Wife's old car (2008 Cadillac SRX)

[kevm14]

I am impressed with the torque this engine is able to produce. It lugged itself up the Newport bridge at 45 mph and 1200 rpm until I got to the steepest part and it had to downshift to 5th. I guess that's a benefit of VVT.

[kevm14]

I just washed it. Hard to reach the roof.

The body is pretty clean overall. The worst thing on the car is the rear bumper cover which has a few small scrapes.

Gave the wheels a nice wash, as well. These are polished aluminum with some kind of coating. They cleaned up reasonably well. There is very little curb rash on these wheels, which is impressive. Just a few very small scrapes here and there.

I still need to wax it.

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[kevm14]

First trip. Mixed highway and rural, with many hills, for 135 miles (round trip). 18.3 mpg. I'll continue to run premium for a while and then maybe see how it does on 87.

I will reiterate how awesome this car is for long distance. Seat heater on the lower back, Ultraview shade partly open, DVD playing for Ian in the back. Good view of the road but not too high. The steering is nice. The turn signals do the later model GM thing of flashing 3 times to change lanes if you tap the signal lever. Also displays the cruise control set speed in the DIC.

I am also still impressed with this engine. It is very flexible and combined with the 6-speed automatic, offers up any level of acceleration you need, in a linear fashion through the throttle range. And I'm still amazed by the torque output below 2000 rpm, for the displacement of the engine. Merging is so satisfying - it just glides up to speed. It's also nice to have many ratios from which to choose, because it'll incrementally downshift as required, rather than give you the old 4 speed automatic choice of downshift to 3rd, or 2nd at WOT. Much more granularity here.

[kevm14]

I forgot to mention the initial results looking at the accuracy of the DIC.

Tank 1: 13.4 mpg, DIC said 13.5
Tank 2: 18.3 mpg, DIC said 18.2

So far, this is stacking up to be just as accurate as my CTS-V is, proving, once again, that it can be done.

The speedo seems to be right on as well.

[kevm14]

Still seems to be within 0.1 mpg, like my CTS-V. When there is an error, it is a miss-fill (over/under) and it is nice to be confident in the computer. Would be nice if other people, including journalists, were willing to put just a tiny bit of science into reporting fuel economy.

Average over 1,750 miles (the tanks that I have recorded - unfortunately I've missed about 50% of the miles so far due to Jamie filling) is 17.0. The combined rating is 15mpg and we've been biased more to highway so I'd say things are as advertised.

I will also say that this car seems to be pretty sensitive to road speed with regard to fuel economy. I think it would actually be capable of its 20 mpg highway rating, at 65 mph. But at 75, anything over 19 seems impossible, and probably more like 18. Also seems like it would do over 20 at lower speeds, but then these trends are obviously normal.

I have been running nothing but 93 octane also.

[kevm14]

I gave up on Fuelly months ago. Jamie does the fuel ups on this and I'm not making her do Fuelly. So the average MPG never gets reset. It has settled on 17.5. I think it was closer to 18 before the winter weather/gas. I have no problem with this. She has been consistently using 93 octane.

I still need to do a trans fluid/filter. It recently crossed the 100k mark. Done almost 9,000 miles in 10 months which is more than I expected she'd do with this car. That about matches what I put on my Caprice. I don't think this one will be holding its value like my CTS-V...

Sooner or later I'll see what all this fuss is about with AWD. Given the 52% front weight bias and limited slip rear diff, I expect it to be very good. Reports from my brother in law on how his does/did inform my expectations.

[kevm14]

Sooner or later I'll see what all this fuss is about with AWD. Given the 52% front weight bias and limited slip rear diff, I expect it to be very good. Reports from my brother in law on how his does/did inform my expectations.

First impressions from the first storm: all of the above is true.

Additional info: this is the first vehicle with stability control that I've driven in the snow. And it's very impressive. That said, I can easily see how the uninformed could build up a false sense of confidence with all this stuff. False confidence aside, the capabilities of this vehicle are very impressive.

