Cadillac Automobile

Cadillac unveiled a concept car this week that runs partially on hydrogen, adding to the ranks of futuristic vehicles powered by the universe's most common element. Yet even if you could drive it -- there's only one now -- you couldn't get from L.A. to San Francisco, because there aren't enough fueling stations. The state, through its Hydrogen Highway program, has been pushing to create a network of 100 hydrogen fueling stations by 2010.

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?

When Italian car-making giant Fiat announced it would be taking over bankrupted, bailed-out Chrysler, I was skeptical. Indeed, I thought the whole plan had ingested powerful hallucinogens. Yet I continue to hope that somehow, one day, I might be able to go down to my local Fiat/Chrysler dealer and purchase an Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon. This is a gorgeous Roman lyre of a car, a sleek transporter that -- when painted gloss black and kitted with 19-inch turbine alloy wheels -- will stop traffic like an overturned big rig. Until that day, the Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon will have to do. I know, "sport sedan" and "station wagon": The terms might seem as notionally dissonant as "Rhodes Scholar" and "Wasilla, Alaska."

LATELY, while pondering a new set of wheels, I'm wrestling with a notion shared by many car shoppers today: Do we buy one last great ride regardless of the gas costs and mileage, sensing that the end of an era is at hand? Or do we give in to the good angel on the shoulder, who whispers that it's not just about us anymore. Decisions like this are now about bigger things: geopolitics, global warming, living within our means.

Kicking out the old folks is a full-time occupation for many of today's marketers. It is an unkind acknowledgment that old people usually die before the young. Dead people don't spend money. Most marketers, of course, are too slick to be that blunt. They'd rather sell "youth" than emphasize demise. Take car advertisements: They give the impression that no one over 45 drives. Middle-aged people and senior citizens don't exist in those pitches. They've joined the ranks of the disappeared.

As Cadillac heads down the road, what kind of music is on the stereo? The GM luxury division's "Break Through" television ad campaign defibrillates viewers' hearts with Led Zeppelin's 1971 classic "Rock and Roll." Let us not kid ourselves. This ad campaign is aimed primarily at white boomers, affluent suburbanites as young as 44 and as old as, say, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, rock gods who are spending entirely too much time in the bathroom.

ONLY about 15% of Americans know how to drive a manual transmission. This is not surprising. Most Americans couldn't find France on a map and couldn't name the chief justice of the United States if William H. Rehnquist bit them on the face.

Whether he was falling into or out of love, the late Ray Charles had a penchant for falling into Detroit's cars when he sang the blues. Charles favored Cadillac, the standard of motorized excellence in the 1950s when he began establishing his reputation as one of the world's greatest performers of blues and country music. To get his woman, he needed that car -- the symbol of wealth, the high-powered version of manhood.

For those luxury SUV customers who hate to make decisions, allow me to present the 2005 Cadillac Escalade ESV Platinum Edition. The only choice you'll have to make is one of four colors; everything else is included. And I mean everything. As if the regular Cadillac Escalade isn't big enough, the ESV adds 22 inches to the length.

General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac luxury brand Wednesday topped a J.D. Power & Associates survey of customer satisfaction with their dealers, while its Saturn brand slumped from first to fifth. The world's largest automaker led the survey for the fourth straight year. Porsche moved up to second from eighth in the annual study by the Westlake Village-based research company. Cadillac was second in 2002. Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln remained third and its Mercury brand rose to fourth from ninth.