Evelyn Reynolds

It only seems as if Cadillac has been struggling in the luxury compact segment since Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded the city of Detroit in 1701. It hasn’t been quite that long, of course, but it has been nearly 40 years since General Motors’s luxury brand introduced the Cimarron to take on BMW’s and Audi’s compacts. The gussied-up Chevrolet Cavalier was such a flop that it’ll forever be on the list of legendary automotive embarrassments along with Ford’s Edsel, Pontiac’s Aztek, and the Aston Martin Cygnet.

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Bringing up the C-word in a review of the 2020 Cadillac CT4 may seem unfair. The Cimarron was such a debacle that Caddy licked its wounds for nearly 30 years, surrendering the small-luxury-car segment to BMW, Mercedes, and Audi. In 2013 it finally jumped back in with the rear-wheel-drive ATS, and that’s really where the story of the CT4 begins. Cadillac says its latest, smallest, and least expensive sedan is all new, but that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s more like a heavily refreshed ATS.
New Mission, Same Old Chassis
While the ATS attempted to go head to head with the BMW 3-series and Mercedes C-class compacts, Cadillac says it is ceding that role of the new and larger CT5, which replaces the CTS. The CT4 has been reassigned to take on the front-wheel-drive-based subcompacts from the premium brands such as the Audi A3, BMW 2-series Gran Coupe, and Mercedes A-class.

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Cadillac

That makes the CT4 the only rear-drive sedan in the class. Its chassis is carried over from the ATS, along with the majority of its exterior dimensions, including an unchanged 109.3-inch wheelbase. Squint, and it still looks a lot like its predecessor, but Cadillac says all of its sheetmetal is new, and it has grown 4.4 inches in overall length. Its base powertrain is also familiar. Luxury, Premium Luxury, and Sport trims get the same 237-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter with eight-speed automatic transmission used in the base CT5.
Cadillac has shelved the 3.6-liter V-6 as the upgrade engine. In its place is a turbocharged 2.7-liter four-cylinder paired with a 10-speed automatic, a combination also used in other GM models, including the Chevrolet Silverado. Rated at 310 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque, it’s a $2500 option on Premium Luxury models and standard in the CT4-V, where it’s bumped up to 325 horsepower and 380 pound-feet. Those are great numbers for this class. Cadillac expects about half of CT4 buyers to opt for all-wheel drive, which adds about 130 pounds to the car and is available across the range.
Dynamically Deficient
Equipped with the turbocharged 2.7-liter—which wears a 450T badge—and rear-wheel drive, our Premium Luxury test car had no shortage of power. Its considerable torque plateaus quickly at just 1800 rpm, so there’s no need to rev it toward its redline. The 10-speed automatic is happy to keep it in its torquey sweet spot. There are paddle shifters, but you’ll use them only for fun, not out of frustration. This is also the only car in this class that can do a John Force-style burnout through three gears. Cadillac says it can sprint to 60 mph in 5.0 seconds, just 0.2 seconds behind the CT4-V and a significant 1.2 seconds ahead of Cadillac’s claims for the base 2.0-liter. That’s quicker than the A3 and Mercedes A220 but in line with the BMW 228i Gran Coupe, which has only 228 horsepower.

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Cadillac

Unfortunately, this large four-cylinder idles with the clatter of a diesel and is alarmingly boomy through the top half of the tachometer. And it sounds like John Deere—not John Force—tuned the exhaust system. Despite a noise-cancellation system and Cadillac “enhancing” the engine’s sounds through the audio speakers, it’s more noise than note. Sound enhancement is paired with the vehicle settings. Tour is the default, Sport is nearly unbearable, and then there’s Stealth. You want Stealth. Or earplugs.
Its stop-start function also isn’t as smooth as it should be, but its EPA ratings of 20 mpg city and 30 mpg highway are in line with the class. And we averaged 26 mpg in mixed driving in Los Angeles, beating its combined rating by 2 mpg.
According to Dave Schmidt, the CT4 lead development engineer, the structure is stiffer than before and cabin isolation is improved, but there’s still some work to do. It isn’t particularly quiet inside, and the CT4’s pedals vibrate on some road surfaces. Only the CT4-V gets the latest version of GM’s Magnetic Ride Control, and it’s missed on our Premium Luxury test car, which rides comfortably but is a touch floaty.