Why I think it's better than a pickup truck:
- Most trucks have part-time 4WD and 4WD needs to be engaged manually
- Nasty front weight bias on trucks means traction at the rear actually sucks. At least the FWD-based crossovers bias torque to the axle with all the weight.
- SRX has waaaay better handling, steering and lower CG

Why I think it's better than FWD-based crossovers:
- Near 50/50 weight dist means that both axles contribute equally to traction. Nail the throttle around a corner and it rotates perfectly, rather than just understeering. This is a RWD-based vehicle and it drives exactly as you'd think. Many FWD-based crossovers are actually FWD until slippage, which is efficient, but lame.
- More sophisticated traction/stability control system. It doesn't just totally cut power and leave you with nothing when traction is poor. I haven't even tried turning T/C off yet because there is no need to.
- Limited slip rear diff. I imagine this is completely unheard of on just about every crossover out there and it adds a mechanical advantage to the existing electronic aids, reducing the reliance on braking individual rear wheels for traction issues.
- Because 320hp V8

The only thing it really gives up to a conventional, full-size SUV is ground clearance to traverse very deep snow.

[kevm14]

Just got home from picking up a pizza. It is snowing and the roads are quite slick. I took the liberty of playing around a little further with the T/C and stability control.

If you hit T/C once, it disables traction control, as you'd expect. Press again, and it's enabled. Is that all? Well, I tried holding it down. You need to hold it a good 5 seconds. That then disables stability control entirely.

What does this mean?

It means that the standard T/C disabled mode still keeps stability control to save your ass. Pleasingly, the yaw limits of this mode appear to be relaxed, similar to Competitive Driving Mode on my CTS-V. Disabling everything by holding the button down enables some...interesting parking lot shenanigans. You know, in theory...

[kevm14]

Just got back from Shartner's Farm for pumpkin adventures. Decided to see if we could fit the two kids (Ian in a booster seat and Owen in an infant seat) plus my parents. I put my mom and Jamie in the 3rd row and the kids in the 2nd with my dad and I up front. It is pretty tight for adults but it worked fine for a local drive. I don't think I could fit back there. Kids and small adults only. There was just enough room behind the 3rd row for two pumpkins and the various items we brought (bag, purse, camera stuff). 3rd row occupants get head rests (storage under floor after raising the 3rd row), A/C and a fixed sunroof with power shade. The power adjustment also lets you change the recline.

Oh, access to the 3rd row goes like this: move booster seat to middle in 2nd row, flip seat back down, flip whole seat forward against the front seat. 3rd row occupants board that way. An alternate approach is to put Ian's booster seat in the 3rd row. I did try that a few months back and it seems fine.

This isn't the most packaging efficient crossover being RWD-based (it is narrow and the 3rd row has a very high floor) but I thought this was still a useful feature. I do wonder how it compares with the other RWD-based unibody crossovers. Any large FWD-based crossover or minivan is going to be a lot better of course.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that the 2nd row does slide forward to make more room for the 3rd row. We leave the 2nd row all the way back. It is split also so I could have moved Ian's seat with booster forward to give Jamie a little more knee room, without impacting Owen's rear facing infant seat (which touches the back of the driver's seat as it is).

[kevm14]

Still seems to be within 0.1 mpg, like my CTS-V. When there is an error, it is a miss-fill (over/under) and it is nice to be confident in the computer. Would be nice if other people, including journalists, were willing to put just a tiny bit of science into reporting fuel economy.

Average over 1,750 miles (the tanks that I have recorded - unfortunately I've missed about 50% of the miles so far due to Jamie filling) is 17.0. The combined rating is 15mpg and we've been biased more to highway so I'd say things are as advertised.

Have not been doing Fuelly so I just let the DIC run the average without resetting. It currently says 17.4 so we can call it 17.5 mpg as an overall, total, cross-seasonal average. Still running 93 octane exclusively.

Jamie does not have a heavy foot and there isn't much real city driving, but there are lots of hills.

MPG ratings (a native 2008 vehicle btw) are 13/20 and 15 combined. So again I'd say doing 2.5 mpg better than the combined rating seems to make sense. There are no fueleconomy.gov driver estimates available.

Fuelly isn't much better. Only two other 2008 SRX's on Fuelly and they are V6s. One averages 14.3 mpg over 32 fuel-ups and the other averages 16.6 mpg over 8 fuel-ups.

Other V8s...there is an 04 getting 12.3 mpg across 46 fuel-ups (ouch).

Now this one is about the same. A 2006 getting 17.5 mpg across 375 (!) fuel-ups (over 100k miles).

And those are the only V8 SRXs actively reporting MPG.

With some very small samplings, here are the 1st gen V6 averages currently reporting:
2009: 19
2008: 16
2007: none listed
2006: 16
2005: 17.5
2004: 16.7

Probably not worth getting the V6 given increased issues for those engines (oil consumption plus a timing chain issue) for the lack of power.