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CT5-V Factory Destroyed 2023 CT5-V Blackwing

CT5-V Model

valhallaatya

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2023
Messages
12
Location
Canada
V-Series Cadillac(s)?
2023 CT5-V Blackwing
Hey guys,

I wanted to show everyone how my 2023 CT5-V Blackwing came in. Only GM is able to get you so hyped for a product then completely crush you when it comes in! (Scroll Down For Videos)

Once you watch the videos you'll see how absolutely mutilated the paint is, that's exactly how it came off the truck and the dealership didn't touch it. There was a CT4-V Blackwing on the same shipment which was significantly worse than mine, every panel had damage down to the primer and/or the metal.

Damage wise, it's hard to gauge from the video how deep the scratches, gouges and swirls are but let me tell you from 15 years experience doing intense paint correction and PPF, DEEP. On the hood you can see a foot and a half meter long pattern of scratches and each one of those ribs will catch your fingernail. It's nasty. Not every panel is as bad, but every panel has uncorrectable damage.

We do a lot of hail mary operations for a lot of dealers in the area ranging from Porsche, Audi, Mercedes to GM and Chevy -- LOTS of Corvettes as well as our private operation. In 15 years I have never personally seen a car come this bad brand new from the factory. I have seen cars come that needed a new bumper, or a panel resprayed sure but never the entire car so mutilated. We're also talking BEFORE the dealerships detailers got a crack at it.

I'm at 55 days now without a resolution, customer care is involved, lots of back and forth. Car has 3 kilometers and hasn't been moved an inch from the showroom and I'm paying for it as we speak. From personal, business experience and experience through other clients that I've worked with in the past. This issue from another higher end company, like Porsche and Mercedes for example on an administrative level, this issue would be solved within 48 hours. On the third day a no questions asked fix would be planned through head office, with the dealership and client involved. A compensation package would be sent out and given the severity of the issue a call from the President, CEO or top executives would be initialized. I'm not saying I want any of that, like all of you here I just want the car fixed the right way or a way that will make me happy.

From a customer service level GM has a HUGE problem separating their higher end Cadillac business with their lower end economical Chevrolet offerings. I'm not trying to sound like an asshole here but someone that buys a Blackwing, C8, Z06 or an Escalade on average has significantly more expectations than someone buying a Chevy Spark. There are LOTS of things someone buying a Balckwing cares about than someone buying a Spark. Man and for one you couldn't give me a Spark for free, but a Blackwing will sell itself and fly off the lot without a salesperson.

Back to the damage and a fix, through extremely heavy paint correction roughly 80% of the damage can be fixed but the problem lies with how much paint is removed, roughly 55% of the clearcoat will need to be removed which is insane. At that point you're biting into the UV inhibitor layer and in about 4-5 years you'll get clearcoat failure, delamination, permanent fading. The Bodyshop Manager at the dealership recommended repainting the whole car if they get approval from GM, I obviously said a big hell no to that -- repainting a brand new car completely is opening a massive can of worms and trust me you never, ever want go to down that road. I suggested an alternative of paint correction and PPF, we tried a PPF sample without correction and unfortunately the damage was still showing through but once a 3 stage correction was performed the PPF was hiding 99% of the damage. Dealership is 100% on board doing that, they just don't want to pay and they shouldn't have to because they did nothing wrong. There's a blame game going back and forth on who has to pay for the damages and I'm stuck in the middle which is ridiculous.

Finally a few days ago the Plant Manager at LGR contacted me and they did an investigation on what happened, the heavy damage was from improper installation of straps, apparently the car goes somewhere else to get the engine installed or something but GM has admitted fault so I did reach out to customer care and the dealership again and was told the issue is being finally escaladed and they're going to try and get the repair covered. This was about 10 days ago.

