My favorite Cadillac salesman at my favorite dealership called me up yesterday afternoon to let me know that an XLR had arrived. Naturally, I was there within twenty minutes of the call. 
The car had just come off the truck, so it was dirty and had the plastic coverings all over it, but there was enough there for me to sit in and play with.
I'd seen one in real life at the LA Auto Show last January, but it was neat to get up close and personal with one of these things and notice all the little touches you can't see when the car is on a spinning platform.
The first thing that jumped out at me was that the instrument cluster is sort of 3-D, like the gauges in the Porsche Boxster. I'd seen many pictures of the instrument panel, but never noticed this. It looks REALLY sharp!
A lot of the little touches, like "XLR" scripts everywhere (including a vague "XLR" script on top of one of the headlight lenses), "BVLGARI" script surrounding the center button on the fob to match the script around the speedometer, a button underneath the trunk lid to power-close the trunk, a scrolling "XLR by Cadillac" message that appears in the DIC when the car starts--it just all adds to the utter hipness of this car.
The engine cover is beautiful, and makes the engine look much more massive than it is. I can imagine, though, that folks who have the good fortune of owning an XLR will spend just as much time washing the car under the hood as they will the rest of the car. It's too pretty under there to let it get dirty. B)
Unfortunately, this particular model was spoken for, so I couldn't drive it; BUT, I got to play with the nifty keyless push-button starter. The thing WORKS! You just put the fob in your pocket, sit in the car, and push the button. If you sit in the car without the fob, the DIC displays a message something like "No fob detected". Really slick.
The XLR is the most flawless car I've come across in a long time, sitting still at least. This particular dealership has 18 coming in, and all 18 are already sold! However, when you have that many pre-orders, chances are good that at least one of them will fall through, meaning that the dealership will have a demo for "serious buyers", or for guys like me who are in there all the time bugging them to let me drive one , so I suspect I'll get a chance to take one for a spin before long. FWIW, I'll definitely tell you folks about it if and when that happens.
The car had just come off the truck, so it was dirty and had the plastic coverings all over it, but there was enough there for me to sit in and play with.I'd seen one in real life at the LA Auto Show last January, but it was neat to get up close and personal with one of these things and notice all the little touches you can't see when the car is on a spinning platform.
The first thing that jumped out at me was that the instrument cluster is sort of 3-D, like the gauges in the Porsche Boxster. I'd seen many pictures of the instrument panel, but never noticed this. It looks REALLY sharp!
A lot of the little touches, like "XLR" scripts everywhere (including a vague "XLR" script on top of one of the headlight lenses), "BVLGARI" script surrounding the center button on the fob to match the script around the speedometer, a button underneath the trunk lid to power-close the trunk, a scrolling "XLR by Cadillac" message that appears in the DIC when the car starts--it just all adds to the utter hipness of this car.
The engine cover is beautiful, and makes the engine look much more massive than it is. I can imagine, though, that folks who have the good fortune of owning an XLR will spend just as much time washing the car under the hood as they will the rest of the car. It's too pretty under there to let it get dirty. B)
Unfortunately, this particular model was spoken for, so I couldn't drive it; BUT, I got to play with the nifty keyless push-button starter. The thing WORKS! You just put the fob in your pocket, sit in the car, and push the button. If you sit in the car without the fob, the DIC displays a message something like "No fob detected". Really slick.
The XLR is the most flawless car I've come across in a long time, sitting still at least.
This particular dealership has 18 coming in, and all 18 are already sold! However, when you have that many pre-orders, chances are good that at least one of them will fall through, meaning that the dealership will have a demo for "serious buyers", or for guys like me who are in there all the time bugging them to let me drive one , so I suspect I'll get a chance to take one for a spin before long. FWIW, I'll definitely tell you folks about it if and when that happens.
