The Cadillac SRX is Cadillac's entry in the high-end luxury crossover category. It's exactly the sort of vehicle no one who owned a be-finned Cadillac in the 1950s could ever have imagined Cadillac building. But in the context of the 21st century, the Cadillac SRX may be the easiest vehicle to live with that Cadillac builds.
There's no mystery as to why the Cadillac SRX exists: Luxury buyers love crossovers. To build the first 2004 SRX, Cadillac started with the same "Sigma" architecture it uses under the CTS and STS sedans. That means a unibody structure with a control arm independent suspension in front and a multilink suspension in the rear. And like its contemporaneous brothers the CTS and STS, it was styled along the lines of Cadillac's "Art and Science" design themes, with crisp sheet metal breaks and sharp headlight and taillight buckets. The sheer scale of this midsize crossover mutes the impact of these design themes, but overall the first Cadillac SRX was anonymously handsome.
A third-row seat was optional in the original Cadillac SRX, but the interior was criticized for being somewhat bland. In response, Cadillac extensively redesigned the Cadillac SRX's interior for 2007.
Aiming to take on powerful challengers, the first Cadillac SRX was offered with longitudinally mounted versions of either GM's 3.6-liter "High-Feature" V6 or Cadillac's long-lived 4.6-liter "Northstar" V8. Both rear- and all-wheel drive were offered on the first Cadillac SRX.
But as the first Cadillac SRX aged, the market changed. So the second SRX (introduced for 2010) moved to GM's smaller "Theta" platform that is used for smaller crossovers. Actually, GM refers to the SRX's platform as "Theta Premium" since it uses some elements from other platforms to fortify it for luxury duty. Available only with transverse-mounted V6 engines, the second Cadillac SRX can be had with either front- or all-wheel drive.
Though it, too, is styled using Cadillac's Art and Science design dicta, the second Cadillac SRX is more dramatically detailed and aggressively shaped. A third-row seat isn't offered, so the second Cadillac SRX is rated to carry five passengers.
