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For the past decade, Cadillac has been a true believer in the church of German luxury. It developed its own rear-wheel-drive platform, built a station wagon with a six-speed manual transmission, and has even been a regular at the pews of the Nuerburgring. But even the pious have their moments of doubt. For Cadillac management, that moment came about three years ago. All of the brand's hard work had yielded one celebrated success, the CTS, and several failures, including the rear-wheel-drive STS and SRX, as well as the Corvette-based XLR hardtop convertible. It didn't help much that parent company General Motors was very publically out of cash and had cut Cadillac's product development budget to the bone. What the brand needed was a quick, cheap, surefire hit.