After disappointing sales, Cadillac has decided to drop its $2250 Night Vision option on DeVille models, according to Automotive News. The option was a "passive infrared" system provided by Raytheon, in which GM has had a financial interest.

Night Vision was introduced on MY 2000 DeVilles and initially had good public acceptance with 7000 sales. But by the end of the 2004 model year, sales had dropped 600 units so Cadillac pulled the plug.

This isn't necessarily curtains for the concept, however. Several European suppliers are working on "active" systems. The whole idea is to detect pedestrians or other warm bodies that provide a visible image to infrared beams.

But there are always high beams, not to mention caution when you're driving too fast for what you can see.

Cadillac Boss Johan de Nysschen recently stopped by (virtually) Jalopnik to answer a round of questions from the readers. Johan is a man who isn't afraid to lay out future plans like some in the business, so it's no surprise that he spilled some future product beans while chatting it up. Most notable of his answers to the many questions? The fact that a new family of V-6 engines is coming, and will be debuted in the new CT6 sedan.

There are no technical details yet for the new engine series, but de Nysschen says that will arrive in the next month or so. These mills should sit nicely alongside the twin-turbocharged V-8 units also mentioned that will power the more potent Cadillac offerings. As horrible as the name CT6-V might potentially sound, the car itself will probably be wonderful.

A bit more news culled from the AMA session revealed that Cadillac is still working on the ELR. Per de Nysschen, the gas-electric machine will receive some technical updates that will hopefully turn it into a better product. It isn't exactly a sales hit, and its Volt cousin is a much better value proposition while also being more enjoyable to drive as well.

Finally, Cadillac fans can expect to see the CUE infotainment system getting a bit of love. An update to the system arrives in 2016, and a full refresh is just a few years down the road.

The V-8 means a lot of things to a lot of people. For the enthusiast, it’s the staple of all things fun and awesome: sound, power, speed. For the greenie, it’s a symbol of waste, excess, and old technology. So what does the future of the V-8 look like?

In a very well-written and well-researched article, Sam Abuelsamid of Navigant Research argues that the V-8 has reached the end of an era—at Cadillac, at least. Citing the recent announcement of the 2016 Cadillac CT6’s turbocharged V-6 and four-cylinder-based powertrain lineup, Abuelsamid argues that the V-8 is no longer the flagship engine of choice—in fact, it’s dead.

While noting that the CT6 still promises high performance capability from its 3.0-liter turbocharged V-6 option, Abuelsamid remains true to his argument, closing with the following:

“What about the classic V8 configuration? Those are now limited to a pair of niche but still highly profitable segments, the ultra-high-performance CTS-V sedan and the full-size Escalade SUV. The rest of the lineup will rely on fours, sixes, and electrification from now on. It seems that a century after it began, the era of the mainstream Cadillac V8 engine has drawn to a close.”

But then he posted the article to Facebook, where Cadillac chief Johan De Nysschen stepped in to have a word.

“Sam Abuelsamid, you are way wrong, I'm sorry to say. There absolutely will be another state-of-the-art mega powerful highly efficient new 8-cylinder from Cadillac, besides the CTS-V engine. Purpose designed for Cadillac. Now, if you consider "mainstream" to represent the average powertrain used, well, no, the realities of the market today excludes that. Besides the exotics, I don't know that any luxury manufacturer today could claim they sell most of their volume in V8. But the V8 Cadillac is alive and well today, and will be in even better shape tomorrow.”

That’s right, friends and neighbors. Not only is the V-8 not dead at Cadillac, there’s an entirely new, Cadillac-only V-8 in the works, and it will be “state-of-the-art powerful highly efficient.” It may even be twin-turbocharged.

Our guess? It’ll be used for the flagship car that’s planned to sit above the CT6. The new flagship didn’t receive its sign-off until shortly after De Nysschen took the helm at Cadillac.

So was Abuelsamid really wrong? Yes and no. As far as the world knew, the V-8 was dead at Cadillac—you can’t research the future. But now the world knows differently—and we can’t wait to see what comes of it.

