The Cadillac CT6's Achilles Heel: Collision Repair

Owning a range-topping Cadillac is supposed to be a trouble-free affair, and — barring gremlins — it still can be, so long as your sharp-edged, oddly light CT6 remains unbent and unbroken.

Cadillac’s liberal use of high-strength aluminum in the sedan’s body structure won accolades when the CT6 debuted for the 2016 model year. Body stiffness, curb weight, and fuel economy all benefit from this mingling of metals. However, trouble arises when those carefully bonded metals come apart.

As it turns out, fixing a damaged CT6 could prove difficult for many of the model’s 7,876-plus owners.

According to GM Inside News, there’s a serious lack of collision repair shops capable of handling the model’s advanced composition. Only GM-certified shops can come near a battered CT6, and they’re pretty thin on the ground.

How great is the dearth of CT6-capable shops? The current tally sits at 150, found in 25 states. Yes, half of all U.S. states do not have a shop capable of performing collision repair on Cadillac’s three-box flagship. As such, the repair process could take a lot longer, especially for those living in the upper Great Plains, central Gulf Coast and extreme Northeast.

The marriage of steel to aluminum though both laser and aluminum arc welding, as well as piles of structural adhesive, makes putting Humpty Dumpty back together again a tricky thing. Certainly, you don’t want anyone screwing that up, and neither does GM.

GM wholesale channel associate Rachel Rodriguez told GMI that certification usually takes one to three months, depending on the shop’s resources. High-end shops with plenty of gear on hand might simply require an audit by the automaker. Still, the CT6 is new to the market, and so far hasn’t exactly flown out the door (though it has beat the CTS in sales for the past two months).

Until those numbers come up, many shops won’t feel the need to bother gaining certification.

[Image: General Motors]