The Reverse-Opening Front Armrest Of The Cadillac CT6: Feature Spotlight
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The Cadillac CT6 has so many positive and redeeming qualities that it’s nearly impossible to list them all of them at once. So we thought we’d cover them one at a time. Let’s start with the front armrest, as first seen on Cadillac Society.
First and foremost, the armrest serves its primary purpose of providing a comfortable, ergonomic, and attractive place for the arm/elbow of the driver and passenger alike. But it goes beyond that, as it can be opened either towards the driver or towards the (front seat) passenger.
Cadillac CT6 Front armrest in closed position
Cadillac CT6 front armrest open towards driver
Cadillac CT6 front armrest open towards passenger
The GM Authority Take
Cadillac interior designers deserve a hand for a well-executed feature that will hopefully be appreciated. It sure was appreciated by us during our time with the CT6.
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even on this photos….interior needs to be updated with luxury materials. too much plastic for this class.
Why is it asymmetric? A perfect rectangular armrest cover would look better and may be later installed in the other GM models.
My 2005 C Class had this feature.
More than likely, that will be a norm for most flagships in this class but a worthy feature nonetheless. I expect ’19 refresh models under JDN to get some worthwhile features currently lacking on the current design cycle.
I’m waiting for the day when Cadillac is compared with the S-Class Mercedes, Audi A8 or BMW 7 series in all the car magazines. The Cadillac CT6, which I assume is the top of the line, is always compared with the E-Class Mercedes. I think it’s about time that Cadillac upped their game and started putting all quality components in their cars along with a V8 engine so that Cadillac will be a Cadillac again.
I agree with most of that, except for the comparisons. They can keep the E Class comparisons.
What I want is for Cadillac to confirm the CT8 and execute it in a way that competes with the Mercedes-Maybach S600 for regular S Class money.
I’m guessing it might look more luxe and innovative if the photography was professional and well-lit.
These look like iPhone shots of some guy’s beatup wallet, there’s a weird white lintball on the fabric surface … doesn’t exactly say top quality and attention to detail.
They should yank these 2d rate photos and do it right. Or at least clean it up in photoshop.
Oh this was taken with a top-rate DSLR.
The deal is that a diamond still looks like a diamond no matter the lighting or the camera.
The wallet in the photo actually brand new and lint is a part of life.
Ultimately, the purpose of the photos is to show how this feature works to those that have never seen it… not to produce recreate the Mona Lisa within the CT6 😉
Ok, I guess a cubic zirconium in one person’s eye is a diamond in another’s.
Looks skanky to me, but if you’re cool with the look, by all means, have at it.
Looking a little Auto Trader to me, though. Seems like every Cadillac brand expression out there should be a positive brand statement.
Maybe this will totally resonate with the market – I could be totally off base: could be this brand expression in spot-on ?
This is definitely a vehicle with a lot of interior wear. Although the functionality of the center console is represented, the photo of Cadillacs quality materials are definitely misrepresented here.
and where is the sexy model caressing the armrest ?!?!? how about the hipster nyc background??? how about filling that armrest with diamonds/rubies. very disappointing.
Or they could rear hinge it so the driver and passenger can use it at the same time .
Or perhaps have the cover slide toward the rear of the car. This would allow both front seat occupants to use the storage area simultaneously while requiring a smaller range of motion than a rear hinge would require and would prevent the lid from slamming shut.
The rear-hinge is practical and cost effective. The reversible switching hinge has a ‘wow’ factor; something that every Cadillac should have.
Rear hinges generally work well for shorter armrests. The longer armrests (as the one in the CT6) are less practical and significantly less comfortable to open rear-wards… hence, they’re significantly more convenient and comfortable to open sideways. Hence the reason for the armrest opening sideways in the CT6.
I should also add that the side-opening armrest is significantly more comfortable if you need to open it while driving. By comparison, the rear-hinged armrest in my ATS is a PITA to open at high speeds… requiring much more attention/concentration.