It used to be that each General Motors division had its own engines—Pontiac had Pontiac engines, Oldsmobile had Oldsmobile engines, and as good as Chevy engines were, no engineer in the rest of GM's divisions would be caught dead using them. There was rivalry. There was pride. Then came the 1970s. The cost of engine development shot up, and GM's "31 flavors of engine" evaporated. All of GM just used the same few engines, a lot of them from Chevrolet. Boring.

That’s the way it’s been for decades. But now, the GM bosses have given Cadillac the green light to go nuts and design a completely new 4.2L twin-turbocharged V8 just for itself. This powerplant will be out later this year in the 2019 CT6 and CT6 V-Sport.

The strange thing about this is that Caddy already has a V8. The CTS-V packs the 6.2L from Chevrolet's small-block engine family, and it'll keep using that engine even after the new 4.2L arrives in the CT6. Ever since their 2004 debut, CTS's have used small-blocks on the performance-oriented V-Sport trim levels. So why go through the expense of creating a new motor for the CT6 and not just use the small block Chevrolet (SBC)?

“Designing an all-new engine was the best way to achieve the… refined and powerful character we were looking for,” says Jordan Lee, chief engineer for the 4.2L. “The engine is biased toward torque versus peak power.” In layman's terms: The CT6 is a bigger, heavier, more luxurious car than the CTS, so its engine has to match its relaxed disposition.

The 4.2L will put out 500 hp and 553 lb-ft. of torque on the regular CT6, and 550 hp and 627 lb-ft. of torque for the top-of-the-line CT6 V-Sport. Cadillac calls it a small-displacement V8, but 4.2L is a typical size for a V8—it's small only compared to the OHV V8s General Motors tends to use. Each will be hand-built at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Six engine builders are on the payroll to assemble them, but each motor is built by just one of them.

At its core, the new Cadillac engine's architecture breaks from the current SBC by being a double overhead camshaft (DOHC) design, in which the camshaft—the brain of the engine that opens and closes the valves, which control air/fuel mixture intake and exhaust flow—resides in each cylinder head. Although it’s complex, the DOHC design allows greater angles between intake and exhaust valves, which allows easier airflow through the engine compared to an overhead valve (OHV) design like that in the CTS-V's Chevy V8, in which the camshaft resides lower down in the engine block. In addition, overhead camshaft engines tend to have three or more valves per cylinder (the new Caddy 4.2L has four) versus two on most OHV engines, which is another airflow improvement.

Ninety percent of the 4.2L's torque is available from 2,000 to 5,200 RPM. That low-end grunt lets the CT6 move effortlessly around town and hustle up highway on-ramps without having to rev to the screaming high end of the tachometer. It’s less dramatic than the CTS-V's raucously tuned 6.2L, but more fitting for a car that thinks of itself as refined.

“The small block is known for its visceral sound and performance, which are great characteristics in our portfolio of performance cars like Corvette, Camaro, and Cadillac CTS-V,” says Tom Read, spokesman for GM Global Propulsion Systems. Read says the new Cadillac engine's four-valve DOHC architecture gives it a more “silk-like character with subtle, yet high-output performance.” Most manufacturers, including Ford and the German carmakers Caddy is trying to battle with the CT6, build their V8s in single overhead cam (SOHC) or DOHC configuration these days.

One unusual design choice jumps out is the location of the turbochargers. The Cadillac 4.2L features what's known as a hot-V, in which the turbos nestle in the valley between cylinder banks. With the turbos mounted on top of the cylinder heads and integrated into the exhaust manifolds, the exhaust gas has less distance to travel before it spins the turbo, which in turn minimizes turbo lag, the delay from pressing the gas pedal to delivery of the turbo's power.

Along with the creative engineering here comes all the technology GM is throwing into its new engines these days. There’s cylinder deactivation, in which half the engine's cylinders shut off when less power is needed, saving gas. There's also a stop/start system, which shuts the engine down momentarily when the car is stopped and restarts it when the driver hits the gas pedal, and direct fuel injection, which can more minutely manage the efficiency and performance of the engine.

