Blackwing Engine Could Be a Hell of a Swan Song for the Cadillac CT6
Twin-turbo Blackwing V8 would give the CT6 more horsepower than a Corvette Stingray. Too bad the future of the CT6 is uncertain.
For years, the Cadillac CT6 has been the luxury brand’s flagship sedan. It certainly has visual presence and its available Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving technology gives it both flash and substance. But one thing it didn’t have that its German rivals possessed was a V8 engine option. The twin-turbo 4.2-liter “Blackwing” V8 fills in that gap, but as Popular Mechanics points out in a recent article, it joins the CT6’s powertrain lineup in “what might be its final year of production.” It depends on whether GM decides to build it at a different plant after the Detroit-Hamtramck facility closes in January 2020 or import it from its plant in China.
The Blackwing takes its name from the merlette, the ebony fowl that appears on the original Cadillac crest. The hand-built power plant is available in two states of tune. In the CT6 Platinum, it generates 500 horsepower and 574 lb-ft of torque. Under the hood of the CT6-V, it cranks out 550 horsepower and 640 lb-ft. In fact, the V version of the Blackwing is so powerful that it even surprised Cadillac initially. In one of its promo videos for the engine, they stated it only has 627 units of grunt. Why? Because the Blackwing developed more torque than Cadillac expected it to.
It routes that power through the same 10-speed automatic found in the Camaro ZL1 and all-wheel drive. In Track mode (yes, there is a Track mode in case you feel like challenging a Mercedes-AMG S 63 owner to a race), the CT6 can jettison 95 percent of its available torque through its rear wheels. According to Popular Mechanics, a Blackwing-powered CT6 can fly to 60 mph in under four seconds and has “the right soundtrack to play against the likes of BMW, Mercedes and Audi—the deep bass burble at idle sounds proper, and there’s no contrived popping on the overrun.”
Although Cadillac addressed the CT6’s lack of a V8, the Blackwing models suffer from what has afflicted previous CT6s: a lackluster interior. (We can personally attest to this. We drove a pre-Blackwing CT6 Platinum and found the cabin to be content-rich, but visually bland and ambitionless.) And there’s a trade-off to getting the CT6-V: you can’t get it with Super Cruise. Cadillac’s logic seems to be that buyers will want to drive the CT6-V instead of having it largely drive them.
Popular Mechanics engaged the semi-autonomous driving feature while inside the CT6 Platinum. As convenient and advanced as Super Cruise is, it’s still not a perfect science. The publication had to physically override it to avoid two separate collisions.
Despite the CT6’s shortcomings, it’s a shame that it got the Blackwing so late in its lifecycle. The biggest shame of all would be GM failing to find another vehicle to put the beast in.
*Photos courtesy of Popular Mechanics and Cadillac.
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