Cadillac Just Gave Up on America and Why You Should Be Mad

in this case my customer bought a used 2008 cadillac cts i'm going to tell you the absolute truth about this car the good the bad and the ugly not just looking at it overall it's a decent looking car rims are in still good shape got the old cadillac emblem no when i was a young mechanic in the 60s a cadillac emblem symbolized quality luxury they've gone a long way down since then if you ask me and i'll show how this gives you a perfect example of one model and how it failed over time now these cts's were made from 2002 to 2019 when they stopped making the things at one point in time for example in 2005 they sold 61 500 of these cts's but the last year that they sold them 2019 they only sold 6 900. the sales were going down why did they go down well in the executive luxury sedan market these days there's a lot of competition they didn't compete on an even footing at all the resale values are horrible because they have all kinds of breakdown frequencies as they age you pair this with a lexus you can't even really compare the car the lexus can go three four hundred thousand miles trouble free still run good these no not the case i had a customer bought one he was a corporate lawyer he made lots of money three four years after he bought it he said to me i hate this car i can't afford it i said you can afford it you make lots of millions yeah well i don't want to afford it this thing is breaking all the time he went and bought himself an acura the handle's better gets better gas mileage and it doesn't break down now this particular one being a 2008 it's not a horrid car to begin with it's got the 3.6 6-cylinder engine as we look inside i took the beauty cover off this is a six-cylinder engine that was made and of all places st catherine's ontario i've got friends that live there canadians actually make very good engines but this engine had a design flaw in the back and that design fall led the timing chains to wear and stretch and go out all the time cost a fortune to replace the timing chains there's more than one in this engine what it comes down to is pcv system positive crankcase ventilation is built into the one side of the engine on the valve cover they designed it wrong it's built into the valve cover and it has a giant opening that sucks the crank case vapor that's why it's called positive crankcase ventilation pcv valve sucks it into the engine and burns it but the hole that it sucks is too big it gets too much volume so along with sucking the pcv vapors it also sucks oil which makes these things oil burners because of that stupid design so especially as to get a few years old these things burn oil people think oh it's a luxury cadillac i don't have to check the oil guess what you don't check the oil the oil gets slow the oil gets low the engine runs hotter than the timing chain and all other parts wear out prematurely now there is a relatively simple fix for this you get a new valve cover gasket that has a big cover that covers the big hole inside where the vapors come through and it only has three little tiny holes in it so all that oil can't come up and there's less pressure so the pcv valve doesn't suck oil and it doesn't burn the oil gee maybe the engineer should have thought about that in the first place and restricted it other than oh we'll leave it wide open so it breathes better and sucks oil in the engine well what happens is people don't check the oil the l gets low wears out the engine way prematurely because of that stupid design it's supposed to be a luxury car that's built right the canadians actually put it together quite well they're good running engines but with a flaw like that and you don't check your oil let's see it's an executive luxury car people own them you think they're checking their oil hardly any of my customers do as you can see this one's a lawyer many of them are doctors and lawyers they're not going to be messing around with their oil or they believe probably the dumbest thing of all that they can change the oil every 10 000 miles which makes the oil get dirtier and dirtier which also causes a problem but if it's burning oil and it gets dirty and dirty as it gets low and they don't replenish it it wears the engine out twice as fast and when you look at the price versus what you get with other manufacturers these guys just don't stand up that's why they only sold 6 900 of them the last year they made them 2019. this thing only puts out 265 horsepower other engines put out more horsepower they don't burn oil over time these just got a deserved bad reputation because of how they were designed now this isn't an all-wheel version this is a conventional rear-wheel drive a lot of people like rear-wheel drive cars and when you look inside you can see you know it's got a lot of leather when you start it up it does start right up and has a cool center unit that pops out of nowhere some wood grain it's a nice looking car got a big old fancy sunroof and as with most american cars it's got killer ac puts out real cold air got a classy looking steering wheel all in all it's a nice looking car and as we climb out you can see got baby seats in here it's got room in the back and when we pop the trunk and typical of the cadillac the fancy holders are broken so you got to hold it up by hand got a reasonable size trunk and it's got dual exhaust we'll take it for a spin it's built pretty solid you can hear the door got a nice solid