Just before the case went to executives review, I had a call from GM and the questions they were asking me absolutely brain dead. Again don't want to sound like an ass, a very nice elderly woman called me from GM, she told me she had to ask me a bunch of questions, etc, etc and one of them was "Well, why did you take the car if you knew it was damaged" what kind of question is that? For one, I waited a century for it, two it's ultra limited production BLACKWING and three because I thought it would get fixed? Tell me you're not a car guy without telling me you're not a car guy. I don't want to get into the other questions asked of me because my nose was bleeding at the end of the phone call but this is what I mean... You can't send somebodies grandmother who doesn't care about the issues being discussed and simply doesn't understand the issues. There's such a huge disconnect between what she considers an issue and what I consider an issue, it's like we were on different planets completely.

In the last 6 month's I bought two ZR2 Silverado's and an XT4, including the Blackwing. GM can give little shits about how you supported them, your previous purchase history, they're the lowest of the lows they truly do not care at all and have zero customer loyalty. I've learned this very quickly.

Regardless, from a buying experience, it's been a fucking nightmare, I don't wish this onto anyone and I hope no one's Blackwing experience goes this way. I'll update this post whenever I get new information.

Thanks for the read.

Hood

Fenders

Miscellaneous

Rear Bumper:
 

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How does this even happen? Was it parked in the desert for a few months & they wiped the sand off with a dry rag??? I'm still trying just to GET one of these. I think I would cry if my car came in like this.
There is SO MUCH MORE damage that I haven't even captured on photos and video because I puke a little bit when I see the car lol.
 
So many of those scratches look circular like someone tried to polish the paint with an orbital polisher. Unfortunately it looks like they used an orbital sander as either the pad or the paint wasn't clean. That's beyond any paint damage I've ever seen on any new GM car. Something exceptionally bad happened here...
 
Oh boy, I think I would have a breakdown when I saw my car like that. What the fuck is right, it looks like it went through a meat grinder. I hate to say this, but is there anything they could do to make this right? I think they owe you a new car or maybe a check for $30K.
 
Clicked on this thread of “factory destroyed Blackwing” expecting something epic, like more epic than the guy who had his LT4 blow after 288 miles, or the guy who discovered parts of his Blackwing were not painted at all, or the guy who discovered they forgot to install the mechanism to open the doors from the inside.

Turns out it’s a thread about swirls on a black car. This is how many of the Black Raven cars are. Dustin from Sewell had a post about this a while back.

Thread 'PSA: Setting Expectations - Condition of your paint may disappoint you, but a paint correction/ceramic coat and a good detailer will fix your problem.'
PSA: Setting Expectations - Condition of your paint may disappoint you, but a paint correction/ceramic coat and a good detailer will fix your problem.

It’s a combination of very soft clear coat that GM uses and the fact they have some guy wipe all the cars down periodically while sitting on the lot of doom. This is a car that is made in a factory shared with 26k Camaros and they are stored in the same place. The guy wiping down the car doesn’t care if it’s a Blackwing or a base Camaro, he’s using the same dirty rag for all of them.
 
I have a black blackwing CT5. Had multiple scratches come on the car. I have been able to remove most of them myself since my car sits in the a garage until April. It’s unbelievable how bad the swirls and scratches are. I wouldn’t say it’s as bad as this one shown but I probably have to spend a good 4-5 more hrs of polishing to get it to a decent level. I also have to say I don’t know what type of clear coat they use on the cars but even running my bare fingers on the car creates scratches. I don’t remember my OG M2 in black having so soft of a clear coat. Even more insulting is there was literally bird poop that was covered up with the shipping film. You just wonder…
 
Clicked on this thread of “factory destroyed Blackwing” expecting something epic, like more epic than the guy who had his LT4 blow after 288 miles, or the guy who discovered parts of his Blackwing were not painted at all, or the guy who discovered they forgot to install the mechanism to open the doors from the inside.

Turns out it’s a thread about swirls on a black car. This is how many of the Black Raven cars are. Dustin from Sewell had a post about this a while back.

Thread 'PSA: Setting Expectations - Condition of your paint may disappoint you, but a paint correction/ceramic coat and a good detailer will fix your problem.'
PSA: Setting Expectations - Condition of your paint may disappoint you, but a paint correction/ceramic coat and a good detailer will fix your problem.

