The crazy-quilt nature of the original CTS interior, with lots of different textures but all in black, has been thrown away, and it's been replaced by a very nice new design for 2008 using black and brushed metal and chrome, very contemporary and very space efficient. This was our biggest complaint with the pre-2008 CTS models.

The entire dashboard has been lowered and moved further away from the front seats to give a more airy and open feel to the car that the original didn't have; it felt like a high-walled bunker. The center stack on the CTS is beautifully done, easy to read and use, with some interesting new readout placements here and there.

On our sojourn through some of central California's tastiest, windiest roads, the front bucket seats held us down and in comfortably, and behind the wheel. We really appreciated the range of adjustment offered by the power seats and the power steering column adjustments; we've always felt that all cars should have tilt-and-telescope columns for ultimate comfort and proper driving position. The instrument package is complete, easy to read, and graphically pretty.

Our car had the AM/FM/XM Bose 5.1 sound systems, the 40-gigabyte hard-drive, iPod connector and USB port for ultimate musical enjoyment. Using the navigation screen, it's easy to switch back and forth between the three broadcast and three stored-music formats by simply touching the screen, and the blue display is large enough to be read from the back seat. We think it's one of the best overall, most fun to use sound systems we've ever used in a car.