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Coupes & Convertibles Cadillac XLR and XLR-V Cadillac XLR vs. Mercedes-Benz SL
63 messages, Last post on Mar 07, 2009 at 4:51 AM
You are in the Cadillac XLR and XLR-V Forum. Your Host is claires
Compare and contrast the features of the Cadillac XLR/XLR-V with those of the Mercedes-Benz SL-Class models.
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Replying to: 213xlrv (Sep 13, 2006 12:36 am) Yet the SL gets the nod in handling. Go figure. Either someone is harping about nothing or the entire industry doesn't know what they're talking about. The Lexus loses in every respect. There isn't a single redeeming aspect of the car I'd prefer over the XLR-v. The only thing we agree on! The SC430 is for the pinky-ring set. I also never said the XLR-v is "superior in every way." I've said it is on balance the best car of its car in its class. Nobody in the class has a perfect polar graph of selection attributes. Your last sentence contradicts the first one. The XLR-V isn't even close to being the best car in this class, as it can't even beat a base SL550. The Mercedes SL55 has more displacement and a large torque advantage set in a dated but torsionally-stiff architecture with long overhangs, short wheelbase, and a quarter ton of excess weight that reflects a lack of design imagination. Interior materials are high quality. Interior design is overwrought and functions are obscured by poor ergonomics. Its suspension technology is the only one in the class to approach GM's in efficacy. The Mercedes is monstrously overpriced and is common as dirt where I live. Gotta love personal opinon on design passed off as some type of flaw. Just say you don't like the SL and this would make sense. Again your cited weight advantage hasn't proven squat in handling prowess in favor of the XLR. Gotta love the "common as dirt" comment too, i.e. Cadillac doesn't and can't sell anywhere near as many XLRs so I'll knock the Benz for being a commercial success. I love it when people who champion slow selling cars try to hint or imply that they are somehow more exclusive when the truth of the matter is the car in question is 10 or 10 times a sales dud! Exclusive is when you can sell more, but won't or when you only build a set number and that is it. GM could crank out XLRs all day long if the market warranted, but it doesn't so please spare me the hint or implication that the XLR is somehow exclusive when the reality of the matter is very few people want or would even consider a 75-100K Cadillac. The Caddy name doesn't warrant or carry nearly enough clout to sell a 100K car in any real numbers today. The V's interior ain't a reason not to choose the car now, however. No doubt the next version will be better still. IYO. Wait till next year or next time, a classic GM defense. GM never delivers a complete car, it is always wait until next time, which by then the competition will have moved the goal post. And by the way, other people do agree with me. The XLR/XLRv owner boards are full of people who bought the car for the same reasons I did, after having owned MB, Lexus, Jag, et al. And most of them never owned a Cadillac before, many never having previously owned an American car, either Seeing as how they sunk 75-100K into a market lagging American car they literally have no choice but to tell themselves this, otherwise they'd have the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the recorded history. M
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Replying to: merc1 (Aug 08, 2006 12:57 pm)
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Replying to: merc1 (Sep 12, 2006 10:50 pm) A sports car is classified as a two seater with rear wheel drive.
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Replying to: merc1 (Sep 13, 2006 1:58 am) More to the point, it would be impossible to build a sports car from the SL platform. It's stupidly heavy. Yet the light-for-class XLR-v is built on a platform that with the luxury stuff deleted and bigger stickier rubber added becomes a 3100 lb world-class sports car. The XLR-v comes from the factory tuned to a specific state of compromise. If you want to shift that mix this way or that, it's easy to do, and you'll be doing it with a quarter ton advantage over the porky SL55. Plainly, the XLR-v feels more incisive and gives me more information about the tire-road interface than the SL. Everything about the car is more communicative. It's not my fault if this isn't obvious to magazine jockeys. Want to really make the point? Put Corvette rubber on a V. Drive one, please, before you use someone else's opinion again to justify your own bias. "...because the rest of the car is lacking." This is not my experience. Now, I agree with you that 9,000 miles doesn't prove the long-term reliability of the V. But given the role of infant failure of componentry in gizmo-loaded luxury cars as a class, it's a good harbinger. Having put well over 100,000 miles on a prior generation Corvette, without so much as an upholstery scuff, I have confidence in the long-term stalwartness of the V. The basic durable goodness of the platform is routinely evidenced in harder-driven Corvettes in larger numbers. The long-term questions TBD are in the small-displacement supercharged engine and the top's mechanism. I'm expecting my car to be in my hands well into 6 digits. Haven't driven the new platform XKR (not sure it's shipped yet) but have driven the current XK. Extrapolating from that experience, and having driven the two cars in last gen and knowing that version's R difference, I don't think Jaguar's convertible handles like I expect 100K worth of car to handle. It has other merits to justify its price however. All these cars, even at 100K, are specific compromises. So having driven