My Suburban is side hinged and occasionally I bump the button if I have something in my left front pocket while driving and it pops open. My Silverado is rear hinged and I would guess is longer than a CT6 armrest. Between a Silverado & Suburban they are both easy to open.
I agree withe rear hinge idea . Makes just as much sense for use by both front passengers . Although it’s a ” cool ” idea , it’s an over-engineered play thing .
What I think a well executed feature by the designers that would be appreciated and actually add a touch of class to the interior would be to find a place for an actual clock . A nice tailored timepiece . Something small I will admit ( to some people ) , but found in other luxury cars from the S and E-class to the G-90 & 80 and Lincoln to name just a few .
Even the old 2010-12 SRX had one . Now that would be something to appreciate while spending time in the CT6 and would be worthy of a ” spot-light ” . 😉
There nice cars but if i had $80 grand to spend on a vehicle it wouldnt be the CT6, if your gonna spend that much $ jing ona Cadillac u might as well buy the new CTS-V series car, now thats a car id spend $100 grand on!
Thanks to this recent burst of “Justification” I dug out my old Southern Red Neck Gospel music by Bill Gaither CD’s and played them in my Cadillac on my way to work, Wonderful stuff. Thanks Again
What in the hell do you need a clock for? There’s one one cue system! Talk about over engineer!
My 2006 C230 has one of those too.
Let’s face it. Cadillac is not going to do anything right if this many of you can find this much fault over a damn arm rest and photo that has absolutly nothing wrong with it.
While some claim over engineered here I say over critical.
Many here really need to save the vitriol for things that really matter and thecars meant to change the brand we have yet to see.
This is an armrest that works it looks fine in the real car, the photo was not shopped or computer generated. What is to complain about.
This here shows what Cadillac is facing with many that no matter what they do many of you are going to complain.
Nice idea yet way to shallow to put anything in, I always ask why don’t they use their time figuring out how to incorporate things customers want like CD players, instead of all the nonsense.
Just another example how they do not know what their customers want, they just dream up stuff.
Agreed Steve. A CD player be standard (at least it’s optional on the CT6, but can you really get the model you want in stock?) on any luxury car. How cheap can you get to eliminate the CD player?
I guess this is part of the theory that it’s more “modern” to delete the CD player, so if you include one somebody might not buy it because it’s “old fashioned”. I’d like to see a poll of who would never buy a car that didn’t have a CD player (which would include me), vs. people who would never buy a car that DID have a CD player (idiot self-annointed “hipsters”, wearing their knit hats indoors at the coffee bar, who belong in a Prius anyway).
Including a CD player in every luxury car is a no-brainer. Including a two-way opening armrest instead is brainless.
It probably has nothing to do with being ‘old fashioned’, and everything to do with luxury consumers who are unwilling to physically lug around CD’s and accept lower quality sound over that of steaming or that of FLAC.
Your little internalize war isn’t against hipsters (because there aren’t any hipsters anymore), but it’s really in your reluctance to realize that nobody has any need or desire for a “CD wallet”.
That’s both technical and practical objections to CD players in cars, and yet I’m sure you’ll consistently think it’s inter-generational friction. We already have albums being released that aren’t available on CD, and if you have old CD’s, there’s nothing stopping you from either ripping them or download higher quality tracks from online vendor.
I won’t even get into the fact the CD’s you have in your collection that you don’t actually them or the music on them. Rather, you’ve paid a licensing fee legally demanded of the publisher to listen to the music encoded on them.
But please, tell us all why it’s Drew vs. the world when it comes to not having CD players in cars.
Tell us how, with your excessive and weak emotional pleading instead of technical or practical considerations, that this is really the crux that bringing America down from within and it was all perpetuated by those dreadful young hipster people who last existed 5 years ago.
Did you want your next Cadillac to come with a blue Kenwood CD head unit with fancy LCD graphics and a factory sub in the trunk too? Are you THAT behind the times that you want to relive the ricer age?
How did you ever recover when cassette players were removed from cars? Was that the result of those awful hipsters too who wanted more ‘modern’ things in their cars?