Although the new Caddy V8 shares no parts with any existing engine, you can see it as the spiritual successor to GM’s Northstar V8. Oldsmobile began development on the Northstar in 1984. When it debuted in 1992, it was GM's most advanced production V8 ever. Ward's AutoWorld, an industry trade publication, called it one of the ten best car engines in production for 1995, 1996, and 1997.

The Northstar was a four-valve-per-cylinder DOHC V8, and the powerplant was most associated with Cadillac from its debuted in the 1993 Allante luxury convertible to the 2011 STS and DTS. Over time, GM loaned out the engine to Pontiac and Buick for staid performance-versions of staid family cars, like Bonnevilles. Aside from a little-known appearance in 1999 for the limited-run Shelby Series 1, the Northstar never had top billing until the 2006-2009 Cadillac STS-V and XLR-V, where it was supercharged as high as the mid-400-horsepower range. Enthusiasts felt it was a good engine that never got a real chance in the limelight.

Once again Cadillac has its own DOHC V8, and GM says only Cadillac will get to use it—a weirdly selfish and wonderful throwback to the old days. The bad nes is that Cadillac will match it with a new 10-speed automatic and won't offer it with a manual. A big part of enthusiasts’ gripe with how GM handled the Northstar V8 over its 18-year life was that the engine never got a chance to shine in many models that could take full advantage of it.

Will history repeat? When asked if Cadillac had plans to bring the 4.2L DOHC motor to other Cadillac models, Read simply said “Stay tuned. Cadillac is just getting started.”

Sorry, Corvette.

Cadillac may be unsure about the future of its CT6 flagship sedan but it definitely knows what it won’t do with the engine of the series’ range-topper. The CT6-V uses a 4.2-liter twin-turbo V8 engine which is also shared with the CT6 Platinum but this motor will remain exclusive to the Cadillac brand.

When asked whether the marque is open to sharing the so-called Blackwing engine with other automakers under the General Motors’ umbrella, Cadillac’s President Steve Carlisle was pretty direct. "Over my dead body," he told MotorTrend in a recent interview. That’s what we call a solid statement.

Last week we learned Caddy has plans to build more CT6-Vs, though exactly how many examples will be made is unknown at the moment. Oddly enough, the manufacturer will sell the new portion of performance luxury sedans at a higher price than the first batch of 275 units. More precisely, the price goes up from $88,790 to $92,790.

As for the Blackwing engine itself, Cadillac will likely use it under the hood of the next generation Escalade which is due next year as a 2021 model. Rumors put the 550-horsepower (410-kilowatt) V8 in the new Chevrolet Corvette but, apparently, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Recently, it was reported Cadillac will also introduce the Blackwing for the CT6 Platinum, the most expensive non-V model in the CTS’ lineup. The sedan will reportedly use a detuned version of the engine with 500 hp (373 kW) and 553 pound-feet (750 Newton-meters). It will be mated to a 10-speed automatic gearbox and an all-wheel drive as standard.

Bringing its flagship twin-turbo engine to the Platinum trim will be a nice move from Cadillac but one thing leaves us feeling there’s something wrong with the brand’s strategy. Word on the street is the CT6 Platinum with the V8 will cost $96,790, or $8,000 above the CT6-V and $9,000 more than the CT6 with a 3.0-liter twin-turbo engine.

As a final note, Cadillac’s official site still lists the CT6 Platinum only with a V6 engine and also says the CT6-V will be available again from mid-2019.

Magnesium wheels have been used for decades in professional auto racing, prized for their light weight. Cadillac claims that magnesium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any commonly available metal. But magnesium wheels are virtually unheard of in current production vehicles, though Chevrolet offered them as an expensive option on some fifth-generation (C5) Corvettes. Now Cadillac is bringing true mag wheels to the street as an option on its 2022 CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing high-performance models.

