CTS-V Possible Next car??
My wife and I have been doing some pulls and while each is distinctive, the SRT is very distinctively American. Our C63 is the closest thing to a German muscle car I have driven in a long time.
The Best of Mercedes & AMG


I owned and sold two E55s' plus an S55. They are great cars. Power delivery is smoother with a little more bottom end grunt with the MB. Top end of the Cadillac is more aggressive.
I just bought a 2011 CTS V 2 months ago. It is a manual transmission car with Recarro seats, back up camera, PDC and no sunroof. I took it to the 1/8 mile and ran a slightly faster time than my MB. The cars are pretty similar stock.
The reasons I think the Cadillac is better, revolve around dependabillity. The car, like most, have some common issues but the Cadillac's issues are minimal and easy to overcome. Rattling supercharger is fixed with 1 hour labor and $75. The squeeking seats are something everyone complains about but mine are fine. Clicking wheels are the other common problem but that is cured by cleaning and lubing the contact surface between the wheel and rotor and torqueing the updated lugnuts down (my car doesn't do this).
So you can get a car that is just as fast / faster, newer styling, newer electronics, handles way better, made in America and can be bought new for $65,000 and used starting around $37,000-$40,000.
The really cool part of this car is the ease of modding. $240 Cold air intake, $100 pulley for the supercharger, bigger Idler pulley (optional) to wrap the belt more on the pulley $100, tune $400, HP Tuner (optional) $650, labor around $500 (easy DIY).
With these basic mods, many are seeing 550 whp with the manual trans.
I took my car with this setup to the 1/8 mile track and ran 7.5x at 97 mph.
Lot's of them are running 10's in the quarter with a few more basic mods.
Heads, cam, valve springs, blower port, lower pulley, heat exchanger, ice box will get you near 700 hp.
Nitrous is an option too.
Take it a few steps farther with a whipple and it gets better. Here is a video of the fastest one I know of.
The comments about reliability are spot on. There have been plenty of comments about well-built AMG's and some not so. I have buddies that have heavly modded CTS-V's and they just don't break. I've put a combined 165,000 miles on our SRT's, and they have been totally bulletproof.
Our C63 is an awesome performing car. It looks great and is really solid. How it holds together going forward will be very interesting. I suppose it's part of a great experiment to see if these AMG cars is a direction I want to take.
In the end, there is a lot of great machinery out there. The gaps between them all is getting closer.
Best bang for the buck in this class IMO, until the newer AMGs drop in price.
My goal was simple. Buy the fastest and nicest car I could afford that could be tweaked without spending a fortune just to keep up with the competition.
The last few years the American cars have been making some nice improvements, I don't know how they'll hold up over a few years, but I do like the idea about not having to pay an import tax when your modding.
The leather that supports you, the AMG badges that you see before entering in the car, The V8 Kompressor screaming come at me bro, the quad exhaust saying you want a piece of me? The roar letting everyone know that the quiet kid in the class is a thug, the Star symbol that reminds you that you are in a Benz, the raising of car and the lowering of car with a button and the look on your face when you realize that you are doing triple digits speed and the look on your face when you get impounded for doing 50 over the posted limit well that sucks.
Until the day I get that feeling from other cars I don't think I'd be able to get it. Also there is a reason why German cars are called Luxury so is Cadillac but I do not consider american cars luxury.
Also I've never sat in a Cadillac V only in Escalades and I liked those but they definitely have an established market.
That's just me.

E63 Biturbo, UPD Cold Air induction kit, UPD performance crank pulley and UPD adjustable rear suspension with ride height adjustment.
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Also I don't see the colored stitching either. How comfortable are the Recaros? I'd assume they are firmer than the standard seats? What do you think of the price on it? I'm sure you researched them alot, if I could get it for 40K would that be a good deal?



