Right after officially debuting at the Paris Motor Show as the North-American version, ATS now packs its bags to be sold in Europe, too. This car represents the GM Group’s new global strategy, which includes more flexibility from their brands, to expand the sales by adapting each one’s main focus to more car categories. To the US this means a whole new kind of Cadillac sedan, while the Europeans now can finally enjoy an authentic one in this price range. You can discover why this car is so nice by reading this article.
Although Cadillac is GM’s luxury brand, the latest ten years have shown that it’s impossible to survive by only relying at this status. If automakers such as Porsche entered the SUVs world, VW attempted entering the high luxury’s and Volvo has even reprojected its entire design philosophy, the luxury brands discovered that the only way of avoiding big losses with all those market changes was changing themselves, too. There were released lots of new crossovers, some sports cars and limited editions, there were sales started at countries inimaginable ten years ago, too, but the trick was not complete: another very effective way of attracting more customers is to leave the comfort zone and start to fight in lower price ranges. The German trio came up with new minivans and hatchbacks and widened the sedans’ options, but the North-American similars can relegate the first ones to their smaller-budget sisters Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford. The car seen on those pictures, therefore, is Cadillac’s very well-tasted attempt to fill a gap of their current line: although CTS was priced near 3-Series, C-Class and A4, it is much longer than any of them. In this category bigger size doesn’t mean a better car because most of those buyers look for a more casual style, achieved with some sporty features but specially a nimbler appearance, far from the opulent limousine-impression brought by a longer body.
However, Cadillac’s answer to this problem turned out much better than what was expected. They didn’t thought of downsizing CTS or Chevrolet Impala, and at the same time remembered what happened when they upgraded the third Opel Ascona for themselves as Cimarron at the 1980s. ATS deserved the entirely new Alpha platform, which surely will be shared with GM’s future big sedans. With that, one more time they enjoyed the good part of starting from zero: although it brings a considerable cost, it was possible to project a light and compact sedan, with lots of technology but specially the much more casual design lacked by its bigger brother – the new one doesn’t try to avoid the very angular lines, but gives a slightly smoother interpretation of them, completed by the headlights expanded through the hood and the third volume smaller than CTS’s. It remains a very elegant car, but without that visual seriousness, length, size and even size: the ATS project team states that this car weighs as much as a two-generation-old 3-Series. Nevertheless, a more casual car doesn’t imply a worse car at all: ATS boasts a very classy interior, composed of a more discreet way of repeating Chevrolet’s “dual cockpit” concept combined to several options of dashboard colors. As it was expected, this car matches its main competitors when it comes to trim levels but also in performance: there will be a 2.5 Ecotec, a 2.0 Ecotec Turbo and the 3.6 V6 used by the bigger sibling.