Liam White 
Just to be clear, Cadillac isn’t pulling off some elaborate big brother scheme to watch your every move each time you take your V-series out for some hot laps (allegedly!). There’s no General Motors representatives in black suits and sunglasses making sure the secret telemetry system is sending headquarters the performance data from your local autocross (allegedly!). It’s also highly unlikely that they know about that embarrassing missed shift that you blundered last weekend at the drag strip (they definitely saw that, though). With that being said, Cadillac has a pretty good idea of which of its customers are tracking their cars and where they’re tracking them, and it all has to do with the new Cadillac CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing sports cars.
How Does Cadillac Get This Information?
According to an article by Road and Track, Cadillac’s chief engineer Brandon Vivian holds a monthly staff meeting where they dissect a report of who’s been using their V-series at which track days. How do they procure this information if there’s not an entire General Motors reconnaissance team working to get this data? Well, as per Vivian, the cross-country network of passionate enthusiasts do a pretty good job at documenting the number of V-Series Cadillacs that were at a certain track on a certain day. Cadillac also relies on formal tracking clubs as well as its national V-Club charters to attain these figures. If you’re still not convinced, you should know that Cadillac’s V-Club currently has active members in 30 states.
It’s All About The CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing
So what’s the real goal here you might ask? Cadillac wants to know how its cars are faring on tracks around the country and hopefully get a sense of whether V-series track enthusiasts are consistently bringing their own dogs to the fight. The new, highly anticipated Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing will be popping up soon as initial deliveries are slated for late this summer. It appears that Cadillac is really putting in due diligence to make sure that the track-focused Blackwing models exceed expectations and magnify Cadillac’s presence, especially on the race track.
The Blackwings Are Probably The Last Of Their Kind
The engineers at GM have obviously spent lots of time and energy making sure the Cadillac Blackwing models are near perfect. The CT4-V Blackwing has already proven itself worthy on the track and boasts record-setting V-series downforce figures, all while managing to keep a respectable fuel economy for a sports sedan. The performance of the CT5-V Blackwing speaks for itself, especially in pure bang-for-buck terms in comparison to BMW’s M5. With all that said, there’s bittersweet air about the Blackwing Cadillacs. Both the CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwings come with a manual transmission option, a sight that’s rarely seen now in the age of electrification and conscious fuel consumption. Brandon Vivian told Road and Track that the Cadillac Blackwings may be the last of the dying manual performance breed. Hence the need to go out with a bang.
