2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing - Jay Leno's Garage

it's just nice having a manual you know in the same way it's nice to just open the window instead of turning on the exit i mean i like great american road cars and this is one of you got a manual transmission you can take your family you've got enough horsepower to keep you entertained and enough practicality to keep the family happy you know [Music] well in the episode of jaylon's garage a car featuring today a 2022 cadillac ct5v series blackwing this car has a v8 engine 668 horsepower and the most amazing part is a manual transmission which is fantastic you know if you had told me 25 years ago in the future lamborghinis ferraris mercedes benz corvettes they'll all be automatic the only high performance car you can get with a stick is a cadillac oh you're crazy get out of here it just seemed uh unbelievable but you know you have a legitimate competitor here to the bmws and all the european sedans and it's american-made i have a 2012. i love it mine is a six-speed 540 horsepower just a fantastic car basically it's a four-seater corvette which is sort of the similar thing here mine was the second series this is the fourth series uh i've got a gentleman here who's the chief engineer for cadillac uh this is what i like about american manufacturing now they're all engineers you know when i was growing up it was a gt package you've got wheels and stripes and you've got a cartoon character on the door but it's just basically a sedan uh even mary barra the president of gm is an engineer mark royce all the guys certain nurburgring every weekend just beating the hell out of these things trying to get them to perform and it's great to see i mean uh american cars now i think are more than equal in many cases better than a lot of the the european stuff we have sort of a complex about that you know and cadillac has completely changed its image you know it used to be well you know what a cadillac from the 60s was now you've got a true high performance sedan that is really a lot of fun to drive and don't knock it till you try it we'll take it out the road you'll see what i'm talking about let me bring in the gentleman who is the chief engineer for a cadillac tony roma tony come on in nice to see you my friend nice to see you too cool we worked together like 16 years ago on my toronado and a bunch of other projects and so this is the crowning glory nice job so is this basically the engine from the zr1 core the last generation zr1 corvette right this is very related to what we used in the z06 right a corvette from the seventh generation and we used a similar version in the uh cts-v the last generation of our larger sedan so this one we've gotten a little more power out of it this is 668 horsepower so it's the highest right i've ever certified it but is this seven speed or six speed six speed a six speed transmission okay uh was that a hard sell for the kind of they always call them the bean counters if they even have those guys anymore to go with a manual transmission i mean nobody does it it's just for enthusiasts because let's face it in the world we live in dual clutches can shift faster but this is more driver involvement this is more fun how much of a percentage of cadillac is the manual transmission so you asked if it was a hard sell honestly yes you know it's it's a lot of money to certify and the manufacturing complexity and all those things what really sold our management a bunch of us enthusiasts really understood that there is a segment of the market you mentioned it a second ago most other manufacturers have walked away from manual transmissions and if you're a real driving enthusiast the engagement you get from that you know act of shifting and choosing which gear and you know just a little bit more involved in the process these days like you said the cars aren't faster so this car unfortunately is not faster the 10-speed auto is just incredible it shifts so fast the gear splits are so small so we expected it to be around 25 of the volume and in our pre-orders we we've been taking orders on this car for about three months and we're over 50 right now wow that's great yeah which is incredible so and the great thing about a manual transmitter it is the best anti-carjacking device you can get because most of these stupid carjackers can't drive a stick don't know how to drive they get in and they just run away from the car so it's the greatest i'll bet your insurance is probably lower with emanuel because because the theft rate is lower they look and they go oh it's got a stick let's get out of here you know you know to me i think it's great because the cadillac has just changed its image because you know everybody is you know partial build is a 911 and they they can't make a car above the 911 because the fans go nuts harley davidson makes a v twin that sounds like this and they go to you know i credit bmw for coming out with their inline which and chain drive with getting away from chef you know you take a chance and you just try something new and that's what i love about cadillac how the brand has reinvented itself i mean people that drive these are just amazed at how fast they are and how well they handle and you always say oh it's bmw and bmw is an excellent car obviously but you've got a more than worthy competitor here and it's pretty amazing and you're about what 20 30 grand cheaper oh yeah at least yeah yeah yeah so