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Cadillac

When pushed in the hills, however, a little float becomes underdamped and imprecise. Mid-corner bumps upset the chassis, and there’s more body roll than expected. It’s competent at an easy, swift pace, especially in fast, smooth sweepers, but it’s not much fun. We applaud Cadillac for mounting the battery in the trunk to improve the CT4’s weight distribution, but the all-season tires keep the limits low, and despite the rear-drive layout, it understeers reliably. For those looking for better handling, CT4 Sport models get firmer dampers, which may improve matters.
Smarter Cabin
The new interior is a huge improvement over the ATS’s cabin. It’s not only more attractive, it’s also easier to live with and uses the space inside better. Cadillac’s experiment with touch-sensitive panels instead of buttons and knobs is over. The normal switchgear and controls in the CT4 work better and are more intuitive. The new seats are soft but proved comfortable during a 250-mile day. It also has one of the roomiest rear seats in its class, but that’s not saying much. Legroom is still tight.
All CT4s come with an 8.0-inch infotainment touchscreen, and Cadillac says a larger screen is on the way. Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and an onboard Wi-Fi hotspot are standard, and the CT4 is fitted with GM’s new digital vehicle platform architecture, which is faster and accepts over-the-air updates. A full complement of driver aids is available, but most are not offered on the base Luxury model and are optional extras on the Premium Luxury. Caddy’s self-driving SuperCruise is promised for later this year.

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Cadillac

Prices start at $33,990 for a Luxury and $38,490 for the Premium Luxury, putting the CT4 right on top of its German rivals. With the optional powertrain and a long list of other packages that added everything from navigation and wireless phone charging to automatic emergency braking and a head-up display, our test car reached a shocking $48,065. And that price didn’t include a sunroof or a power-opening trunk. And the CT4’s hood is held up with a prop rod instead of struts, which just seems like penny pinching. There’s also the matter of badging. Cadillac says the numbers highlight its peak torque output measured in newton-meters. With the 2.7-liter engine, it’s branded a 450T, but the engine’s torque calculates to 475 Nm. That mistake could be solved with a heat gun, some dental floss, and 10 minutes of your time.
Forty years since the Cimarron dragged Cadillac’s reputation through a Chevy showroom, the brand is still struggling to achieve small-car excellence. The CT4 offers solid performance, more interior space than most of its competitors, and its interior design is a leap forward, but it’s sabotaged by refinement deficiencies and disappointing dynamics. It is a good small sedan, but in Premium Luxury guise, it falls short of its more refined and fun-to-drive German rivals.

Specifications

Specifications
2020 Cadillac CT4 450T
VEHICLE TYPE front-engine, rear- or all-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan
BASE PRICE $40,990
ENGINE TYPE turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 16-valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injectionDisplacement 166 in3, 2727 cm3Power 310 hp @ 5600 rpmTorque 350 lb-ft @ 1800 rpm
TRANSMISSION 10-speed automatic
DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 109.3 inLength: 187.2 inWidth: 71.5 inHeight: 56.0 inPassenger volume: 90 ft3Trunk volume: 11 ft3Curb weight (C/D est): 3650–3800 lb
PERFORMANCE (C/D EST) 60 mph: 5.0–5.2 sec100 mph: 11.7–11.9 sec1/4 mile: 13.5–13.7 secTop speed: 140 mph
EPA FUEL ECONOMY Combined/city/highway: 23–24/20/28–30 mpg

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If you could see me riding in the rear seat of the Bentley Flying Spur, which I’m doing right now, you’d have every reason to assume I’m rich. You’d be half right. Yes, I have a chauffeur by the name of Dave. But despite appearances, I’m not actually rich—just Rich, the regular person. And Dave […] More

From the March 1994 issue of Car and Driver.
If the $226,450 price of the 1994 Bentley Turbo R seems a bit, well, extravagant in this era of frugality, a short tour of Rolls-Royce’s assembly plant in Crewe, England, will soon put things in perspective.
The factory where Bentleys are built employs both space-age technology and olde-worlde craftsmanship. There are gleaming clean rooms where engines are assiduously assembled to extremely close tolerances, and there are workshops where craftsmen go to extraordinary lengths to shape and polish veneered dashboards and to cut and stitch flawless hides.

