After years of making dynamically excellent sedans and a financially excellent (for GM) large SUV—the Escalade—Cadillac is following the money and rolling out new small and midsize SUVs. The smallest of this new litter is the XT4, a compact SUV that fits between BMW’s X1 and X3 for size and price. The XT4 is sharply styled—eye-catching and attractive, I’d say—but can it compete?
My tester is a 2019 Cadillac XT4 AWD Luxury with a sticker of $42,585 (excluding destination fees). XT4s start at $35,790 for FWD models, with AWD adding $2,500 to the base price. My tester is painted in a beautiful metallic red paint that feels worth its $1,225 price tag. The Luxury trim level is the entry trim level for all Cadillacs, but the XT4 Luxury’s cabin is still pleasing to my eyes and hands. The hides, synthetic on the seats and dash and bovine on the steering wheel, are nice to touch. The stitching on the dash and doors adds a touch of class to the cabin. There is not a whiff of piano-black plastic to be found. (Oh my, how Cadillac has matured since the dark days when my 2014 CTS-V rolled off the assembly line!) Hard plastics are sparingly used, and when they are found, they are being used in places where their durability is an asset.
All XT4s leave the factory with an 8” infotainment screen. After so many Teslas, the screen seems a bit small to me, but it is still bright, legible and responsive. My tester has the $1,500 CUE with Navigation upgrade that incorporates real-time traffic and handles natural language commands from the driver. I found CUE to be quick and accurate at parsing my voice commands. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto can be connected to the XT4 for ever-updating user experiences. Thank you, Cadillac, for including this smartphone connectivity for free. Thank you again for building a handy and easily accessible cell phone pocket into the center console.
The final options on my frugal XT4 are a panoramic sunroof for $1,700 and a cold-weather package that adds seat and steering wheel heating for $850; both front and rear seats get heating. My wife drove the XT4 to work one day, and the heated steering wheel was her favorite thing about the car. Actually, it was the only thing she liked about the XT4.
I am a great fan of Cadillac’s ATS, CTS and CT6 sedans, largely because of their excellent feedback and driver involvement. I’d hoped that the XT4 could be the driver’s choice of compact SUVs too, but it was not to be. The feedback in the XT4 is there, as there is excellent feel for the road and feedback from the chassis through the steering and floor, but the weighting of the steering is too light and loose to be fun and encourage sporty driving.
(To my surprise, the Cadillac XT4 is better at communicating the interface between the tires and the road to the driver than sporty cars like the 2019 BMW 330i and 2019 Tesla Model 3. Both these sedans were in my driveway at the same time I had the XT4 on loan.)
The XT4’s light steering would be okay if Cadillac was chasing luxury through isolation. This was the tack taken by Audi in the previous-generation Q5, and I appreciated being sheltered from the rough and noisy outside world. But the XT4’s cabin is too loud, and its suspension is too firm to offer cherub-on-a-cloud floaty luxury. I’d wager that Cadillac tuned the XT4’s suspension with firmer shocks and roll bars to keep the high-riding vehicle’s weight well under control. And the XT4 does corner reasonably levelly. Small bumps are swallowed competently, but the firm suspension causes the whole SUV to move up and down with road undulations instead of letting more compliant shocks absorb the vertical energy and keep the car flat. Consumers hailing from states with frost heaves will wish for a softer suspension.
The XT4’s ugliest wart is its engine. The Cadillac uses a 2.0L turbo 4-cylinder engine—doesn’t everyone?—that makes 237 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque. The power and torque are appropriate to the XT4’s size, and the SUV can zip away from stoplights and climb hills with gusto. The problem is that you won’t want to call the engine to work, as its song is a complaining grind. Request hard acceleration, and it will fill your ears with unsympathetic moaning.
The XT4’s power is routed through a 9-speed automatic transmission on the way to the wheels. Drive normally, and the automatic works well. Nine gears are quite a lot, but the transmission is well behaved and avoids the ceaseless cog-swapping that so annoyed me with Ford’s 10-speed automatic. There are steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles, and while they are helpful at keeping the engine in the powerband on mountain roads, the shift response is slow but predictable. Again, it is just better to save the spirited driving for some other car; it’s not the XT4’s forte.
What is the XT4’s forte? It delivers on the elevated ride height and the extra interior room that buyers seek in an SUV. It has the good build quality expected of a luxury vehicle. And it wears the bold styling that is Cadillac’s hallmark. If these are your top priorities, the XT4 should please.
Cadillac is a little more generous than the Germans and includes features like smartphone connectivity and four-door keyless entry for free in its base cars. The XT4 also has some thoughtful design touches like doors that cover the lower rocker panels to keep your pants clean on entry. These are small things that are found in many cars these days, but I still appreciate them.
How does the XT4 stack up against the Germans? For shoppers with deep pockets, I’d recommend buying one of the imports. Choose your own adventure. Turn to the Audi Q5 for luxury or to the BMW X3 for sport.
Both Audi and BMW offer superior interior quality and premium technology in their similarly sized—okay, slightly bigger—Q5 and X3 SUVs. You’ll pay for their superiority, though, as the foreign SUVs start at the price of a fully-loaded XT4, and both Audi and BMW require additional, expensive options to get the best tech and luxury fittings.
The XT4 better matches in cabin amenities and price to the BMW X1. If you want a high driving position and extra space, pick the XT4. For the dynamically superior vehicle, take the BMW X1: It can hustle with surprising gusto over mountain roads. I’m single-minded when it comes to car shopping, so personally, I’d take the BMW X1 over the Cadillac XT4.
Mike's Steering Column 