give us some more facts here uh there's no two-door available right that's four-door no this is the only body style we make in the ct-5 right now uh we get a lot of questions about wagons i love the wagon we used to make a coupe the wagon was cool oh the wagon was awesome yeah i'm a card-carrying member of the wagon fan right but you know right now the the suv market is kind of eating the sedan market that's not a secret um so the fact that we continue to make these sedans i think is a testament to what cadillac wants to be and and we want to be relevant in this segment like you mentioned and we really have reinvented ourselves it's almost 20 years we've been doing v-series and i've been involved since the beginning i've been lucky enough to be part of this and um it's been a great ride to represent kind of america and yeah and build cars that we want to drive so and the thing is i predict this will be a collector car because sadly this is the last generation of big v8 high horsepower until we go electric but i think the value of these will increase especially the ones with the manual they'll be the ones that the real enthusiasts will drive i mean it's nice that they recognize the fact that because i've driven the dual clutch and it's just i mean it's so quick but there is a level of involvement here and you you enjoy yourself you know all the fun is between 40 and 120 maybe and even 120 is pushing it most people it's zipping around through the road just having a good time going through the gear you know i i'm sort of tired of cars that go 280. well you can't do that anywhere you just go to jail you're in prison you lose your license for the rest of your life you're going 280 on a public road so you just have somebody that's fun and you can really enjoy i imagine a lot of the big changes since mine in the 2012 are probably in suspension and um yeah this this car is the the body structure the things you'll notice when you drive it are incredibly stiffer we've worked a lot on that to get the the dynamics and how quick it responds when it turns these new michelin tires are just incredible this is the first time we've offered carbon ceramic brakes these are rambo ccb brakes they're 404 millimeter rotors they're ginormous these are the biggest breaks ever on a catalog yeah that we've ever used for sure they're huge um it's got an electronic limited slip differential in the rear now which really helps for stability and and traction yeah we talked about the six speed there's a lot of enhancements even to the transmission in the clutch and the driveline since 2012 little things we've done for refinement the engine is just it's just incredible it's a work of art really we benchmarked a lot of our competitors including like ferrari for responsiveness you know how how fast the engine makes torque when you hit the throttle and you know as of my knowledge this is still the fastest responding engine of anything we've ever benchmarked you touch the throttle and it makes torque like instantly and that's what you get from 6.2 liters with a supercharger we've got our built-in performance data recorder you can see the small camera so it puts the telemetry from the computer up on the screen and you you can do that or not so even if you're just going down a nice mountain road you can record what's going on and get the audio and all that integrated yeah this is this have the valet record mode like yep which is the funniest thing you can see these on youtube what it is is when you put it in valet mode you give it to the valet it automatically records everything the valet is doing in the car and you see guys go out and just burning rubber doing awful things to your car and they deny and of course you play it back but it's it's a good feature did you guys bristle when people call it a four-door corvette i think that's an obvious comparison i mean no i wouldn't say we bristle there well because basically it is it's just a more quote sensible version you can i mean the fun of having performance cars is sharing it with someone you know you know i got to drive one of those uh bac monos which is fun but you're by yourself you can't share it with anybody i mean that's that's half the fun is seeing your buddy's face light up when you you know put it all the way to the floor you know well let's open the hood let's see this engine sure 6.2 liter direct injected intercooled uh supercharger 668 horsepower right yep got the tower to tower brace for chassis stiffness yeah this is uh i always like these this is always i remember just being you know when you when you're 14 years old there are certain things just impress you and i remember with the ford falcon when they raced it they called this the monte carlo bar because they raced the ford falcon with a 289 at monte carlo and i thought ooh my mom has a falcon you know i got to get one of these monte carlo bars here but yeah just an incredible piece of bracing there looks like a car written motor oh come on it says cadillac it does say cadillac on it and i'm a huge cadillac fan you know i've got a 1918 cadillac a 25 cadillac you know it's one of those brands that's had the soda up and down when i look at my 1918 cadillac it's got dual water pumps on each side it's a v8 everybody thinks henry ford invented the v8 but cadillac had it 15 years before they did right and it is a it's just an engineering marvel it's really what made cadillac it's smooth and you know and everybody else had