I can’t believe the CD issue is still being discussed after all of these years. I also can’t believe that they still produce CD!
Waste of space
Waste of time
Waste of money
You can put thousands of songs on one thumb drive, and talk about sound quality who cares you driving a car! Your not sitting at a symphony orchestra! Your just playing background music while you drive.
Plus with all of the streaming services both free and pay using mp3’s might one day be a thing of the past!
CD’S are not needed anymore just like 6 disk CD changers are no longer needed or offered! Time change and we need to move on. Next thing they are going to be asking for is tape decks and 8 track players!
Brian, probably true that most people can’t tell the difference between MP3 quality and CD quality, in a moving car. And you could add one more advantage to MP3 – in today’s Cadillacs with the jarring “sport ride” (compared with past Cadillacs), I suppose someone’s CD player could be shaken enough to mistrack. It’s interesting though that Cadillac once offered a car with a record (vinyl LP) player. Imagine the smooth ride Cadillac must have had to make that possible.
As far MP3 quality being good enough, well tell that to the people buying the 34 speaker Bose Panaray on the CT6. I’m pretty sure they are going to want at least CD quality, even if you don’t think they can tell the difference.
Also an advantage of CD is that you can take it straight from your home stereo (where MP3s sound really bad if you have a decent sound system), to your car, back and forth. Who is going to do that with an MP3 file?
But the bottom line is – even if you don’t think CD players are no longer needed, and even if that were actually true – if Cadillac is losing sales due to not having CD players installed, then that is a problem for Cadillac, not for the customer. It’s funny how so many of you lose sight of the fact that this is a business, while merely trying to envision the car that would suit your own personal needs and desires, ignoring the rest of the market.
Drew,
Sound quality in a Cadillac is no longer a concern. We listen to the noise of the RFT on the road. lol
Quit assuming that newer is automatically better. Research CD sound quality vs that of an mp3 so you know WTF you’re talking about.
Simmer down, Grawbuddy. You sound like those young people who starts breaking windows and attacking others, when someone says something they disagree with. I guess they didn’t get enough participation trophies as kids. All I did was to express a preference and opinion about CD player inclusion; I didn’t threaten to take away your USB or your streaming or your favorite knit hat (or maybe you call it a tuque up there in Canada, eh?).
If you want to sell more cars, it’s best to offer more ways to access music, not fewer. And sure there are some higher bit resolution formats accessible via new formats, and I’m all for them. But don’t kid yourself that most people in their 20s and 30s are listening to better-than-CD format, because they aren’t. MP3 has about 1/10th the bit rates as CDs. No wonder music has gotten so bad since at least the early 1990’s – because not much music gets through on MP3, so it’s all about “words and beats” instead of real music.
Steve was talking about what his customers want, not about where they “should be”. You can go to every Cadillac dealer and try to educate the public about how they can just rip their CDs to flash drives and SD cards if they want, but if they see there’s no CD slot, they are a lot less likely to buy.
I like the convenience and option of playing a CD. Sure I’ve also done the ripping to flash drive and SD card, more as a test than something I really wanted. On one car I test drove with SD card, the card played the songs in the wrong order (they had song “11” following song “1”) and put gaps between the songs, when there were no gaps for a live concert recording. Maybe they’ve fixed some of those issues, but I don’t always want to deal with a playlist or someone else’s choices of songs.
I also don’t want to go through and rip every CD to digital format, I like being able to grab the CDs I want to hear, and hit the road. Recently I was listening to the remaster of “Candy-O” by The Cars. It sounded great by the way. It’s a new album, out maybe one month. All I had to do was open it up and put it in the car’s CD player, no ripping necessary. And no doubt a lot better quality than the MP3 version.
And wow, I am so impressed that you listen to albums that haven’t even been released on CD. Much of what I listen to hasn’t been released on CD either, since I have a lot of concert recordings that have never been released on CD. But I transfer them to CD-R (gold, for better fidelity and longevity) so they wind up in the car’s CD player.
