The car looks nice, I will tell you that. Mine was white, with a nice leather and cream-colored interior. The car had decent mileage around 22 to 28 mpg, and handled very well. The problem was how much maintenance needed to go into the car, that ultimately I would never want to purchase another Catera again. I would not recommend this car to anyone at any time.

The Cadillac brand itself carries a lot of weight, and sounds great when telling someone about what car you drive. This specific model is actually a bit unlike what you usually would think of when you think Cadillac. I have often had people tell me it was not a Cadillac until they came close enough to see the logo. For a Cadillac it just looks a bit too ordinary, but it still have some features that make it stand out from just any sedan. The grill looks great, and so do the rear lights. The interior is beautiful with leather seats, and wood trim to the door handles and dashboard. It comes with a Bose stereo that performs great, the steering wheel has buttons built in to control the stereo, which is a great feature, when it work. Once in awhile these buttons would just stop working for no apparent reason, and then later all of a sudden they would be working again. This same problem seemed to exist with the controls to the moon roof. The cabin is very spacious with plenty of leg space, and 4 people fit comfortably. The trunk is also pretty spacious, about what you would expect from a sedan class car. This car performs great, and has a surprisingly strong acceleration, however it lags in the handling area I would sometime experience the steering wheel locking up to where it would take a considerable amount of force to unjam. The breaking is average, and does what it is supposed to do without impressing significantly. I haven't taken this car to the shop often, as my boyfriend does the mechanic work himself. That being said, it often needs repairs, and parts can be rather expensive to get because Cadillac for some reason decided to have this models engine built in Germany. The engine is covered, which makes it quite annoying to do mechanic work on. The car developed a leak in several places in the cooling system, and you have to keep checking your anti-freeze levels as it needs to be refilled about once every 6 weeks or so, this becomes more important as the warning light to tell you when you have low coolant is always on, as there is a defect in the sensor. This make and year of Cadillac's have an issue with the headlight assembly where the part that holds the light bulb in place disintegrates with time due to the heat from the sun, which causes the bulb to hang, so it doesn't light up the road ahead of you. This isn't a problem if you drive in areas that are well lit, but I would not recommend driving this car in dark roads, as it becomes very hard to see the road ahead of you. I had to change out the hydraulic bars, that hold the hood open when doing maintenance, twice. Cadillac recommends that you use premium gas for this vehicle, it get's good mileage for a Cadillac, but compared to the competition it doesn't stand out. It is more expensive to get an oil change because this car uses an special oil-filter. On an average day this car, as most Cadillac's, is a joy to drive, but all the issues, especially the, not often occurring, steering wheel jam makes you feel a bit unsafe.

This was the first car I owned myself. I wouldn't make that mistake again though. I bought it used with 70,000 miles and within a week it was in for repair for the first time. It had a computer chip go bad. This resulted in no traction control, non working speedometer, and a non working odometer. Thankfully the car came with a limited warranty so I was not faced with the 1000 dollar bill. Shortly after this the air bag suspension needed replaced. It always seems like once something gets fixed another thing breaks. Two out of the four windows to not work. Surprisingly the car has never left me sit. I had a close call when my alternator died but I was close enough to home to turn around. Overall when the car drives its fine and drives fairly nicely, but just when you're getting used to that something breaks. Some good things I did like were the leather interior, the moon roof, and the Bose sound system. All of these have held up the 4 years I have owned the car and they show no signs of stopping. The best gas mileage I could achieve while driving this car was around 23 mpg.