four cylinders and models and it's just a fabulous car to drive four wheel brakes which sounds silly now but in 1925 that was a huge deal you know so it's it there's a great history there so so in seriousness um this engine was developed with this application in mind right so i know you know people call it a four-door corvette and like we said that that is an obvious comparison but we really did have a hand in specifying this engine so it was also used in the corvette but um there were a lot of the specifications for how smooth like i mentioned how fast it responds all those things so it really was engineered with this in mind so that's a little bit of bristling well it's just it's explaining the choices no no it's great it's it's great it's great i like that i mean i just like the fact that they've decided to build a sports car because i imagine that's a huge leap for a company you're used to building a standard of luxury and you know brocade interior and all that kind of stuff and then you make the decision we're going to go for a different we have a market we own it we own the segment now let's try to get a new i mean that to me that takes a lot of guts to make that because a lot of companies don't they just keep building the same thing and then they hey i'm out of business what happened you know so no i think it's great i think it's great okay let's shut this and uh now let's go around to the trunk see what the back of this looks like so it's got active exhaust and uh the new integration for this car is the valves are variable so before we either had them opened or closed so you didn't have much flexibility but now our engineers are able to kind of move them for the different modes as you go from tour to track to sport right so it really does give a different sound character you'll you'll hear all that when you drive it yep back seats flip down so if you want to use it for for hauling anything you know it's not the most practical car in the world but it's better than uh is there a spread tire no no no spare tire yeah right you get that little can of w ready whip or whatever it is that's right [Music] i've never seen one of those work but that's that's but that's every manufacturer yeah that's down under the load floor very nice what does it weigh do you know it's right around four thousand pounds okay yeah that's right in the market yeah yeah it's actually uh considerably lighter than most of our competitors now that they've all moved to all-wheel drive so we're actually yeah cadillac's the lightweight now well that's right this is rear-wheel drive isn't it which i understand why you'd want it maybe in the northeast before but i love rear-wheel drive i mean just for steering and handling yep and that's that's exactly why we we chose to stay this way because if you want a precise nimble handling car those aren't attributes you normally use when you're describing an all-wheel drive car right they go really fast they're they're great but yeah is this carbon fiber or carbon carbon look no that's real carbon now they have kosher style it's not really kosher it's real carbon fiber and the seat back is as well which is just gorgeous and the little v accent in it um that's obviously an option but it's just gorgeous that's what i like that's what i mean about not having just a stripe and wheel package it doesn't look like carbon fiber it is carbon it is carbon fiber because you get to go why have it if it's not right yeah you're just trying to fool people so one of the new changes this year you can see the steering wheel it's got direct access to what we call v mode and the rocker switch on the right hand side i like the sporty steering wheel everyone you have all your controls right on the wheel here yep so this is new for the ct5v blackwing you can get access to v-mode which is configurable for the exhaust sound that you like the different um shift patterns and things and then on the right hand side the rocker switch lets you have quick access to the different performance traction modes so if you're on track and you decide you know hey i want to do my warm-up lap in mode three and as you get comfortable you want to click your way up you don't have to fumble around for switches or anything so what do you have you have like a tour mode or economy right tour sport and then track yeah point track okay and then in track mode you've got five different settings think of it was inspired by what we did in world challenge with the race car so there's five different settings for traction and stability to to basically let you open up the parameters to let the car slide around a little bit more before you turn everything off right to give you uh more flexibility and then the last two modes are specifically tuned like a race car for corner exit traction and so they're actually trying to help you make the car go faster instead of being there to kind of rain you in and give you stability so it's something that we do that really is driver-oriented yeah very cool and and this uh gamble seems to have paid off doesn't it i mean it's really changed the image of cadillac in the last i guess decade isn't it well we're coming up on 20 years right 2000. i guess 2004. yeah yeah it's it's totally transformed the brand it's been a big part of the image you know people see a v-series now and they know what it is right i tell people when we did the first one people said well that's interesting what did cadillac do when we did