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It is precisely all that diligent craftsmanship that helps offset any financial misgivings prospective owners might have, even knowing there are several arguably better cars to be had for less than half the Bentley’s price. Of course, better is a relative term. After all, the Bentley Turbo R will propel itself from rest to 60 mph in 6.4 seconds, and through the quarter-mile in 14.9 seconds at 93 mph. In our hands, the car also ran a 146-mph top speed, and stopped from 70 mph in just 171 feet.

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Dick KelleyCar and Driver

These are more than modest accomplishments for a five-seat luxury car weighing more than 5300 pounds. And now, after an extensive corporate reorganization that has resulted in significant new product-development programs, the 1994 Bentley Turbo R is also better equipped, more refined, and more efficient. The engines have new cylinder heads with larger valves and manifolds that flow more freely, and the motor electronics have been optimized in the area of turbo-boost control and transmission-shift energy management. Plus the car’s suspension has been carefully recalibrated.

HIGHS: Ample power, glorious craftsmanship, genuine exclusivity.

On the other hand, the car is also another year older. Although the company could argue that it is one year better, the unavoidable side effects of its old design are readily apparent. Climbing into the car, for example, we are reminded how uncommonly high the floors of these cars are. Likewise, the seat and windshield are at an elevation not unlike that of a pickup truck. This is what Bentley calls “a commanding driver’s position.”
And it’s true. You get a lofty perch and a good view of the road ahead. But the driver’s seat is so high that people with long torsos will find their scalps uncomfortably close to—or even touching—the wool headliner, and their view of overhead traffic lights neatly cut off by the roof where it meets the windshield. A retreat to the rear seat will not provide much relief. The space back there, while adequate for passengers of average size, does not compare favorably to that found in, say, a Chrysler New Yorker. (For more space, try the Turbo RL model with a wheelbase that is four inches longer.) Fortunately, the ambiance provided by the elegant wood veneers, the impossibly even-grained leather, the lambs-wool rugs, and the other lavish interior appointments go a long way to negate any niggles about space.

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Dick KelleyCar and Driver

To set the raffish Bentley apart from its stuffy stablemate Rolls-Royce, the Turbo R’s cockpit boasts features like a tachometer and a gear selector that has been moved from the steering column to a much sportier position in the center console. The selector is a switch rather than a lever that sends electronic instructions down to the four-speed automatic transmission as it slides effortlessly from position to position. But it looks the part, and the transmission now has a shift strategy that coordinates engine and transmission functions electronically so that engine torque is reduced briefly during shifts for smoother driving.

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Dick KelleyCar and Driver

The engine now features electronic transient boost control, which provides a brief period of high turbo boost during the initial stages of full-throttle acceleration. This is of particular value during passing maneuvers, when the big Bentley steams by slower traffic with surprising vehemence. At full throttle, the car belies its size and weight, pulling through each gear on an unrelenting wave of torque.

LOWS: King Kong price, lusty thirst, debatable value.

With this much punch, the Bentley obviously needs help from the rest of the chassis to stay on the road in corners. So the car’s suspension is more firmly sprung than lesser Bentleys and Rollers, and has more stringent roll control. It also has Bentley’s adaptive ride control, with three levels of damping firmness for a ride that is poised and fairly taut without feeling harsh.

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Dick KelleyCar and Driver

The refinements have eliminated nearly all of the structural creaks that we’d noticed on poor surfaces in earlier Bentley Turbos. A self-leveling system operates at the rear, and you can set up a series of front-end pogo-ing motions with a couple of well-timed dab at the throttle before the rear jacks up to restore the car’s composure.
Considering its size and role, the Turbo R exhibits a good compromise between comfort and control—an achievement worth applauding even after a decade of development—and it can be driven with enthusiasm while retaining a fair sense of what is going on at the contact patches. The steering is also new for ’94, and it feels much livelier and more naturally weighted than the Rolls version, although it’s still somewhat remote by contemporary car standards.

