Video: 2019 Cadillac XT4: Review

Similar to the XT5, the XT4 straddles a couple of size classes. The five is between compact and mid-size, the XT4 is sort of at the high-end of subcompact luxury SUVs and into the compact size and in its base trim level, which is simply called luxury, it's priced on the bottom end, closer to subcompacts at just under $36,000 including destination. Now, the two higher trim levels, the ones that are gonna be more popular are the premium luxury and what we have here, which is called the sport. A few things distinguish the sport trim level from the outside, starting with a blacked out grill where the premium luxury has chrome facets on the the front, the door handles also are strictly body colored where the premium has an additional trim inlay and the taillights are white on the sport as opposed to red. There are not that many mechanical differences but one of them is best understood when you're on the road so let's get behind the wheel. There's actually only one potential mechanical difference between the trim levels. The sport that I'm driving is eligible for the active sports suspension option, which is $1,200. I like this type of feature but I have to say even if you have the regular suspension it's quite nicely done, very well controlled, comfortable. It's not overly firm to no great effect like some SUVs are. It's a nice balance of kind of controlled kind of medium firm, very comfortable even with the 20 inch wheels that come with the sport and the premium luxury. So even if you don't get the active sport suspension I think one of the higher points of the XT4, the actual option however may increase comfort a little bit. It's not a tremendous amount. The real advantage to a system like this is that it automatically monitors conditions and makes adjustments automatically on the fly. And I emphasize that because if you are going from touring mode to sport mode, you're not gonna feel a real big difference in the ride quality when you're going in a straight line. And this is a pretty common approach nowadays. There's really no reason to make the car ride more firmly in sport mode just because you can, in a straight line it's less important. Now when you start to turn that's where the firmness plays a part in controlling body motions and such and it does that. It is a good system, but I'm pretty impressed with the standard suspension as it is. The XT4 is powered exclusively by a new two liter turbocharge four cylinder engine, good for 237 horsepower, 258 pounds feet of torque with a very nice broad torque band, really nice delivery. It's a bit noisy. I find it a little bit noisy even at idle and at higher revs you'll hear it pounding a little bit unrefined. You're hearing it more than you want in a luxury vehicle. I was concerned to see that the XT4 had a nine speed automatic transmission and that's partly because transmissions with high gear counts tend to take too long choosing which one, which gear. This is a GM transmission and it's pretty well calibrated. I think in normal driving, people would be fine with it. I'm not gonna say it's a favorite because sometimes it's a little bit slow. If you downshift using the paddles and the steering wheel it kind of free wheels a little bit too much between shifts, but by and large the transmission is not a problem and I'm thankful for that. One of the more interesting aspects of the XT4 is that if you get the optional all-wheel drive, your modes are tour, all-wheel drive, and sport. In tour mode, only the front wheels are driven and that is under all circumstances. Even if you come to a stop on ice or snow or something and stand on the accelerator, the front wheels may spin, the traction control will kick in but the rear wheels are not even connected to the system. To activate it, you have to go to all-wheel drive mode or sport and what that does is it can improve your mileage when you're in the two-wheel drive mode. The engineers say with rounding, you can lose up to one MPG if you drive with all-wheel drive on when you don't need it. So what this does is it gives you the opportunity to save a little bit. Now if you look at the numbers for the front wheel drive and all-wheel drive versions of the XT4, you're gonna see front wheel drive is 26 miles per gallon combined and all-wheel drive is 24 miles per gallon combined. You can't make up for one mile per gallon because of the added weight of the system. It's always there. By disconnecting or decoupling the drive shaft that leads to the rear, you can save as much as one mile per gallon by staying in that two-wheel drive mode. By and large I think the car handles a little bit better when the all-wheel drive is engaged. If you're taking it around corners, you're gonna find that it has a better balance that the rear wheels are kind of pushing the vehicle into the curve when you have it in all-wheel drive or sport mode. Now there is a downside to the XT4 and that is the brakes, specifically it's the brake pedal feel and your ability to modulate the braking finely. And there's actually something to this. This is a new advanced braking system that doesn't use vacuum for power assist like almost all brakes do. This is an electro hydraulic system that's technically a buy wire system. The problem is it doesn't feel like they're there yet. It reminds me a lot of electric power steering assist. No reason that that can't be as good as or better than the old way of doing things and in fact, nowadays it finally is. But there was a period when it was first introduced where it was not up to standards. I feel like that is the case with the brakes in the XT4. Another feature highlight here is the use of a full-time rear view camera that's integrated into the mirror. See, I can see you right there. Hello. This is the regular mirror but flip the lever where you would usually just go to the darker version of the mirror and instead you get a camera system. Unlike some vehicles that have this, I find that I'm sitting just far enough away from it that it's clear to me, something to think about, if you need reading glasses or don't have great near vision sometimes the rear view mirror is too close to show you an image as opposed to reflecting something that's distance vision way behind you in the mirror itself. The other thing I like about this particular one is how adjustable it is there. You can adjust the brightness, you can zoom in and zoom out, you can move it up and down. It really addresses some of the early complaints that