As I said, I bet if you took a poll, you’d find more people refusing to buy a car without a CD player, than people who would refuse to buy a car which did have a CD player in it (along with all the other popular music accessing options). But for some reason you blew a gasket over that opinion. Are you against greater choice? Are you against more car sales?
Maybe you have the snobbish JDN attitude about “wrong driveways”. Perhaps you don’t want people who like to play CDs in their cars owning Cadillacs. You have the right to be a snob, but Cadillac is part of GM, which is about profits. If CD players means more Cadillac sales, then GM owes it to the shareholders to include them. Steve is an actual Cadillac salesman, so I’m pretty sure he’s got a handle on this.
“If you want to sell more cars, it’s best to offer more ways to access music, not fewer.”
And that’s where you’re wrong right off the bat. Thinking that quantity is a substitute for quality.
If you can’t figure out why quality is more important than quantity, then you have no business looking at Cadillac or any luxury car.
Nothing in the rest of your dribble is worth reading if you keep getting it fundamentally wrong.
I bet you still use a green marker on your CD’s.
“If you can’t figure out why quality is more important than quantity, then you have no business looking at Cadillac or any luxury car.”
Grawduddy, thanks for one of the most hilarious quotes I’ve seen all year. Especially in the context of giving the driver more options, more choice. This is not a choice of quality over quantity, but if it is, CD quality tops MP3 quality. However, I’m not saying that the bluetooth and USB connections should be ended, or the satellite radio or whatever, just give the customer more choice including a CD slot. Where’s the “quality” in deleting it?
I’m pretty sure that you are one of those “more gears are better” people, deriding the smooth and reliable 4 forward gear DTS transmission vs. today’s unreliable but impressive sounding 8 gears or more. How does your “quantity is not better than quality” mantra stack up in that case?
But more choices is not a “quantity over quality” calculation. More choices IS quality, to many people. Look at paddle shifters, I don’t like them, but they give people more options with an automatic transmission. They are considered a mark of quality to some people. Then there are the choices of “sport mode” vs. other modes, again an option for the driver to use or not. The better cars have these options.
Many high quality cars also give you a choice of dashboard layout. I guess you just think they should get the one YOU would choose, because that’s the “quality” choice. Or there’s the choice of setting your headlights on when you want, or “automatic” when it gets dark. I suppose you would be in favor of deleting one or the other of those (whichever one suits YOUR driving habits) because after all, quantity is not as good as quality.
Or how about making the seats just have one position, the one that fits your body perfectly? It’s unnecessary “quantity” to give the driver so many seating position choices. And of course the steering wheel should be set in one position too, no power adjustment like my DTS, no adjustment at all, for anyone. Just make them all at the perfect Grawbuddy position and stop giving people other options.
The bottom line is that not everyone drives the way you do, not everyone likes your preferences in dashboards and headlight settings, etc. Not everyone is your size or likes to sit and hold the wheel the way you like to. Not everyone listens to music the way you do. Having options for those things makes the car more luxury, not less.
Right on point. They are not listening, their minds are made up, this blog is for us to tell them how wonderful they are.
For many years I had the pleasure of selling Industrial safety equipment for a company that excelled in quality, they out sold their closest competitor 3 to 1. Management thought that if they would cut their prices in half and sold through wider distribution they could make a lot more money.
I left the company, and moved on. Today they are no longer manufacturing those products. they handed it all to their competition and stopped production. My old customers still call me.
When the factory forgets who their customers are, and what they are supposed to be doing they are in trouble.
I never once said MP3. That was your doing, and only yours
I did say FLAC, and we all know FLAC and streaming (neither of which are MP3’s, may I remind you) offer far better audio quality than a CD ever could. Furthermore when it’s on a phone or EXS, you also escape the total embarrassment of being seen with a CD wallet.
That why I still stand for a demand of quality and you simply don’t.
Perhaps there is a used 300 with a CD player that might be more to your liking, as I’m sure the 300 would look ‘right’ in your driveway.