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Dick KelleyCar and Driver

The brakes leave little to be desired, but we were disappointed when the brake pedal refused to return to its resting position after our braking tests, causing the brake lights to remain on and requiring us to rig up a firmly tensioned bungee cord to restore normal function. We also noticed that at idle the big V-8 produces a discernible bobbing motion, and that it is quite vocal when asked for maximum output. Our car also shook the front passenger seat significantly when it was unoccupied.

THE VERDICT: If you can afford one, don’t let us stop you.

Nevertheless, our microcassette recorder played back our verbal notes with remarkably little rumble and roar, so perhaps the crew at Crewe knows which frequencies to kill and which to ignore. They’ve certainly done a convincing job of making the Bentley perform like a modern car while incorporating the traditional trappings needed to justify the enormous price of ownership. The challenge now is to attract enough wealthy customers to sustain profitable operations. And that will be a considerable challenge indeed.
Counterpoints
Everyone seems enthralled with the Turbo R’s unusual combination of performance and weight, as if weight were a property of some intrinsic virtue. I think the best aspect of this car is its terrific paint job. The color is deep and rich and the finish is uncontaminated by even a trace of murkiness or orange peel. The hood reflects every detail of the drifting clouds overhead, as if it were a flawlessly tinted mirror. There are faster luxury sedans for less money, but if your hangup is paint, there’s no substitute for the Bentley’s hand­-rubbed finish. —Csaba Csere
Is my judgment clouded by bourgeois awe, or is this actually a pretty decent car? Rollers and Bentleys have never been terribly good at doing the things car magazine editors like doing. Yet, if I’m not mistaken, I enjoyed driving this zillion-pound tank at least half as much as I enjoyed arriving in it. It goes and stops as well as many good sport coupes weighing half as much. Its demeanor at 146 mph is as imperturbable as any Mercedes. It corners flatter than most 2.5-ton vehicles I’ve driven. And my neighbors just died! (I guess we’d better not discount the bourgeois awe factor). —Frank Markus
What I like to do with a Bentley Turbo is crawl along a freeway at about 50 mph, then floor it. The sensation is of an old 707 at liftoff, and the sound of this huge, ancient engine issues forth a great deal of fury. There is just nothing like a Rolls. A lot of people will say that’s the problem, and they have their points because it is a dinosaur. But what a dinosaur! What other car has a choice of horns? Or a hood the length of an ICBM? Or leather seats as hard as saddles? Of course it makes no sense to most people, but the Sultan of Brunei and the Duke of Kent are not regular Joes. —Steve Spence

Specifications

Specifications
1994 Bentley Turbo R
VEHICLE TYPE front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan
PRICE AS TESTED $226,450 (base price: $226,450)
ENGINE TYPE turbocharged and intercooled pushrod 16-valve V-8, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injectionDisplacement 412 in3, 6748 cm3Power 360 hp @ 4300 rpmTorque 460 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm
TRANSMISSION 4-speed automatic
CHASSIS Suspension (F/R): control arms/semi-trailing armBrakes (F/R): 11.1-in vented disc/10.9-in discTires: Avon Turbo Speed CR27, 255/60ZR-16
DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 120.5 inLength: 207.4 inWidth: 74.3 inHeight: 58.5 inPassenger volume: 92 ft3Trunk volume: 12 ft3Curb weight: 5316 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 6.4 sec100 mph: 17.7 sec130 mph: 44.2 secRolling start, 5–60 mph: 7.0 secTop gear, 30–50 mph: 3.1 secTop gear, 50–70 mph: 4.3 sec1/4 mile: 14.9 sec @ 93 mphTop speed (drag limited): 146 mphBraking, 70–0 mph: 171 ftRoadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.74 g
C/D FUEL ECONOMY Observed: 10 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY City/highway: 10/16 mpg

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