It’s a combination of very soft clear coat that GM uses and the fact they have some guy wipe all the cars down periodically while sitting on the lot of doom. This is a car that is made in a factory shared with 26k Camaros and they are stored in the same place. The guy wiping down the car doesn’t care if it’s a Blackwing or a base Camaro, he’s using the same dirty rag for all of them.

Sorry no, did you bother even reading this?

This is NOT a normal GM Solid Black delivery -- I expected light swirls with some marring, which can usually be easily removed with a single stage correction, or at worst a light rotary cut with DA to finish out the haze. In 15 years I've probably worked on 300 or more GM Solid Black cars ALONE, this is far from normal. I'm able to slide my finger nails into the grooves of these scratches and they're everywhere. This wasn't done with a dirty rag, if it was we could have fixed it. The damage is showing through MATTE PPF, do you realize how deep that is? Matte PPF can hide the nastiest of damage. That's how deep this is.

If this was normal and easy fix, trust me I would have fixed it 54 days ago and would have been on my way.
 
Sorry no, did you bother even reading this?

This is NOT a normal GM Solid Black delivery -- I expected light swirls with some marring, which can usually be easily removed with a single stage correction, or at worst a light rotary cut with DA to finish out the haze. In 15 years I've probably worked on 300 or more GM Solid Black cars ALONE, this is far from normal. I'm able to slide my finger nails into the grooves of these scratches and they're everywhere. This wasn't done with a dirty rag, if it was we could have fixed it. The damage is showing through MATTE PPF, do you realize how deep that is? Matte PPF can hide the nastiest of damage. That's how deep this is.

If this was normal and easy fix, trust me I would have fixed it 54 days ago and would have been on my way.
The black with bronze wheels that I have looks so good on the car but you wonder if we should have gone with a lighter car knowing the amt of swirls and such this type of car comes with.
 
The black with bronze wheels that I have looks so good on the car but you wonder if we should have gone with a lighter car knowing the amt of swirls and such this type of car comes with.
You know what's funny? Most of the worst damage was actually under the shipping film which is ridiculous. That's me peeling back the film.
 

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Oh I get it. I was taking off the film and was just perplexed how much swirls were on the hood and roof. And the front lower bumper, the film just caught a lot of dirt so it has a lot of pitting that is tough for my buffer to get. Maybe we should trade ours in with 4 miles for a lighter color BW rift.
 
Oh I get it. I was taking off the film and was just perplexed how much swirls were on the hood and roof. And the front lower bumper, the film just caught a lot of dirt so it has a lot of pitting that is tough for my buffer to get. Maybe we should trade ours in with 4 miles for a lighter color BW rift.
I have a 5BW in Rift, it took a heavy amount of paint correction and to avoid too much clear removal, we stopped around 80 + %. We got to the point of good enough and coated it in ceramic.

So even though Rift is lighter, it still shows up and yeah, maybe not as bad, but annoying enough to notice.
 
I have a couple of thoughts: Firstly, it seems like you’ve put yourself in an unenviable position for negotiation having already consummated the deal. This from someone who refused delivery of a GT350R. Secondly, I question the wisdom of going public while negotiations are still underway. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Hearing these kinds of stories is disappointing because the Blackwings are supposed to be 'halo cars' that lure people away from other brands and turn them into GM/Cadillac customers for life. It doesn't seem like an isolated incident either.

It's not even like this is about the basic level of quality and service expected for a $100K car (it is) but this is also the top dog product for Cadillac. It would be like BMW telling a M5 CS buyer to get stuffed or Porsche treating their GT2RS buyers indifferently. High-end brands understand that the perception of prestige and desirability for their whole range trickles down from the halo products.

Although presumably GM can't quickly fix their logistics and storage issues, they should at least step up on the back-end to take care of these customers differently.
 
That's totally ridiculous, I hope they make it right for you. Part of me says you should have just refused to take delivery, but I know the reality of that decision means another 6+ months without a car so I get why you took it.
 
Although presumably GM can't quickly fix their logistics and storage issues, they should at least step up on the back-end to take care of these customers differently.
I think the OP got serviced in the back-end alright. I think at this point, actually much sooner, I would get an attorney. - Fortunately I'm friends with several.
 

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