2013 cadillac srx5/17/2023 Our fully-loaded tester had an expansive complement of tech gear, including heated and cooled seats, a dual-screen rear seat Blu Ray system, adaptive cruise control and, naturally, Cadillac’s infotainment suite known as CUE. The SRX makes a comfortable ally both in weekday commuting jaunts and passenger-hauling evening duties. The Caddy also weighs 60 pounds less than the Lex, so you can probably imagine which one will earn the stoplight kudos. That’s right in line with the RX350 F-Sport I had a while back, and that car’s 3.5-liter V6 was down 38 horses on this Caddy’s 3.6. Truthfully, I didn’t have much trouble comfortably beating that 18 mpg combined figure in my week with the SRX, averaging closer to 20 in mixed driving. That might not sound like much to write home about, but against the previous generation’s 14 city and 21 highway, the decision to switch the FWD architecture starts to look well-founded. Offered initially with a 3.0-liter naturally aspirated V6 or a quirky, Saab-sourced turbocharged 2.8-liter V6, 2012 brought a line-standard upgrade to the 3.6-liter V6 and 6-speed Hydra-Matic auto combination, good for 308 horsepower, 265 lb-ft, and on our 2013 AWD Premium tester, combined fuel economy of 18 mpg (16 city, 23 highway). Sales of the 2010 SRX nearly doubled the old car’s numbers in its best year, and steadily increased from there. What that change achieved was to help bring the SRX’s fuel economy up – way up – and prices down relative to the previous generation, a move that supercharged sales compared to its CTS-based predecessor. GM’s Theta platform, originally formed for the Saturn Vue and Pontiac Torrent/Chevy Equinox twins, was comprehensively upgraded to become Theta Premium, underpinning the new SRX and the now rare-as-hens-teeth Saab 9-4X. not Internet car enthusiasts), Cadillac modeled the new SRX in 2010 on FWD-based underpinnings, similar to the Camry duds the class best-seller was riding atop. To help their funky wagon-turned-SUV appeal to more of the types of shoppers that buy such vehicles (i.e. And yet, despite all of this, the first-gen SRX couldn’t quite cash in on the white-hot luxury SUV segment with the vigor of its closest competitors, namely the Lexus RX, which sold three to one over the Caddy in its best years. It handled with aplomb thanks to a low-ish center of gravity and its competent CTS underpinnings. Even if the Northstar wasn’t your cup of tea, the DOHC V6 was capable of hauling the SRX around with acceptable poke. A leather-lined cocoon with a 255-hp V6 or 320-hp Northstar V8 driving the rear wheels as god intended – or all four, if you insisted. Sure, we call them SUVs and crossovers now instead of station wagons, but let’s call a spade a spade: the original SRX was a CTS sportwagon before there was a CTS sportwagon.Īnd boy, was it a great wagon. It was an honest-to-goodness, rear-wheel-drive station wagon for the country that loves its station wagons. It wasn’t an executive car formed from the rib of European upper-middle-management sedans. That first SRX was an American car if there ever was one. That’s probably true – but I think the original SRX doesn’t get its fair share of the credit for changing perception among the buying public. Most car experts will point to 2003’s CTS sedan as the golden boy of the new Art and Science Cadillac – the one that started the wave of resurgence the brand is still riding high on. Suffice it to say, American buyers lost interest in Cadillac nearly as fast as GM’s upper management did. I’ll gloss over the brand’s fall from grace in the late 1970s, as it’s been covered ad nauseum by journalists and economists alike. If you were somebody in Middle America, you owned a Cadillac, and if you didn’t – then you weren’t. Look at Cadillac – for decades leading up to the 1970s, a Cadillac was the car –the only car – to own in America. Not even the car industry is immune from such trending. Danish furniture, chukka boots and typewriters are all experiencing a confounding resurgence of late – someone specializing in the sale of all three would earn a tidy living for himself. Eventually, everything comes back into fashion.
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