the second one it was like oh you guys did it again that's interesting and then really it was when we did the third gen people would the the spy photographers would follow us around and people were clamoring and talking about us so this one it was really refreshing everybody expected it they were waiting for it when we put up the pre-orders we sold out almost a year's worth of production in about a day and a half wow that's great yeah and what's top speed on this so we haven't certified it yet but it's over 200 miles it is wow okay yeah 200 mile an hour kind of like going down collins avenue miami beach let's see that would have been this would have been impossible yeah 30 40 years ago uh well very impressed can we take it for a ride absolutely let's give this a shot [Music] sounds good yeah i love the exhaust sounds like a cadillac well it feels first impression is like people used to say it feels very european but it does because it just has that you know americans used to be about horsepower and heating and ventilation and not so much about suspension uh but now they are now it's a complete package which is yeah i i love the transformation of cadillac i like what they've become they've become a sportier brand just it must be funny those awkward days when the old guy comes in looking for the brocade interior and you know they you know because i imagine it's it's probably only manufacturer isn't it where the average age has gone down it's gone way down yeah even corvette was creeping up 60 62 58 as opposed to 30s or 40s you know all the guys i want around taillights what the hell is you know all know so you know you've got to placate the existing customer while bringing in new customers and this is such a massive leap and it takes such a chance but i'm glad it's paid off yeah like you said the average age and when you really get into v and then what we've seen already with v black wing is the average age is yet again lower right right so as a brand we're getting younger more affluent buyers which of course is the holy grail is what everybody's going for but when you get into the v black wing it's um more than 10 years younger than the average cadillac buyer that's coming in and buying one of these well i'm uh i i'm confident that the electrification of gm is going to be successful i drove that new electric hummer and i am not a hummer guy i mean it just it was never my thing i thought it was a bit overdone i thought it was fantastic yeah i mean it's a little smaller it's a thousand horsepower it's crazy it's like watching a building move it's like zero to sixty and three seconds or under i was stunned how good it was how quiet it was and and across some of the unique features the crab walk and all that kind of stuff it's interesting we're kind of in the same position we were in about 1907. is it going to be electric is it going to be steam is it going to be gas you know well yeah you're right i mean you think about hydrogen fuel cells full electric hybrid you know diesel there's so many technologies right now it's it's an interesting time yeah it really is it really is like like that period where they weren't quite sure which way it was going to go back in the day i totally agree i think we've got a winning strategy so i'm excited to see people get into these products and this is the last gasp of the great v8 isn't it it is um and you know that's one of the things we talked about the manual that's why it was important that we you know i'm so proud of this car as representing kind of the peak of this technology right yeah well integrated it's just fantastic it's quiet when you want it to be quiet it's super fast when you want it to be fast well i'm just amazed at all the features that you i mean there's a lot of electronic stuff here i like this my mode configuration you just put it how much steer you want how much feel you want how much brake feel you know engine noise i mean it's uh it's and if you go to the v button on the steering wheel then there's another menu that comes up that lets you choose the performance traction and if this would if it was an automatic you get to choose what shift pattern and then yeah that's for ptm yep the performance traction management okay yeah and then you know like we talked a 200 mile per hour car that has heated and ventilated seats right i mean right well you get 250 to 350 000 performance for about 100 grand right yeah i mean in terms of this can equal pretty close to what lamborghini ferrari corvette could do honestly i think and we see this when we go to track days or different club events for the way most people drive this car is more capable than most drivers honestly yeah and so yeah you give somebody a lamborghini or this i'm not sure most people are going to go faster in a lamborghini than they are you know that's so true i always remember the classic example of that was uh i like to ride motorcycles and i remember the rock star one of these guys came up i know it was jay springsteen one of these famous 883 harley just a regular harley sportster and everybody's on there kawasaki yz suzuki whatever you know all the cafe bikes the carbon fiber and 200 horsepower and he takes them up the the snake which is and he's literally banging the handlebars on the ground yeah and honestly nobody came up with them i think yeah it's the same thing cars are so so much better than the people that drive them now well and that's really why these tires like i mentioned