Vehicle
Cadillac XLR
A retractable-hardtop roadster built on the Corvette C6's Y-body at the same plant, which is the single most useful fact about it: the chassis, brakes and much of the suspension are Corvette, while the engine, electronics and interior are Cadillac's. The roof mechanism is the complaint that dominates its service history — five hydraulic cylinders, a pump and a long chain of position switches, where one failed switch stops the whole sequence and leaves the car unusable. The V's supercharged 4.4 Northstar shares nothing with the standard 4.6.
Generations
-
First generation 2003–2009
Magnetic Ride Control and keyless access as standard. Roughly 15,000 built across six years, so almost every body part is scarce.
- Body styles
- Roadster
- Platform
- GM Y-body
- Engines
-
- 4.6 Northstar V8 — LH2 · petrol · 239 kW (320 hp) · 420 Nm (310 lb-ft)
- 4.4 supercharged Northstar V8 — LC3 · petrol · 330 kW (443 hp) · XLR-V
- Transmissions
- 5-speed 5L50 automatic · 6-speed 6L80 automatic
- Drivetrain
- Rear-wheel drive
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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