close and as with most cadillacs it handles decently has a relatively quiet ride and we'll see how it takes off it's got a reasonable amount of power still shifts really smoothly they are fun to drive overall it's in decent shape for 116 000 miles and when you hit the brakes it's got a nice solid stop it's got great brakes there's no arguing that now this particular one doesn't have the oil burning problem because that valve cover gasket has been replaced with the one that blocks up most of the hole inside so instead of overwhelming the pcv valve and sucking oil and burning it it just gets the vapor so this one doesn't use oil like a lot of them do but unfortunately a lot of them did took a while for people to figure that out they got a bad reputation left a bad taste in people's mouths and they only sold 6 900 of them in 2019 and they stopped making them kind of symptomatic of general motors as a brand overall they used to make great cars and over time they started to slip on quality and design and they just kept sliding down where companies like lexus acura their quality goes up up up and they keep perfecting them a different ball game today back in the 60s cadillac was all over the world oh it's a cadillac of cars la la la well not so much these days and this particular one not bad the automatic transmission is still in pretty good shape the canadians and st catharines they did a pretty good job putting this engine together it's a good solid engine previous owner must have changed the oil a lot and didn't believe in this oh let's change the oil every ten thousand mile crap which ends up destroying a lot of these cadillac engines i see it all the time and when you consider the last year they made them 2019 this v6 one would have been a 55 000 car and the other versions were using those horrible gm turbocharged four-cylinder engines that were just being strained too much to get horsepower for a heavier vehicle like that it's no wonder they don't make them anymore they just weren't competitive cars like i say this 08 is still a decent car because it was taken care of that oil gasket was replaced so it doesn't have the oil burning like a lot of them will if you don't put that special new gasket in they really can't compete especially with the japanese luxury and they break down so much less that they've taken over so much so that they don't make these anymore hey it's a very competitive world out there especially when it comes to executive luxury cars and they expect a lot more than they ever got out of these cadillacs plus the repairs had a corporate lawyer customer he got rid of him because he said it was costing him too much money to fix i got another customer with the 2008 lexus he's got 300 000 miles almost three times what this has and he spent very little on maintenance other than changing the oil and filter and the brake pads when they were out if you're trying to compare them it's like comparing apples and oranges when you compare the supposed luxury car against a lexus or an acura the quality of these things just isn't there just like gm overall the quality's been going downhill for quite some time instead of fixing the problems that perfected it what do they do ah we won't make them anymore they just give up friend of the family he was an executive lived in san antonio and he had a cadillac and i said to him i said well whatever you think about the japanese cars and these cadillacs and he openly said to me he said i buy a cadillac because it's an american car and i'm from tennessee originally so i want to support american stuff but he said this cadillac can't compare to the japanese there's too much pressure for short-term profit where the japanese are just gradually building them better and better the american companies especially gm all they're thinking about is their quarterly stock reports and how they can make them cheaper to make a higher profit well then you end up not being competitive with the people that are building the better and i have to say i'm not for supporting people that don't do things correctly i'm not in love with japan but i got all japanese vehicles why because i'm a mechanic and i'm cheap i buy them used when they cost less they'll have a ton of their life i'm a mechanic i don't want to spend my spare time working on my own cars that's why i drive them and as far as cts it's not a bad car i have fun driving around after i fix them but i wouldn't buy one because truthfully that cadillac emblem doesn't mean what it used to mean but if you could find a used one like my customer did that isn't burning oil runs great you get them at a pretty low price and they can be a fun knock around car sometimes one like this that's still a decent car if you can get it cheap enough you can have fun with it but there's no way in hades i'd spend 55 000 for one of these things so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 321,458

Keywords: american, american cars, car, car review, cars, culture, diy, is toyota the best, japanese, japanese cars, japanese culture, japanese vs american, japanese vs american cars, most reliable, most reliable cars, reliable car, reliable cars, scotty kilmer, toyota, who makes the best cars, why america stopped making luxury cars, america, luxury, luxury car, luxury cars, american luxury car, japan, american car, reliable luxury cars, best luxury car, cadillac, cadillac review

Id: exHqSeE7qa0

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020