A Cadillac full of sound, fury

With 556 horsepower under its tented hood and a cross-wire grille that looks inspired by the maximum-security wing at Chino, the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V seems, well, sort of aggressive. Remember when Cadillacs were soft and pillowy and ambled around town in a kind of Vicodin haze? Remember when you felt like you needed to slip into supportive undergarments to drive one? Doesn't that seem a long time ago?

I cannot gauge whether the investment General Motors has put into this 191-mph monster makes good business sense. I understand that Cadillac is trying, and succeeding, to gain parity with German luxury brands, and their high-performance divisions (BMW M, Mercedes-Benz AMG and Audi S). I further understand that these kinds of cars are halo products, bringing light and glory to the brand without necessarily returning a per-unit profit.

Yes, this is a Cadillac, and yes, the second-generation CTS launched last year was pre-engineered, so to speak, to handle the additional horsepower and ludicrous cornering loads the "V" modifications generate. But this car is night-and-day different from the regular CTS.

For starters, there is a 6.2-liter Corvette-ish engine under the hood, supercharged to within a hairy inch of its life. This engine does not produce a mellow flutter, a deep sonorous rumble, a seismic stirring like that of some distant underground fault. No. This engine screams like it's got its hand on the stove. It howls. It whines like the Season 1 DVD collection of "The View." Good Lord, somebody stop throwing those crows in the wood-chipper.

This is the fierce, brain-baking sound of a super-sports car. What's interesting to me is that, at some point, Cadillac development engineers were weighing the sound quality of the engine -- how raw do we want it, how refined? -- and decided, "Ah, what the hell, let's make it sound psychotic." Good choice.

Said sound is accompanied by a very rude, soccer-mob style shove in the back as all 551 pound-feet of torque catch either the flywheel or the torque converter (the car is equipped with either a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic).

From a dead stop, this car accelerates to 60 mph in about 4 seconds. One-two-three-four. From there it's a rapid and delirious elevator ride to 191 mph (top speed for the automatic is 175 mph).

Let me take a moment to adjust my wedgie before I proceed.