We are growing ever closer to the world’s first look at the Cadillac ATS (the vehicle dubbed GM’s BMW 3-Series fighter) and GM recently published a video on the internet of GM boss Mark Reuss driving the new ATS on a closed circuit – offering us a handful of quick looks at the interior features of the new sedan including Mr. Reuss rowing his own gears with the manual transmission.
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The new video featuring GM head Mark Reuss and a handful of GM and Cadillac engineers is titled Project ATS Chapter 1: Ambition and while it really doesn’t provide any new information about the upcoming Cadillac said to go head to head with the BMW 3-Series, it does show Mark Reuss shifting with what looks to be a manual transmission shifter. You can see this in the video below (which runs by itself) around the 21 second mark that Reuss looks to be shifting from 4th to 5th gear, at the same time giving us a very brief look at the shift console – albeit a blurry look. One of the key attractions to the BMW lineup is that they are pretty good about offering a manual transmission which is a must for a good sports car these days so it would make perfect sense that GM would offer a manual transmission in the Cadillac ATS, which would probably be a 6-speed gearbox mated to the 3.6L V6 found in the CTS lineup.
These blurry first-look shots of the Cadillac ATS appear in the background of various interview shots with Mark Reuss, offering a quick glimpse of the interior door panel with leather upper and lowers with a chrome door handle. There are also some long-distance shots of what we can assume are of the Cadillac ATS but they’re so far away that you don’t learn anything shy of the fact that there were other cars on the track during filming. Finally, we are offered the same black teaser picture of the ATS from the side (shown above on the right) as GM issued a while back, which shows what looks like a compact version of the CTS – which is exactly what the ATS should be.
The rest of the video is packed full of driving shots taken from the dash board and out the rear window and while these shots don’t offer any new angles of the Cadillac ATS, it does give us a look at the ATS cruising and speeding around GM’s Milford Proving Grounds. Unfortunately, the speech and background music drowns out any sweet engine sounds but based on the comments made by the various GM reps in the video, Cadillac is expecting the ATS to be as much about being fun to drive as it is about being a luxury sedan that will do battle with the BMW 3-Series.
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