’t trail off up to the 6,200 RPM redline, so on the track, you may find yourself hitting the rev limiter once or twice,” says a Cadillac spokesperson, preparing us for our first foray onto the track at Monticello. I’m sheepishly trying to sink further into the leather couch, hoping none of the elderly car journalists sitting around me brings up the fact that, half an hour ago, I was bouncing off the rev-limiter at full throttle in third and fourth gear, passing all of them on the wrong side of a two-lane mountain road. I guess that Cadillac considers the 556 HP, 191 MPH 2009 Cadillac CTS-V so fast that drivers — even professional car reviewers — won’t be able to fully exploit its engine on the road. The thing is, they’re wrong. More »