The Smoking Tire recently managed to get their paws on a 2014 Cadillac ELR so they could complete a comprehensive road test review of the EREV coupe. That video is coming soon, but in the meantime, host Matt Farah took the sporty EV to ‘The Snake’ in Malibu to see how it handles some of California’s twistiest mountain roads.
Thanks to its sheer mass, the ELR doesn’t feel very nimble and its eco tires aren’t doing it any favors in the bends. It runs up the road in total silence, with the loudest noise in the entire video coming from the tires shrieking in pain as its tossed into the corners faster than any EV driver would ever dare. But it isn’t all bad, with Farah saying putting some sticky tires on it “could be interesting”.
Considering it wasn’t designed for spirited driving and the majority of owners will never subject it high speed cornering, we’d say the ELR did pretty well from what we can see in the video. We’ll be sure to share The Smoking Tire’s full review of the ELR when it’s posted, but for now, check out the canyon run in the video below.
Comments
The coolest cadillac since renaissance of GM
But it seems a bit posh, whimsical and expensive
Regards from Spain
It’s interesting that people don’t seem to notice that in the video, *all* of the tire squealing occurs when the rubber is crossing paint.
I have both a Volt and an ELR and I’ve driven both on the same road, as I live in Los Angeles. The ELR’s grip is noticeably higher and more confident than Volt’s owing to the wider/bigger rubber and more sophisticated HiPer strut and Watts Link suspension in the Cadillac. It’s true that the low-rolling-resistance rubber on both EVs provide less grip than performance tires would, and it’s true that you can get tire squeal on bare pavement in twisties at speed. But the tire squeal on paint is quite common even with summer tires on performance cars here, and certainly occurs at a lower threshold with eco tires.
The point is that the tire squeal on paint in the video does not accurately communicate the adhesion and dynamic characteristics of the car. Even if it had a mechanically-connected gasoline engine with, say, 500 hp, the ELR wouldn’t be a sports car. It’s a fwd luxury GT with special qualities in a huge urban area like SoCal. No one looks at a fwd 2+2 GT and thinks it’s equal to a Corvette or 911. But getting accustomed to using the regen paddles to adjust the entry speed into a corner helps a lot.
The ELR is quite competent and satisfying for the serenity and dynamics of its driving experience, which nothing else really offers. The Tesla has other impracticalities, and as a long wheelbase sedan just doesn’t have the intimate, flat-cornering appeal of ELR. Once you value ELR for its strengths and for what it is, what it is not fades quickly. I say in the context of having had a string of high performance cars over the last 20+ years that the ELR can easily be driven with confidence, and it can be driven at a quick pace. But it is a 4000 lbs. bi-technology coupe in which the drive wheels are powered electrically with no direct assist from the gasoline engine nearly all the time, just a few special conditions during which the planetary gear taps petrol torque excepting.
Phil