from michelin these things are so incredible they have so much grip and that's why we do what we do with the performance traction because we want the performance to be accessible right and so we use the electronics to help people ease into it because honestly most people have never driven a 668 horsepower hot rod i mean it's a it can be a little intimidating i'm astounded at people who buy a car like this well i went down to discount tire and they had these tires for 110 bucks to pee okay do you buy shoes that are size too small because they're cheaper i mean they have no idea you know what the thing i love about michelin it sounds dumb the tires are all round i mean they're perfectly round whenever i put michelins on very rarely do i have to use wheel weights because they're the same all the way around you know i have a i finally found one it was from from the 30s or 40s a tire shaver yeah you know and because when you have the older cars like dusenbergs and packard stuff you know you buy these denim or the uh den ham whatever these these kind of just tires for old cars and i had a shimmy and i couldn't figure out what i put a stabilizer on it well it turns out i had a not a rubber oh sure you know and so you had to true up the tire yeah it just goes around and it took a pound of rubber off just goes around and okay that's a problem so it's having like having a big knot right you're bumping over everything yeah yeah yeah michelin even has they have this incredible technology as a development engineer where if we're out tuning the car right and we see something about the tire that that we want to change and you know we we get deep into the details of belt angles and different compounds across the tread pattern they can make us a prototype tire and deliver it to us at a test session within two or three days wow which is incredible we can call in and say here's what we want to change on the tire and they have this prototype technology where they will literally have a cured back we mounted on the car like three days later that that's incredible you know that used to take months you know you have to think about it engineer it make it put it all together get back to us and by then by the time you drive it months later you're like what did i what was that what was it i didn't like it's just nice having a manual you know in the same way it's nice to just open the window instead of turning on the air conditioner you know you just want to get back to basic now they used to have a seven speed manual with corvette corvette could it not take the power no um it's really just the packaging to fit to fit that extra length and the tunnel here was just a little bit too much and i imagine six top ratios probably the same as seven ones anyway it's probably pretty close so we we engineer we look at all the gear ratios fit them for the track and fuel economy and balance all the different when you've got six ratios it's you can make the car do everything well so there's no real compromise watch it's fantastic boy it really feels planted you know you know i you know i just drove in today in a 57 chrysler imperial so yeah it's one extreme or the other right you know back in the day it was sort of you you wanted complete absence of road feel whether it was cadillac imperial lincoln the idea was you didn't want to know you you just you were feather driving a feather bed you know you just kind of went like this and touched the brake and all that kind of stuff you know where's this so when when you're accelerating in the manual one of the things we do is called no lift shift so if you leave your foot on the floor it knows when you're pushing the clutch and so if you're high enough in the engine range and you do a shift it'll keep the wastegate closed and keep making boost should i try that sure yeah well yep so that makes the engine even more responsive because it keeps the keeps it from falling and boost and supercharging obviously over turbocharging because obviously there's no lag and you've got that yeah different applications so in the ct4v blackwing we use a twin-turbo v6 it gets you a little better specific output the engine doesn't have to work as hard to get the power to the ground but yeah supercharging is the ultimate for responsiveness and we offer a manual in the ct4 as well yeah it really is nice have you been to nurburgring with this thing um i didn't go with this car but yeah i've been there many times over the years so with covid and everything last year was a little weird for everybody and no it's fascinating it's a public road that's what people think it's a race track but it is a public so when you have an accident you had an accident on the public view they send you an invoice for the armco if you bend the arm code right so i've had to unfortunately sign those for incidents we've had over the years they charged by the meter oh yeah it's expensive it's very expensive i love that place it's uh it's it's it should be on every car person's bucket list but in germany you can't change a thing can you no i mean if you owned this car in germany you couldn't suddenly put somebody another set of wheels on it from the manufacturer so in the winter time in germany you're required to run because these are summer tires you're required to want to run a red winter rated tire so you would put like a pirelli soto zero or a michelin winter rated tire on it but other than that yeah that they're very restricted about