Cadillac now has a competitive product line, but branding and image issues haunt it.
General Motors will add 200 jobs the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant, the result of a $44.5 million investment to build a Logistics Optimization Center. A new 400,000-square-foot building will be built next to plant to sequence and assemble parts to make manufacturing more flexible at the site.
The plant currently builds the Cadillac ATS and the three Cadillac CTS models – sedan, coupe and wagon, as well as high-performance V-Series models of each. A revised CTS is due this fall. The next-generation Chevrolet Camaro due in 2015 will also be assembled at Lansing.
GM said that lower capital investment and improved production efficiencies were factors that caused it to move the Camaro from what was its home plant in Oshawa, Ontario since a successful fifth generation revival occurred in 2009.
In GM’s latest attempt to make Cadillac a global brand, it is increasing the size of the CTS while toning down its distinctive styling that made it successful in the U.S. but is thought too radical for offshore customers of German and Japanese luxury cars. This no doubt will set off an interminable and pointless debate about whether Cadillac can catch BMW; the answer of which is not any time soon as it is a decades long task.
The third-generation CTS sedan is based on the rear-drive architecture of the competent compact ATS sport sedan, but in a larger mid-size package that starts production this fall in Lansing, Michigan. A range engines and transmission will be available, including the all-new Cadillac Twin-Turbo engine and GM’s first eight-speed automatic transmission in top of the line Vsport (sic) models.
(Read AutoInformed on Next Gen Chevy Camaro to Be Built in the Lansing, Michigan Plant and First Look – 2014 Cadillac CTS Mid-Size Sedan and Cadillac Twin-Turbo Debuts in All-New 2014 CTS Sedan)
