From this piece:
“It is your business to craft a philosophy of life that makes sense to you and that serves you. You can’t entrust that task to anyone else and you can’t just buy any existing philosophy or religion hook, line, and sinker.” [Emphasis mine]
Once again, I strongly believe that being a blind adherent or a slave to any ideology–political, religious, philosophical–usually leads to bad outcomes and is a waste of our brainpower.
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This piece from Hagerty is their first look at the 2022 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing. The article is full of praise for the car, although to me it reads as if the author thinks the car won’t be successful in the marketplace given the failures of the ATS-V and CTS-V. From the article, a picture:
This is the Blackwing V-6 version; the CT-5 Blackwing is the V-8 version with the LT4 engine used in the C7 Z06 and the current Camaro ZL1. Yep, a lot of alpha-numeric gobbledygook.
The CT-4 Blackwing is powered by, basically, the same 3.6 liter V-6 we have in our 2015 Cadillac ATS and rides on the same Alpha platform. Of course, our ATS doesn’t have 472 horsepower because the engine isn’t turbocharged like the Blackwing. Both a six-speed manual and ten-speed automatic transmission will be available.
The piece ends:
“On a personal note, your narrator has thought about this thing a significant amount since leaving VIR. [Virginia International Raceway] Mostly in terms of financing and personal credit.
And so here we are, in the twilight of the gasoline performance car, gifted one of the last great fossil-drinkers. One of just a few modern vehicles to prompt deep and emotional thoughts concerning changing times.
Just before we moved on, there were great heights. And boy hell yes, child, it was good.”
To me, this piece reinforces the notion that Cadillac makes and has made good products, but has suffered a seemingly permanent disconnect with most of the car-buying public. I don’t think the switch to electric cars will help Cadillac differentiate itself in the marketplace, either.
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Speaking of Cadillac:
This is the Allante of which I recently wrote that is parked in a driveway on our street. This house seems to have a lot of “non-standard” cars parked. I don’t know if the homeowner is a collector, a mechanic or both. I have walked down to the house two or three times, but have never managed to be there while a garage door was open.
Even in White, not a favorite color of mine, the car is beautiful in person to me. I wish I had been able to take a photo before the car “cover” was strapped on.
The Allante’s MSRP was $54,700 when introduced in 1987 and $61,675 in its last year, 1993. Hemmings currently has 23 Allantes listed–model years 1990 to 1993–and eight of them have a list price of less than $12,000. Remember, of course, that 1987 dollars or 1993 dollars are not the same as 2021 dollars. The 1993 MSRP is about $116,000 in 2021 dollars.
OK, I’ll stop babbling about this very idiosyncratic favorite of mine. As I tried to convey with the Frugal Friday posts (thanks to David Banner, not his real name), interesting cars don’t have to be expensive.
#EightEightTwoOne
#ThinkForYourself
#CadillacCT4Blackwing
#PlightOfCadillac
#CadillacAllante
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Disaffected Musings 
The current President (Biden) just signed an executive order requiring 50% of all car sales to be zero emission by 2030. I do not believe that in a little over 8 years there will be that many electric or hybrid cars sold. As a retired electric power utility engineer, I do not believe that the power grid will be able to support that much addition to the base load demand. Also the buying public will not embrace that level of purchasing. The economy is already under the strain of inflation. Also, finding the raw materials for that level of batteries will put us into the position of being more dependent upon Communist China. Even with both General Motors and Ford planning on more electric vehicles by 2030, they still have to convince the buying public that electric cars are the smart purchase. There are lots of places in Arizona that I could not reach on the current range of electric cars so an electric car is out of the question for me. And to buy one, I’d have to make changes to my home electric system to install the charging connection. I also do NOT need the additional cost added to my current electric bill.
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Thanks, Philip. Executive orders are in the gray area between law and suggestion. Any such order can be countermanded by an order by a successor President. An executive order is a means of issuing federal directives in the United States, used by the President of the United States, that manages operations of the federal government. Note, operations of the federal government and not of private companies.
In any event, even if 50% of new cars sold in the US in 2030 are electric-powered, that doesn’t mean 50% of the vehicles in use will be electric-powered. I suspect some people will never buy an electric car and hold onto their ICE-powered vehicles as long as they can buy gas and oil. It will take many years to “phase out” the current fleet. In fact, some in the automobile business think that, worldwide, the number of vehicles powered by ICE will increase from the current 1.2-1.3 billion to 1.8-2.0 billion in the next ten years before plateauing and then falling.
I agree with you that the electric grid is decades away from being able to handle 100,000,000 electric cars being charged every night.
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I come from a state that has three times more registered vehicles than total population. North Dakota has long drives between population centers and little, if any, infrastructure to support electric vehicles.
I am confident that in 2030, there will still be large expanses of the country that won’t have the required number of charging stations for cross-country electric car travels. On the other hand, for those crowded cities choking on automobile exhaust, converting a decent percentage will help to clear the air. For cars that never leave the city, that seems to me a good trade-off (as long as the reinforced grid doesn’t grow by using fossil fuels, anyway.)
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Thanks, JS.
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Most of the electric car charging will take place overnight at people’s homes and commercial lots. This will require a huge baseload on the power grid. Solar doesn’t generate at night and wind power is sporadic at best. That leaves fossil fueled, nuclear and hydroelectric to generate the baseload demand. No new nuclear plants have been built in the last 30 years and none are planned. Hydro power is limited by the drought conditions in the West. That leaves us with fossil fueled steam plants and the tree hugging, green new deal idiots want to decommission the ones on line now and not build anymore. Their plans are incompatible.
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Thanks, Philip. For the nth time, blind adherents of ideology are usually wrong.
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