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Is president-elect Obama going to indirectly axe the new 550-horsepower Cadillac CTS-V? Probably. It's very possibly the last in a long line of mindlessly powerful uber-sedans, and come Jan. 20, Obama is going be the first black U.S. President. Out with the old, in with the new.
I must first give credit where credit is due. Ford, General Motors, American Motor Company et al brought us some pretty solid cars in the days of yore - the Mustang, the Corvette, the Corvair (short-lived, thanks to Ralph Nader), the pickup truck, the station wagon and the AMC Eagle (absolutely worth Googling if you've got time to kill).
But Cadillac has it coming. American automakers have had 50 years to re-invent the automobile following the gauntlet thrown down by their Japanese counterparts (Toyota vehicles were first imported to and sold in the United States in 1957). While Detroit was good at designing cars with passion, flair and madder than mad V8 engines, it didn't exactly rise to this particular occasion. Look up "1966 Oldsmobile Toronado" if you want to see front-wheel-drive so easy (and pointless) a caveman could reverse-engineer it.
The 80's were not Detroit's decade. The same passion that went into creating the 1968 Plymouth Road Runner never could quite find its way into the 1985 Plymouth Turismo.
The 90's didn't go much better and eventually everybody got all wishy-washy and nostalgic, and GM and Ford dispensed with the pretense and started building muscle cars again. In 2005, Dodge released the Magnum, a station wagon for NRA members, and since then there's been an "all four barrels blazing" mentality at corporate drawing boards, which brings us right back to the supercharged 2009 CTS-V.
Obama's long-term plans include $150 billion to "advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure [and] accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids." The man is serious about plug-in hybrids - he wants to see a million of them on U.S. roads by 2015. These vehicles will, at least in theory, be built here and get 150 miles per gallon, and anyone who buys one will score a $7,000 tax credit.
Another facet of Obama's grand scheme for domestic automakers includes stricter CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards - four percent per year (presumably until we hit zero).
Taken altogether, it's an ambitious scheme. The prospect of new technology brings with it the prospect of millions of new jobs, which is kind of nifty.
Still, Google the new CTS-V before it goes extinct. It does zero to 60 in less than four seconds with an automatic. I don't care what he thinks about CAFE standards, Obama's gotta respect that.
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