people had about this technology, which is that it was a fixed perspective. Now you can adjust it to your liking. The advantages to this are many, primarily if you have people in the backseat or you have cargo especially if it's piled up high, it doesn't matter because the camera is in back at the top of the lift gate where it has a great view unobstructed by those things. Another feature that's well executed is the regular backup camera and optional 360 degree view. It gives you many different views. There's the bird's eye view overhead. This is the forward view. That's a wide forward view. Straight down from the front and here's one of kind of the vehicle as if from behind it from its surroundings. Kinda neat. There are the front wheels. One thing we're positive about in the XT4 is the multimedia and control system. Cadillac has a history of some not so great approaches with touch sensitive sliders and all that other nonsense bad menus. Here we have a very simple layout with regular old buttons. Yeah, they're, you know, quite a few of them but why is that scary? And there's an eight inch touch screen which is nicely laid out. It also supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto if you prefer using those as most of us at cars.com do. All pretty good. One objection I have though unfortunately is the screen is tilted back and as a result it reflects light especially if the moon roof is open. I prefer if the screen is facing you but some people think that looks added after the fact. It looks stuck on as opposed to integrated. I have seen vehicles that have it tilted back like this where it doesn't reflect so much and they seem to have kind of a matte finish to them and that might be the solution that Cadillac needs here, to address that aspect of the problem. But by and large, really nicely executed multimedia, you don't even have to think about it. In case you're concerned that there's no knobs up here specifically no volume knobs, which most of us like, there is one, it's just down here. Here's your volume knob. It also has a a couple of track skip buttons on either side and some buttons that are redundant with the touchscreen menus. Down here you've got your little audio icon, navigation, back and phone and then a knob to select among things on the touchscreen. This is the most useless device I've seen in a vehicle not because it doesn't work well, but because the touchscreen is so close and so usable there's really no point to it. But there is a volume knob, so if you're hardcore on that at least it's here. For this class, we find the interior quality to be quite good. The base trim and the base sport come with leatherette seats that's imitation leather. This one happens to be equipped with real leather which is an option across the board. Pretty good materials all around. There are a few things we're not quite as crazy about. The cup holders here are actually quite small and the door pockets don't have integrated bottle holders to hold those bottles. One thing I like is that even though it has this panoramic moon roof, which is great gives it a much more open feel, especially in the backseat. It has a sliding sunshade, powered sunshade but it's not a thin mesh that allows light to get through, it's opaque and it's also thick enough that it actually does a decent job of helping to block sound which you might not realize is a thing. It's definitely a thing when it's raining. This helps damp some of that noise. One of my favorite features is the wireless charging pad for smartphones. This is a a feature that's gotten pretty widespread among new cars, but the location for these pads isn't always good. Sometimes they're too small for a large phone. Here's what I like about this one. It's a good location to begin with 'cause it's reachable in the XT4 and it's big but it also has this adjustable shelf which I know some people will say you're gonna lose it, maybe you'll lose it, maybe you won't. You set it to whatever height you need and then you drop your phone in there and as soon as it starts charging, you see a little lightning bolt on the phone icon on the touch screen. But what I like about it is that you can still use it not while you're driving, but think about it. You come to a stop, stop light, for example. You flip it up, you can just reach down here, use it real quick. Light turns green, you head off again. Many people are surprised by how much room there is in the back seat just based on the exterior dimensions of the XT4. I have the driver's seat almost all the way back where I drive and my knees are just clearing it. My knees are raised a bit but the floor isn't as high as it is in some vehicles. Overall, it's pretty impressive. There are a couple of things that people have called to our attention though. One is if you're six feet tall it's very close here, headroom wise if you have the optional moon roof which tends to decrease your headroom by lowering the height of the ceiling essentially. And what doesn't help is that the backrest is relatively vertical. Some people have actually said it might be a little bit more vertical than they like it for comfort, and even though it does fold forward to extend the cargo area it doesn't recline. But overall, for the size of the vehicle on the outside the backseat works out pretty nicely. Now here's a real neat feature. You may have seen cars out there that project logos on the ground from say their side mirrors. It's a luxury thing and some non-luxury car. It's a very showy. Cadillac's approach was to put it here. And if that seems weird, it's actually for a purpose because this shows you this little Cadillac crest bat signal shows you where you need to kick to operate the optional power hands-free power lift gate. It's kind of a neat use of the technology. As you can see, the cargo area is pretty generous again for the size of the XT4 in general. One of the things that really impresses about this is it's packaging, as we call it. The amount of space you get on the inside for the amount of space it takes up on the outside. It's one of the strongest aspects of the XT4. Overall, the Cadillac XT4 makes a very good impression. It doesn't do anything extraordinarily well but it also doesn't do anything really poorly with the possible exception of that brake pedal feel. So if you test drive it, make sure that that is not objectionable to you. And if it's not, then the XT4 should be to your liking. I suspect Cadillac's gonna sell an awful lot of these little boogers.