From the teaser photo GM released, its new mag wheel won't look very different from the hundreds of aluminum alloy wheel designs currently spinning around on today's vehicles. Its one distinguishing feature is a small "Mg" logo stamped into the wheel rim, the symbol for the element magnesium.

Cadillac says that the new forged mag wheels will reduce unsprung weight—we assume this means in comparison to the car's standard aluminum alloy wheels—though the company hasn’t revealed by how much. Cadillac also claims that the lighter wheels and will improve ride-and-handling. They could improve acceleration as well. The laws of physics agree, but it will take driving and testing the mag-equipped cars back-to-back with those on the standard wheels to see exactly how much the dynamics actually improve.

Asked why it chose magnesium wheels rather than carbon-fiber rims like those Ford fitted to the Mustang GT350R, Cadillac responded that "magnesium wheels help reduce mass at the center, allowing for more flexibility with the spoke design and better shock/vibration absorbance. In our testing, magnesium alloy wheels produced a better ride quality due to its vibration dampening."

This actually isn't the first time parent company General Motors has offered true magnesium wheels on one of its production cars. Chevrolet sold magnesium wheels for several years as an option for the fifth-generation (C5) Corvette but apparently dropped the expensive and rarely purchased item in 2001.

"Nice mags!" is a phrase you heard often in enthusiast circles if you were around in the 1960s. (Of course you heard it, Ceppos. You were there!—Ed.) It referred to "mag wheels," a term derived from the exotic-looking, lightweight magnesium wheels prevalent on post-war racing cars. But it was actually a misnomer; magnesium wheels were virtually never installed on production cars back then; they were expensive, prone to corrosion, and thought to be too fragile to handle the hard impacts and bad weather encountered in street use.

Many of the muscle cars prevalent in the sixties were equipped with stylized, stamped-steel wheels that were often chromed and painted. For reasons lost long ago, they were dubbed "mags." There is one type of car, however, on which magnesium wheels have found wide use: the hot rod. Rodders long ago appropriated magnesium wheels from race cars—Halibrand-style mags used on old sprint cars and Indy roadsters from the fifties and sixties have been long-time favorites—for their cool appearance as well as their light weight. Today, many of those original designs are recreated in aluminum.

We'll have to wait until these new Cadillacs are revealed, likely in spring 2021, before we know if "nice mags!" is a phrase we'll be hearing once again.

Cadillac's upcoming 2022 CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing will be the first GM production cars to utilize 3D-printed technology. In fact, the technology will be featured front and center on one of the cars' most hotly anticipated features — in a decorative medallion atop the shift knob of the manual transmission.

Cadillac says that "additive manufacturing" (named as such because 3D printing accumulates tiny deposits of material to create the object) made the manual transmissions possible by reducing costs and waste. Aside from the medallion, the cars will employ two 3D-printed two HVAC ducts and an electrical harness bracket.

"[The manual transmission is] something we know V-Series buyers want and it’s something we knew we had to have, so we used innovative processes to make it happen,” said Cadillac performance variant manager Mirza Grebovic.

Speaking of which, Cadillac commissioned a Harris Poll survey about manual transmissions and received some interesting results. For example, 66 percent of American adults surveyed know how to drive manual, and 55 percent said they've owned a standard shift car. Of those who don't, roughly 40 percent are either somewhat or very interested in learning. Interest is highest among two key demographics, 64 percent of those earning $75,000 or more in annual household income, and 62 percent of those ages 18-34.

The findings seem to contradict what many automakers have said about lack of interest in manuals, with some declaring a sub-1 percent take rate when manuals are offered. Perhaps with a performance-oriented car such as the V-series, buyer preferences change.

The mix of old school gearboxes and new school manufacturing techniques will result in what looks like a very potent car on paper. The CT5-V Blackwing is rumored to be powered by an updated 6.2-litter V8, while the CTS-4 Blackwing is said to be motivated by a turbo six. Neither will use the twin-turbo 4.2-liter V8 of their namesake, but they should prove to be worthy successors to the CTS-V and ATS-V.