Grawbuddy, FLAC is actually data packing software, that allows lossless compression of files from whatever size. That doesn’t mean they are automatically better than CD, in fact I would guess that most FLAC unpacks to WAV files which can then be burned to CD-Rs. There currently isn’t a lot of music which is higher bit rate than CD.
I don’t know what you have in mind as far as “streaming”, but streaming comes in a variaty of data formats as well. Pandora is a popular “streaming” service, and their cheapest service streams at 64 kbps, which is worse than the rate of the worst MP3s (which can go from 96 kbps to 320 kbps, and are typically 128. kbps). For comparison, CDs run at 1411 kbps. I’m unaware of any streaming services for the CT6 that have higher bit rates than CD, though one called “Tidal” has a bit rate equal to CDs.
I had assumed that by “quality vs. quantity” you meant you didn’t like the “quantity” of many choices for auto music play, which IMO should also include CD. Your post simply wasn’t clear, except of course in your own mind. But if your case is quality over quantity and you insist on better-than-CD only, then your car should prevent you from playing MP3s as well as CDs, as well as streaming services with CD quality or lower. So unless you’ve got a portable blu-ray audio, DVD-audio player, or high bit memory stick, hooked up via the USB port (bluetooth maxes out at 768 kbps), then your car will only be capable of playing the “sounds of silence”, and I don’t mean the Simon & Garfunkel song.
You want a CD player? Why bother
Why bother with a CD player you ask? Because present customers want and use them. Not memory sticks, not transferring through Bluetooth on their phones. Not every one listens to head banging noise. There is enough of that without Panaray Sound Systems.
I have driven in the CT6 with it, and find the Panaray to not be a selling feature. Not worth the admission price. we don’t order it, unless a customer spec’s it. Several of my customers like to listen to Classical music, there are thousands of those CD’s in the market.
Another advantage is a CD removes the constant Trump bashing in the media these days.
Granted, I am aligned with the customers I deal with.
We listen to Classical Music, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s & 80’s Rock and Roll, Flatt & Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, 40’s music etc. Not eveyone likes “Cowboy” music, or “Soul Sounds” some find them offensive. A CD lets a customer choose what they want. Not what they are forced into.
XM is good, but not the same. Lots of customers say that without a CD player, they just turn the radio off. Not mute it, turn it all the way off.
We are talking about a Car, not a set of headphones. so the argument respecting sound quality, is nice but not as important as middle level worker bees trying to justify their jobs, wish it to be. If it were there would be no road noise, wind noise, Wiper noise, Tire noise etc. Bose Noise cancellation helps but still does not eliminate enough background.
My wife asked me, why do people with hearing aids, buy quiet cars?
I said, because hearing aids amplify background noise. Quiet cars make for a more pleasurable ride.
Designing cars for their tastes and not their customers, is missing the point.
I could swear that I was in a 1990’s Lincoln Town Car that had this feature.
CD player? I saw one at the Smithonian last summer. It was next to a typewriter and flip phone.
If you put a CD player in next someone will want an 8 Track and then a 45 RPM record pLayer under the dash.
You guys don’t get it. A lot of customers still use CD’s. They can listen to what they want without the advertising. A lot of audio books are on CD’s, but then again you would have to be literate to now what books are. The cloud is not safe.
It is a hassle to transfer to a media stick. Half the time the car does not recognize the format used. ITunes is not that great, and the cars have trouble playing them too.
Oh that’s right, you have to buy CD’s how silly of me.
I refuse to believe the move was technology driven, it just allowed the general to increase profits and deliver less. Typical bean counter thinking.
Your’e wasting your time. These people are idiots.
Last time I check I was told we were not allowed to call people names on this site. Has the rules changed? Please tell me this is the case cuz I would love to give choice words to certain people on this site!
This CD argument is a joke, just because somebody looked up a comparison between CD’S and mp3’s and there’s a difference in sound that only a music composer could tell. And if a person says they can tell the difference the two while driving down the road is full of you know What!
