Let's cut to the chase: Cadillacs, the star fleet of General Motors, sucked for a while there. While the Germs and Japanese were busy incorporating new technology and adhering to superior manufacturing standards- creating the dopest sedans in the world in the meantime- America slept and put out a bunch of soggy, uninspired road hogs. They were slow, gas guzzling, wack looking love boats for aging patriots, and as much as we all wanted to love Cadillac (and Lincoln, for that matter), it hasn't been easy since the late 60's. Our attention drifted towards Mercedes and Lexus and BMW and we all ignored that fact that the land of open roads was slapping together embarassing excuses for pimp rides.

But the recent crop of Caddy's has brought a modicum of respect to our shores, and for the first time the Sakebomb crew began seriously considering the new American luxury cars. The Eldorado and Sevilles had nice lines, and started incorporating some interesting technology: Northstar engines, Night Vision, ultrasonic parking assist, GPS, and the retarded-yet-somehow-compelling Onstar system, which among other things promised a friend to talk to whenever you were driving home from the bar, alone. Paul has a good story about rolling around with Chad Muska in his STS, asking the operator where to find some handrails. That's about as Sakebomb as you can get.

When the new Deville premiered, I got pretty excited. I liked it. I wanted to drive one. Poo Dollar Ruben, a good friend of Sakebomb, also liked it. He wanted to drive one. We talked about it a lot. Then, one fateful day, I was feeling the wanderlust and Ruby was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and we decided to fuck it all, rent a Deville, and drive to Colorado for a couple days. It was on.

I'd been trying to rent a Deville for a while, actually. You can reserve a luxury car on the phone, but you can't specify the model, and over the past six months I'd rented a Mercedes, Buick Park Avenue, Blazer, and a Lincoln Town Car before we finally, after three hours of driving around LAX to every rental place, secured our Ham Sandwich. We got the white one with the lowest miles, and made the prudent choice of accepting the daily insurance charge. "You drive it in, park, and walk away. No questions asked", they said. What a nice thing to say.

It was a Friday night, and Ruben had a first date planned. We agreed to leave afterwards, no matter how late. I secured drugs while Ruben secured good blessings, landing a first kiss in the ride before we even left Los Angeles. It was a good omen. We left at 2, drove straight to Vegas, gambled for 6 hours, won enough money to pay for the car and surf and turf dinners the whole trip, continued on through Nevada and Arizona, narrowly escaped the probing fingers of Utah's finest (You know the tension-creating effect in movies, when the killer is right around the corner, and the other person doesn't know it, but the viewer watches in uneasy anticipation? Well, it was kind of like that, for about 20 long, long, minutes, and the uneasy anticipation was not about some phony axe-murderer with a mask and fake blood packets, it was about two pasty white boys spending time in a very real Utah jail cell. I don't know how or why we escaped, but some kind of karma must've come around and helped our sorry, smelly asses out. Thank you, who or whatever it was.) As we approached the continental divide we were treated to rain and then the first snow of the year, speeding though curvy, icy, little roads on zero sleep and Biggie Smalls, and finally made it to our destination around midnight. The next two days were spent pushing the Deville to the limits, which included driving it into a ditch. I'd like to excuse myself and say, "If it had been a rear-wheel drive car, like my Chevy, I would have spun out and made the turn," but in reality I'm just a jackass. The accident created a little shudder in the wheels around 65 miles an hour, but the sandwich liked to roll around 95, well beyond the frequency of resonation. We made it home with no further mishaps, returned the car to its rental home and, just like they said, we walked away with no questions asked. Mission accomplished.

(click above for video profile)

The video should give you a pretty good idea of what this car is all about. Because it was a rental, it didn't have the full DTS package, so I can't write about the really dope tech shit. I'm going to forward this review to Cadillac, maybe they will send one over (or better yet, one of the 350hp Seville STSi's, if anyone knows how to get one of these, let me know.) All in all, we were very impressed with the Deville. It's not ridiculously fast, but plenty strong for most people's needs. The interior is roomy, but it drives like a mid-size car. The engine sounds good, quiet, a little growl at WOT. The top speed is limited to 110, but it cruises at over 100 like you are doing 50. The seats are comfy, the panels and instrumentation are all well designed (although the green digital shit has to go, if any car companies want some consultation on that, Sakebomb can help), the trunk is huge, the suspension is tight. The ABS brakes work flawlessly, the only way to skid is to kick down the parking brake- which works well. There's nothing worse than a car you can't ebrake slide. I prefer RWD cars, and word on the streets is that Cadillac is going to revert back to this (Europe never abandoned the dream, of course) but the stabilitrak system really came through- check the rally turn in the video, and you'll see a rare case of perfect FWD oversteer. Hot damn. We drove the shit out of this car, in rain, mud, ice, snow, and it performed like a champ. It's no M5, but it's fun to drive and you don't have to worry about bouncing off the side of the road like you might with early 90's Caddy's. I say tint the windows, throw on some nice rims, subsonics, and floss the fuck out. The low end Deville starts at $41,215, the DTS starts at $46,987.

End result: if (and only if) you got the cash for the full DTS techno/performance package, I would recommend buying this car. Hopefully enough kids and speed freaks will buy Cadillacs that aftermarket and racing parts become more readily available, Mercedes/BMW style. The 2001 is out now, and it's tits. America is back. Let's do this.

Stats, taken from the Cadillac Deville home page: