Road Test
Cadillac BLS 1.9 D Luxury
Test date 19 April 2006
Price as tested £25,073
For High speed refinement, driving position, clear instrumentation
AgainstExpense, unsettled on B-roads, engine lacks torque
If you can’t beat them join them, the saying goes. So after several failed attempts at wooing European buyers with its American blend of shiny chrome, V8 engines and cheap plastic interiors, Cadillac is trying a different approach.
The plan is simple enough: take one European-designed small executive saloon and remould it to suit. Look beyond the BLS’s new-age Cadillac family styling cues – big grille, tall lights and more angles than a stealth fighter – and you’ll find a Saab 9-3 underneath.
Objectively you can’t question parent company General Motors’ thinking: Saab’s Trollhattan factory in Sweden has unused capacity, and to reverse-engineer a Cadillac from the 9-3 platform was far cheaper than dragging an American-designed Caddy up to meet European standards of handling, ride and quality.
Given the constraints of retaining the Saab’s roofline, windscreen and side windows, the Cadillac designers have done a very good job – from
the outside the illusion is pretty convincing. Few will recognise the BLS’s origins, with only the thin shutlines revealing this Caddy wasn’t built Stateside.
Surprisingly, the Cadillac nose works rather well on the 9-3 platform, and the materials used for the grille – and most of the cabin – shame those of the BLS’s bigger and more expensive brothers.
The front three-quarter view is easily the most appealing; stare at
it long enough and you’ll notice what looks like a pronounced beak. Moving rearwards, the thick, angular C-pillars and oversize light clusters just about work, but the jutting rear bumper sits rather awkwardly. Yet for those who’ve seen the bigger CTS or STS, the BLS is unmistakably a Cadillac: more restrained, more European, but still clearly American.
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