everything I can think of in this peculiar class of retractable hardtop luxury sporting GTs, plus the ragtop contenders adjacent to this category, every one is imperfect and every one makes a specific impression. On an absolute basis, none of these cars are worth $100,000, but that's a reflection of prevailing conditions. But in a world where an SLK 55 AMG starts at $61,000, a Lexus SC costs $70K, an XLR is $74K, a Jag is similar, and a Mercedes SL is $92K, yes the XLR-v is worth its price. No one thinks the XLR, XK or SC are too expensive for the market. For another $25K over the those, you get a hand-built semi-racing grade engine with added 123hp, bigger brakes, material upgrades in the interior, better transmission, larger wheels with more aggressive rubber, greater performance in every parameter. Sure, it's worth $100K in that context. Anyone who thinks it isn't worth $100K is essentially saying the brand is their issue, not the car. I don't have a problem with a $100K Cadillac at all. I didn't buy the car to make an obvious point about personal wealth. I bought it for its competence, power, comfort, fit, feel and intrinsic progressive emotion, compared to the other more flawed entries in its class, along with being the most agile performer lacking the ponderous dynamics of the SL and SC. Phil
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Replying to: merc1 (Sep 13, 2006 1:58 am) |
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Replying to: 213xlrv (Sep 13, 2006 12:36 am) Anyway, Phil, what kind of real-world mpg are you getting with your V? And thanks for the write up... I think I'm much further away from grabbing my mid-life crisis car as the evil wife has announced that she wants to buy a lakefront home in New Hampshire or Vermont within the next year or two. Actually, so would I. God's Country are the Northern New England states. Dropped my skis off at the shop for a tune up, looking forward to Ma Nature making up for the dearth of snow last winter this year.
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Replying to: laurasdada (Sep 13, 2006 3:56 pm) Real world mileage? I live in L.A. I often have an entire tankful of fuel consumed at an average speed of 26 mph when I can't arrange driving time outside of the expanding "rush hour" on our freeways and city streets. When I have a tank like that, I get 16 mpg. On a tank of solidly mixed off-peak freeway and on-peak city streets driving, I get 19/20 mpg. And when I have been able to track mileage on sustained highway runs at speed, I get 24-26mpg. Example: I recently finished a meeting in south Orange County after midnight and had to drive home on the northwest side of Los Angeles. It was 88 miles. Knowing I'd have clear running, I filled up before I left, and then topped off at destination. 88 miles at average speed of 82 mph yielded 25.2mpg. I...uh....can also say that I know exactly how to drive mileage down to 12 mpg, but doing so is a deliberate indulgence of unfriendly acceleration. I'm happy with the mileage given 443 hp in a 3800 lb. car. A couple of weeks ago, I was helping a friend evaluate cars. I have to say that if I were more cash limited and wanted a mid-life crisis machine, the only other car today under $100,000 that can match the XLR-v's sheer charisma and presence is the Shelby GT500, especially in coupe form. Simple, competent, poised, sensational. Otherwise, when you buy that lake house, sneak in a just-off-lease XLR-v in 2007/8. Phil |
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Replying to: poncho167 (Sep 13, 2006 4:54 am) True and I don't think I've ever said that MB was perfect in this regard. However this year JDP changed the criteria because MB went from 5th to below average and that didn't happen due to a sudden drop in quality either. Depending on which magazine write up you read the Cadillac XLR is raising a lot of heads. I believe it was Car & Driver last year that had it being barely edged by the Mercedes with four cars being tested. Must be a magazine not published here on earth. No issue of Car and Driver has ever said anything near that, in fact it was just the opposite. The XLR has lost each and every time it faced the SL and not by a small margin. In this recent comparo they pretty much said the BMW 650i barely edged out the XLR, not the SL. The XLR hasn't raised that head of anyone that matters, buyers. GM has a huge supply of XLRs and they are simply put, slow sellers. Cadillac uses a better quality plastic than Mercedes does as far as the noxious fumes that it doesn't give off. Other than that plastic is plastic and few people really notice the differences which are very minor. Not! GM uses the same plastics in the XLR as they do their other cheapo cars. I give the XLR credit for being something no other American brand can touch, but that isn't saying much since Chrysler and Lincoln have nothing even remotely similar. The problem is that GM doesn't sweat the details and a 100K is all about the details. You look at GM's new Kappa twins, the SKY and Solstice. I had to stop and look at one up close on a dealer lot because I couldn't believe how sloppily the top fits on these cars when the top is raised. Whoever signed off on that should be fired, but hey that it typical GM. They'll introduce something with great potential and even get the engine right, but then muck it up in cheapo details. M |
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Replying to: poncho167 (Sep 13, 2006 7:02 am) The XLR is no sports car and neither is the SL, they are GT cars. Big difference. M |
