You know I don’t really care either way about the success or otherwise of the Cadillac SRX or Cadillac in general. Send them all here as far as I’m concerned….
BUT.
This particular Cadillac – the new SRX – has a sister vehicle that will be very important for Saab’s future, so when I saw this review at Jalopnik on my feed reader this morning, I thought I’d take a proper look.
The most important thing to read in this review is the summary sentence on quality.
The SRX greets you not with the new car smell of off-gassing plastics, but instead smells more like an old Jaguar with a nose full of leather and wood, a subtle reminder that this car is part of a return to proper Cadillacs, a return to that whole “standard of the world” business that Cadillac hasn’t been able to claim in at least three decades.
The interior fit and finish in the SRX is seriously luxurious, using GM’s “cut and sew” hand-stitched leather throughout.
Fit and finish are said to be ‘luxurious’ and in the absence of any complaints, I’d take that as a suggestion that the quality of workmanship in screwing this car together was satisfactory.
For those who are concerned about the Saab 9-4x being built in Mexico for quality reasons, this will hopefully give an initial small measure of comfort.
There’s a few other comments worth noting:
The difference between “Drive” and “Sport” is striking. The former is characterized by sluggish shifts, controlled-but-noticeable body roll, slightly over boosted power steering and a tendency towards understeer. Sport changes things completely with Crisp shifting, high revs, near-neutral handling thanks to the Haldex AWD system….
Saab were responsible for the adaptation of the XWD system into all of GM’s FWD vehicle platforms. So kudos to Saab for a job well done on this vehicle for GM.
Standard equipment for the SRX includes the 3.0-liter, 260 HP V6 in our tester with a 300 HP turbo V6 coming soon.
Again, that turbo engine will basically be the HF V6 that’s currently in the 9-3, tuned a little higher. And again, turbocharging was Saab’s baby in the GM fold.
It’s a review that’s worth a lookover if you want a very generalised idea of the quality that should be present in the Saab 9-4x when it arrives. The vehicles were developed somewhat independently, but there’s a commonality there that can’t be denied, so a glimpse at one should provide some insight into the other.
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