So there I was, sitting in the Lear Jet with my two colleagues and Elvis Presley, looking forward to driving the new Hummer, and wondering how on earth lesser mortals tolerate the long check-in queues ACSA forces them to endure. Okay – it wasn’t really Elvis, but an affable Scottish lookalike called Danny Fisher, who General Motors was flying down from Durban to perform at the launch of their two new brands.
Apparently being a pseudo Elvis is quite a rewarding pastime. When the real one turned up his toes in 1977 there were 170 Elvis impersonators in the world, but by the turn of the century that figure had grown to at least 85 000. According to ScienceWorld Online, if the numbers keep swelling at the current rate, by the year 2019 approximately one third of the people on this planet will be Elvis clones!
When we set off for Fancourt Estate we were anticipating a couple of days driving Hummers around in the bush, blissfully unaware that Cadillac was part of the deal. We had an idea that General Motors would be bringing in selected Cadillac models sometime in 2007, but had heard nothing official. Now, with GM’s Hummer export program up and running, the company earns enough import credits to import selected Cadillac offerings at competitive prices, and they chose the Hummer launch to make the announcement. I feel that their timing in introducing the new range of cars is a little unfortunate – if they’d gotten the brand established two or three years ago they would have benefited from the boom years the motor industry has enjoyed. Now, with our currency on a downward slide once again, the future doesn’t seem quite so rosy.
Like my Elvis co-traveller, the Cadillac BLS sedans that awaited us at Fancourt weren’t your typical All-American product. They do have the correct lineage, though, because General Motors owns Swedish car manufacturer SAAB, and the launch vehicles came straight from that company’s Swedish factory at Trollhattan. The upside of this is that the cars are more European than American: this means they don’t handle like barges, they don’t guzzle fuel like there’s no tomorrow, and you don’t need to extend your garage to accommodate them.
I drove all three versions of the BLS – a 100 kW 1,9 litre four-cylinder turbodiesel, a 131kW turbocharged two-litre four-cylinder petrol, and the flagship 2,7 litre V6 turbo with 188 kW tucked under its hood. We pedalled the front-wheel-drive cars as fast as they’d go through the gorgeous passes in the George area, and I found them to be among the best-handling sedans I’ve ever driven. All three also offer spirited straight-line performance, and I’d expect the two-litre turbo petrol version to sell particularly well because it’s a superb luxury sports sedan that will probably cost a fair bit less than its stablemates.
General Motors will set their pricing nearer the cars’ official launch in mid 2007, but the BLS will compete head-on with the BMW 3 Series, both in performance and price. Two other models, the STS luxury sports sedan, and the SRX, a luxury crossover vehicle, will probably also be offered here once the dealer network is in place.