Pros

• Rapid speeding up.
• Contains useful technology features.
• The gas mileage is good for a fast car.

Cons

• There is a small back seat even in the classroom.
• Ride quality that is too stiff.
• For how much the CT4 costs, there are way too many rough edges and plastics that feel cheap.

Where does the CT4’s power come from? It’s clear that the CT4 is strong, and it starts up quickly. Our test car with all-wheel drive went from 0 to 60 mph in 5.0 seconds thanks to its improved 2.7-liter engine. Driving is not as fun in real life as it looks, unfortunately. When pushed, the supercharged engine wheezes and doesn’t have much power. Our test car’s brake button clicked loudly almost every time we pressed it. It also felt like wood, which made it hard to stop smoothly most of the time.

The mass of the CT4 makes it seem like you need to be more willing to do what you want. Its handling has a hard time going from one sharp turn to the next, and the steering needs to be lighter to be comfortable. One of the loudest engine stop-start systems in the area, the 10-speed automatic transmission makes shifts sound like they’re being slammed together.

How does it feel to ride the CT4? The test car was in the Premium Luxury grade, but we couldn’t find much data to support that lofty word. It doesn’t feel high-end or luxurious, and the leather looks and feels cheap. Things get worse from there. There is little comfort in the seats. Drivers will notice that noise from the road can be heard inside the car at almost any speed and on almost any surface. That needs to be better for a car with that name and that price.

The jerky suspension is the worst part. There are bumps and holes in the road that you can feel as well as hear. There are a lot of inexpensive cars with much better rides. The situation could be more pleasant.

How is the state of the inside? A few strange problems ruin an otherwise fine house. It’s easy to get in and out of the front seat, and there’s a lot of room inside. The back seat is very small, even for a small class. The doors open only some of the way; you have to step over the openings, and the roof isn’t very high. Long-term comfort in the back will be low for people six feet or higher, and they may have to squirm to get out.

In other cases, the driver’s controls and buttons look like they were thrown around without any thought to where they would be most comfy or useful. A weak rotary controller controls the main interface, and we often had to look for the right button or key.

What is there to do with technology? The test CT4 had a 14-speaker Bose surround sound system and a navigation system built right in. You don’t have to do these, but they were both great parts of our time with the car. The 8-inch tablet makes it simple to read and move around, and the sound quality is great and can be changed in many ways.

If you don’t have a chord, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are normal ways to connect your phone, and setting up Bluetooth is easy and quick. The CT4 also has a voice recognition feature that works well. Not only can it not understand normal words, but it is also easy to teach it how to find its way and use some car features. It’s not fair that our test vehicle didn’t have adaptive cruise control since a lot of famous cars come with it as standard. You can get adaptive speed control.

How is the storage situation right now? The CT4 is very useful because it can do most of the things you need it to do every day. There are, however, a number of qualifiers. Even though it’s deep and wide, the trunk can only hold 10.7 cubic feet, which is pretty small for this class. A lot of its competitors come with trunk handles that let you fold down the second row of seats. This one doesn’t.

At first look, the cabin’s space for small things seems like enough. The center armrest is a good size, and the car we tested had a place to charge our phones. But the door pockets and cupholders are pretty small, and compared to other small luxury cars, the console needs to be closer to being good enough. There are places to connect child seats, but big child seats can’t fit in the second row because there isn’t enough room.

How well does the fuel work? The EPA thinks that the all-wheel-drive CT4 with the 2.7-liter engine will get 25 mpg in the city and on the highway, which is good for a four-cylinder luxury car. Good news: our test car easily beat that number when we actually drove it, getting an amazing 29.5 mpg on our planned 115-mile evaluation route.

Should you get the CT4? What else is there to say? While we were driving, we didn’t hear any shakes or rattles coming from inside the cabin. For how much the CT4 costs, there are way too many rough edges and plastic parts that feel cheap. The test vehicle we looked at cost $46,690, which is way too much when you consider the quality of other cars that cost the same amount.

Cadillac’s standard warranty lasts for four years or 50,000 miles, and the powertrain guarantee lasts for six years or 70,000 miles. For a high-end name, four years or 50,000 miles of corrosion protection is short.

There isn’t a single thing that makes the CT4 stand out or be new or even special. You look like you made a copy of a current high-end car. It might be easy to forget that driving the CT4 is anything but exciting and satisfying if it has a smooth ride. It’s too bad that this is not the case. To make money, the CT4 tries to use the prestige of the Cadillac name. It might even make it less useful.

The middle-level Premium Luxury trim level is best. It not only has a nicer cabin with leather seats, but it can also do a lot more and comes with adaptive cruise control as standard. One of these has a 2.7-liter engine that makes more speed.

Types of the Cadillac CT4

There are four trim options for the 2024 Cadillac CT4: Luxury, Premium Luxury, Sport, and the faster V-Series. All models can have all-wheel drive as an option, but rear-wheel drive is normal on all of them.