Cadillac CT6 Will Use Aluminum Body

Once upon a time, car designers didn’t think twice about building land yachts like the 70s Cadillac Eldorado, which was more than 18 feet long and weighed close to 5,000 pounds. These days efficiency is in vogue, and the upcoming Cadillac CT6 full-sized flagship will use an aluminum body to keep the pounds off, reports Automobile Magazine.

Details have been slowly coming out about the CT6 ever since Cadillac poached former Audi US chief Johan de Nysschen, who has made some controversial decisions and remarks in his remake of the luxury brand. Among those is the approval of the CT6 as a tech-heavy flagship meant to launch the brand into the next decade, and will likely include a plug-in hybrid drivetrain with an emphasis on performance.

But performance would be hard to achieve with an excessively high curb weight, so aluminum will be utilized to try and keep the CT6 at or below the 4,000 pound mark, and possibly as low as 3,700 pounds. Compare that to a likely competitor like the BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe, which ranges in the 4,200 to 4,500 pound range, and Cadillac could carve out a serious advantage for itself.

While GM hasn’t been the fastest automaker to adopt aluminum in an effort to improve efficiency, the automaker could be adopting a top-down mentality by applying it to Cadillac first. Ford on the other hand went straight for volume sales by building an aluminum-bodied F-150, though the fuel economy figures were perhaps not as high as they had hoped. Cadillac has been similarly unlucky with ELR sales, which have only recently surged following huge discounts off the MSRP.

Once reserved for race cars and sportscars, aluminum is definitely becoming a lot more common in the auto industry. It might not be long before even the cheapest cars are made from old beer cans.

Old Trucks Get Their Groove Back In West Virginia

The classic car has a special place in many gear heads’ hearts. I mean, who doesn’t feel a sense of American pride thinking about Steve McQueen racing his Mustang through San Francisco or the Cadillac Eldorado in “Smokey in the Bandits”? It’s just too bad that driving these older models comes with oodles of environmental problems. That’s why it’s wonderful to see some old, diesel trucks finding a useful home at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia.

Like optical telescopes which need dark areas in order to operate properly, radio telescopes need shelter from electromagnetic interference. This is because weak cosmic signals can be easily masked by terrestrial radio waves. The NRAO, for example, is located in a quiet zone surrounded by national forests and the mountainous terrain of West Virginia.

To protect the zone from any interference, NRAO Regulations require visitors to limit motorized traffic to diesel vehicles. Electric spark plugs and computer chips inside modern, gasoline-powered cars interfere with the radio. Visitors can’t even use new diesel cars because the door chimes, seatbelt buzzers, and computer-controlled engine management systems are also problematic. 

But old diesels don’t have the same problem. They use glow plugs instead of spark plugs and mechanical fuel injection instead of electronic injection. In other words, they’re actually good for the environment around a radio telescope because they don’t interfere with its sensitive signals.

Some of the old trucks seen around NRAO include Chevrolet Suburbans, pickups, and even some diesel-powered Checker Marathons. (Remember those?!) They range in age from 30 to 45 years old, and come complete with nostalgia-worthy features like blue vinyl seats and manual windows. While they may not be the classic Mustangs and Cadillacs of your dreams, at least these old trucks seem to be getting plenty of use.

Source | Image: Driving.ca