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The 2012 Cadillac XTS Feature Reviews and Rating

With the XTS, GM’s luxury-car division has made the difficult decision to replace the front-drive DTS and rear/all-wheel-drive STS sedans with a single car that it hopes doesn’t drive away current buyers of  both. Last year, U.S. buyers (many of them probably bearing coupons) scooped up about 23,000 of these models, or nearly 40 percent of Cadillac’s car sales.

The DTS, especially, looks out of whack with Cadillac’s rumored future product plan, which is performance oriented. One of Cadillac’s goals is to move the CTS up in size and prestige to become a true rival to the BMW 5-series and the Mercedes E-class. Also, the company is to bring in a smaller car, the ATS, which will line up against the C-class and the 3-series. But Cadillac has a lot of loyal DTS buyers, people who gladly pay almost $50,000 for an old-fashioned American luxury cruiser. As one insider tells us, “Why walk away from such a profitable niche in the marketplace?”

Cadillac’s front-drive STS and DTS replacement is shaping up, and we get a peek at the interior.

Update: Our spy shooters have nabbed several great new pictures of the XTS, including an interior shot, so we’ve updated the story below. Additionally, this article previously ran with a few shots of another future Caddy in the mix. Those pictures are of the smaller ATS; fresh images of that car are here.

We’ve known for some time that Cadillac is working on a smaller rear-wheel-drive car to battle the BMW 3-series, likely to be called ATS. Other intel has recently uncovered plans to crown the brand’s range with something big.