So we choose to use a format that is easier to have just about every song you have ever heard just one click away on the radio.
So if a few people still used cassette tapes we still feel the need to offer those?
This argument needs to go away!
You say it’s your preference should manufactures still offer drum brakes front and back just because that’s what you are use to? NO IT’S NONSENSE!
Instead of forcing people to buy cars with CD players why can’t Cadillac start a program that will teach a buyer how to convert their music or do it for them as a perk for buying the car.
Arguing about sound quality in a car is ridiculous, it is just a way of trying to justify keeping a CD player.
Not talking about Cassette players, you bring silly arguments to justify your errors.
After you guys ruin the company, you will sit around and wonder what went wrong.
I bring it up to display how dumb it is to still want things that have no use anymore
Because you do not use them any longer, is no reason to discontinue it.
It’s not that I don’t it’s that 95 % of the people don’t!
Sounds like you guys are using the DNC to determine what people use. I noticed how accurate their polling was in the last election.
Brian, what is wrong with offering people a choice of options? Just because YOU never use CDs doesn’t mean only 5% of the public uses them. I’d guess it’s more like 40-50% of luxury car buyers who use CDs. Among all cars buyers, it’s lower, but like it or not the luxury market skews older.
I don’t use paddle shifters, and I’d guess that far fewer Cadillac drivers use paddle shifters than use CDs in their cars. But Cadillac is including them on their premium cars anyway, because some people want them.
Every car manufacturer wants to increase demand for their products. Cadillac/GM is no different. They may choose to price their cars high in an attempt to maximize profit, and the higher the demand, the higher they can price them (or have the least discounting at the end of the model year run). If the demand for Cadillacs is significantly higher when they include CD players, then Cadillac should include them, whether or not you personally feel it’s a technology that you don’t need.
Steve,
They will need a name for that book. What Happened is already taken. 😉
The library is full of books, and they are FREE to borrow, as long as you bring them back. When I find one I like, I buy it to help the author, he doesn’t get paid for using the Library books.
Try reading Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith, one of the best books you will ever read. A Wonderful author well researched, his other books are just as interesting, The one of FDR was a very interesting one.
I am a Speed Reader, so it does not take me all that long to go through a thousand page book. The key is remembering it.
Of course anything by Napoleon Hill is a must read for anyone in business.
And of course The Holy Bible, which is my most often read book.
I am in trouble now.
As Paul said, Those that come to God must believe that he is and that he will reward those that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
Forgive him, that was a pretty harsh Adjective to use. Sometimes words just escape when looking for the right one to use. Obviously not a lawyer.
Thanks to this recent burst of “Justification” I dug out my old Southern Red Neck Gospel music by Bill Gaither CD’s and played them in my Cadillac on my way to work, Wonderful stuff. Thanks Again
Steve,
“You guys don’t get it. A lot of customers still use CD’s. They can listen to what they want without the advertising. A lot of audio books are on CD’s, but then again you would have to be literate to now what books are.”
I think the issue here may be that some contributors don’t use luxury products. People who don’t deal in luxury can’t be expected to understand that the luxury buyer has expectations. If Cadillac doesn’t meet expectations another auto maker will.
In some respects that may be the motivation for Cadillac’s push for the youth market. They wouldn’t know luxury if they tripped over it. Bean counter’s dream.
Where are you getting this advertising crap? When you put songs on a thumb drive and you put that drive into your car there are no commercials.
You click from song to song album to album. And if you have a live album and you want to listen all the way threw with no breaks all you have to do is turn shuffle off!
You make up reasons to still use cds when there is zero reasons for them to be used in this day and age definitely in a car where road noise takes most of the clarity away.
Like I said before it’s just background music while you drive.
I’ll go one further having all of your songs on a thumb drive is safer then flipping threw a CD case like we use to!
It’s getting close to 2020 so start acting like it
Brian makes very valid points. I’m not sure why he is experience such harsh treatment. Many things get relegated to history. The CD is one of them. It’s not the end of the world nor is it a hindrance to luxury.