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Replying to: 213xlrv (Sep 13, 2006 7:19 am) True, but who should I believe as far as the XLR goes? A biased person who has the car and thinks it is so superior to everything else in the class or the professional reviewers? Not just one, but all of them say the same thing about the XLR. I have driven the current SL a many times, thank you. This nonsense about handling and weight is the about most ridiculous thing I've seen harped about for a long time. When is it going to sink in that even if the XLR were a superior handler (which it isn't) that handling is not the sole criteria for buyers with these cars! So what if the XLR is a better handler, it still is skinny-tired and very much an aquired taste for many and it doesn't have an interior worthy of it's sticker. You keep harping about handling yet you'll then turn around and say that these are not sports cars. Which is it going to be? If you're going to make the case for the XLR and it's handling advantage (which no one else has found) then that is ok, but that doesn't outweight the rest of what is wrong with the car, especially the 100K version of it. More to the point, it would be impossible to build a sports car from the SL platform. It's stupidly heavy. Yet the light-for-class XLR-v is built on a platform that with the luxury stuff deleted and bigger stickier rubber added becomes a 3100 lb world-class sports car. The XLR-v comes from the factory tuned to a specific state of compromise. If you want to shift that mix this way or that, it's easy to do, and you'll be doing it with a quarter ton advantage over the porky SL55. So what? Mercedes didn't set out to build a "sports car" from the SL platform. I mean really is it that bad to the point where we have to debate shoulda/woulda/coulda been built from the SL platform. Now the XLR is a sports car again? Plainly, the XLR-v feels more incisive and gives me more information about the tire-road interface than the SL. Everything about the car is more communicative. It's not my fault if this isn't obvious to magazine jockeys. Want to really make the point? Put Corvette rubber on a V. Drive one, please, before you use someone else's opinion again to justify your own bias. Ok, to you, no one else. Fine, but that doesn't put the XLR over the SL. Seconldy why do I have to put Corvette rubber on a XLR? They aren't going for the same market, yet another "wait until next year" type apology. My bias didn't set in until I saw the reviews of the car because honestly I thought (initially) the SL would really have some competition, but it doesn't in either the market or on the road, at least not from Cadillac. Now, I agree with you that 9,000 miles doesn't prove the long-term reliability of the V. But given the role of infant failure of componentry in gizmo-loaded luxury cars as a class, it's a good harbinger. Having put well over 100,000 miles on a prior generation Corvette, without so much as an upholstery scuff, I have confidence in the long-term stalwartness of the V. The basic durable goodness of the platform is routinely evidenced in harder-driven Corvettes in larger numbers. The long-term questions TBD are in the small-displacement supercharged engine and the top's mechanism. I'm expecting my car to be in my hands well into 6 digits. Putting 100K on a Corvette has what to do with the XLR? I don't expect any car to have problems relating to it's structure nowadays. The XLR has more things to go wrong than a Corvette every had so if you can put 100K on a XLR and nothing goes wrong, bravo. Until then the previous mileage racked up on car as bascially simple (relative to the XLR) is matterless. Haven't driven the new platform XKR (not sure it's shipped yet) but have driven the current XK. Extrapolating from that experience, and having driven the two cars in last gen and knowing that version's R difference, I don't think Jaguar's convertible handles like I expect 100K worth of car to handle. It has other merits to justify its price however. All these cars, even at 100K, are specific compromises. So in other words your bias is there before you've driven the thing? How hypocritical is that? The new XKR shares absolutely nothing to do with the last generation car, nothing. Totally new chassis/platform etc, only the engines carry over so some of your own "until you drive it" advice would be in order for you here! I fully expect the XKR to trounce a XLR-V in handling if not in a straight line. Anyone who thinks it isn't worth $100K is essentially saying the brand is their issue, not the car. Bingo! Cadillac hasn't built anything in the last 30 years that even comes close to putting them in the position to ask 100K for one of their cars. You're right it is a brand issue that is supported by a car that simply doesn't feel like a 100K car. No one thinks the XLR, XK or SC are too expensive for the market. Not true, obviously buyers think the XLR is too expensive going by its lacklust sales performance, then again it could be the whole thought of sinking 100K on a Cadillac that won't be worth half that in a few years. In short Cadillac's comeback wasn't yet up to the level of being able to charge 100K for anything yet. All the the other cars have proven themselves to some degree, especially the SL. I share you're dislike of the SC430 as a GT car, but the car reeks of quality build, construction and materials, that is what puts it over. The previous Jaguar XK, while totally an antique until this new 07' model came along, was so gorgeous to the point where it could sell on looks alone. I can't take any of your dynamics argument seriously if you're going to say this: ..lacking the ponderous dynamics of the SL and SC.. The SL is a lot of things, but ponderous it isn't one of them and to place it on the same level as the sedan-like driving SC430 tells me you simply don't like the SL because this claim is just plain untrue and ridiculous. The SL can run rings around a SC430 and you know it. M
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