This $30k Cadillac XLR-V Is An Angular Drop-Top With 437bhp
If you wanted a 10-or-so-year-old luxury drop-top with a dash of sportiness, you’d just get an R320 Mercedes SL55, wouldn’t you? It’s the obvious choice, but if it’s just a little too obvious, allow us to present a quirky, left-field alternative: the Cadillac XLR-V.
Built from an ingredients list that includes the C6 Corvette Y-platform, a folding hardtop roof - weirdly - jointly developed by Porsche and Mercedes - a GM Northstar V8, the XLR was very much Cadillac’s answer to the SL. The base model used a 4.6-litre lump, but the one you want is the XLR-V, with its supercharged 4.4-litre V8 putting out a useful 437bhp.
This dropped the 0-60mph time below five seconds, and although it’s really more of a cruiser, road tests from around the time of the XLR’s release suggest the roadster is a pretty decent steer.
Predictably, the interior isn’t anything like as nice as the Merc’s, nor is it screwed together quite so well, but the angular exterior more than makes up for it. It’s a handsome thing roof up or down, but that wasn’t enough to woo many buyers into stumping up the considerable $110,000 asking price.
Thankfully, you won’t pay anything like that for a used one. Terrifying depreciation means there are XLR-Vs out there like this 2006 example, which is up for a curiously specific $29,981.
Tempted?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I think id just stick to an SL
Yea me too
But what if to you want to be weird and a bit different?
You. I like you.
Northstar is a crap engine. Just buy one and LS swap it
Or….just buy a first gen cts v
LS swap everything
Why not a Ford crate engine. A 5.0 has 420bhp. That’s as much as the 6.2 LS
Don’t even bother, you can buy a C6 Z06 for the same amount
So you want a gm based rwd 440 horsepower rwd 2 seat sports car.
Buy a corvette cabrio
So many better cars for that price on the market…
I’m usually concerned about the exterior, but in this case, just the interior alone would make me not want to buy it.
i might pay $19,981 for it…
Id be paid to take it. Im not too fond of the XLR
I saw one of these at my local grocery store yesterday, pretty cool
I saw one the other weekend!
If I lived in America I would own so many cars
I work at a grocery store and a regular drives one of those
is it fred meyer? because I saw one there yesterday 😂
Man, that interior is awful. It looks like it came from a mid-90’s STS or something.
That being said I’m a sucker for left-field options, and the XLR does look good from the outside.
I’m not sure if I’d pick it over a Corvette C6 though, since that’s even prettier and has a better engine.