what you can do and you can't have a dent in your car either well yeah they have inspections and yeah you're required to keep your maintenance much higher than most folks in the u.s would be used to well you know kills a lot of hills that brightens up your day absolutely well just when i walk out and start this thing every morning i've been driving one of these for a while yeah just like you said it just brightens your mood i mean i'm older than remember the days if you got the high performance auction you couldn't get air conditioning for it i mean the amazing thing is how safe cars have become i mean i see cars you know suvs in a ball on the highway and kids said hey dad can you come get me an accident i remember in high school kids got killed in the parking lot about 20 miles an hour you know the steering column crushing your chest or something yeah it is amazing um that's one of the reasons why whenever i tell somebody this car weighs four thousand pounds they're like what it's like well yeah and if you looked at what's engineered in here and all the airbags and all the equipment yeah it's amazing unfortunately i think a lot of people have taken that for granted though when you watch the way some people drive and they're you know distracted doing 63 things going down the highway at 90 miles an hour you know when i was younger 90 miles an hour you were paying attention that was you know that was going right well it just feels firmly planted that's what i like it just gives you know just this this has the latest version of our uh mr magneto rheological dampers right so the metal particles suspended in fluid so we use the accelerometers on the suspension now to predict what what's happening and that's made it even faster it's made the software able to calculate what the suspension needs better and react faster right it's incredible that's a lot of what you feel how the car doesn't move the body doesn't move it just sort of reacts to what's going on but then when you turn the wheel it does it urgently is the way i describe it this only comes in a two-wheel version correct yeah that's correct we do make in the v-series with the twin turbo v6 we make an automatic sorry not an auto we make a um two-wheel drive in all-wheel drive right but in the black wing like we talked about earlier it's a rear-wheel drive and what's the engineer's definition of the difference between all-wheel drive and four-wheel drive in my mind the difference is whether it's uh selectable or not so like a truck where you can put it in two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive versus like in a ct5 the center differential is always engaged so that to me that's that's that's the way i put it in my head that's all wheelchair yeah i consider that all-wheel drive it's just a matter of what torque split and how much do we send to the front versus the rear and then we use the electronic limited slip diff with our all-wheel drive system so it can send power you know many different places it's really super capable oh this thing is it really handles very nicely i mean it really handles nicely it's an exciting car to join you know i'm just old enough to remember this makes me laugh as a cat you know the first thing i did when i made money in show business was i bought my dad a catalan you know and you know that was because i always said that would make a big hit yeah you'll get me a cat yeah sure you will just just pay your bills and you know you know so i bought them a white cadillac with the red velour interior a 76 model you know it was like it looked like elvis coffin in that thing and you know he was so proud that my mother was so embarrassed whenever we would come to a stoplight if people were looking at the car my brother would roll down the window and she go we're not really kidding our son gave us this and my dad would get mad we're driving on damn cattle our cars were cadillac people then they'd start arguing and people would take off but oh he loved that thing you know i've said this a million times on the show but it is funny my dad said you know cadillac's the royal choice of automobiles i go pop it can't be the rolls-royce auto reveal but i love the fact that they can have that image and they can have this one too you know and that's really really impressive isn't that isn't it just so precise it's precise i mean i like great american road cars and this is one of you got a manual transmission you can take your family you got enough horsepower to keep you entertained and enough practicality to keep the family happy yeah this kind of road is exactly where this car is at home right it's just oh yeah this is it's funny you know young people have no idea what brake fade is because it doesn't exist anymore right basically yeah i have a 55 packer and i was driving along my level and i'm just you know pushing it hard and the stop sign i put my foot that goes right there i sail right through the stop like i'm like dude i mean it was like oh my god that was like you know you smell the you know yeah you had what eight inch drums a little tiny drum break oh my god you got one panic stop yeah you know people talk about the 60s you know this is the golden age of muscle cars the fact you can have a muscle car that's a family car that's whatever you want it to be you know people have no idea how much faster these cars are than any of those storied muscle cars well i'll tell you something funny with tim allen and i on this show we got a we got a 60s have a gto tri-power you know all the options it wasn't automatic but you know it was the high performance we got a nissan altima v6 family you know just a family car yeah four-door you know and we drive the ultimate blew the doors over there i mean it was hilarious yeah people have no idea what their their uh yeah their econo box can blow the doors off most of their fast cars i remember when we did the uh the original about the original the zr1 you know the lt5 uh the four 5.7 liter and um we seriously had discussions back then about 400 horsepower and that's just you know almost too much power yeah and you thought you go back and drive one of those now and they're great cars my dad has one right and you drive it now and like you're saying you're like really this was too much power huh it feels so tame compared to even though it's funny how the avatar you know i've got a 63 a 64 rather dodge player with a max wedge 426 and a four speed it sort of predates muscle ira by a year ago and [Music] the way like it says in uh it says in the road test just because this car has electric windows and a little chrome button that automatically puts the top down don't think that it's some effeminate vehicle and no one will question your manhood when you drive and it goes on and on like electric windows and an automatic top or something you know it was just so funny to read yeah these are the kind of roads and this car is a lot of fun you could be you can still be responsible maybe a little faster than the speed limit perhaps but not crazy you know and the car can more than handle it you've got the braking to stop you've got the handling yeah yeah like i said this this car is this is home right this is where this car craves and it begs you to do it all of the controls the stiffness we put into the chassis really just shine you know the mr dampers the elsd is back there working um you know just giving you that little extra bit of stability but you know it's funny because cars have always been fast even from the beginning it's really breaking and handling where all this is all the real change i mean go back to 1910 19 you know i've got a 1913 plus a race about and it'll hit 100 miles an hour right you're not going to stop anytime right you're not going to go around a corner necessarily but i mean it's got the power and you realize all the sophistication is really in the handling and the braking and tires right and that goes right in line with what you're saying the tire technology and if you think about what this rubber is engineered to do that that still blows me away when we when we watch we did a belt test of the tire and if you watch it run a lap of the nurburgring and you would if you saw that before you went and drove the car on the track you'd say what the heck you're asking that thing to do all this and the way the sidewall works and yeah like i said before the people i know that buy performance cars and then put cheap tires on what are you doing i mean a car where you can never really reach its limits will always be entertaining like we were talking before you try and what we do as engineers is try and make it as accessible as possible because anybody can make a scary fast car right but the trick is to make a car that you feel comfortable exploring those limits and i think you talk about a lot of those cars from the 50s and 60s those things were scary fast yeah if you actually tried to go you know 160 in a in a corvette from that vintage with those little tires you know that that took some work i remember in 2002 i drove the pace car at daytona and that was the last year of the firebird so they brought out all the fire all the performance firebirds one of each model to take around the track you know and i remember driving what was the 455 i guess from 73. i had my foot down to go into the banking i'm hitting 110 like 100 900 the needle's going like this and this thing is like like i'm going which is really this is i mean i could barely hit 110 miles an hour in that thing and on the banking it was like oh yeah those four tires are probably complaining like crazy oh yeah well tony thanks so much for br you know this is it is such a i'm so proud of american manufacturing i do like american stuff i like that we can compete against the best the europeans have to offer you know we're the only country that even when we're on the top we're still underdogs you know it's like it's like when ford went to le mans a 10 billion dollar company versus a 5 million company and we were the underdog but somehow that's what we do but i i love the fact that american engineering is doing as well as it is and it's successful it is and this is really one of the great cars you know i'm just so impressed with how it handles and how it stops so tony thank you very much and i'm glad now that covent has calmed down we can ride the same car again yeah that's great thanks for the opportunity thank you my friend and uh test drive one of these i think you'll like it i'm talking about [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,049,765

Keywords: Cadillac, Blackwing, V series, CT5, supercar, luxury car, sports car, brand new, General Motors, high performance, Super Cruise, Detroit, Mary Barra, Mark Reuss, manual transmission, Corvette, 6.2L, supercharged, American cars, jay leno, jay lenos garage

Id: FwCEVBIPay0

Length: 40min 43sec (2443 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021