Autoblog

Over the past two decades, John Heinricy has probably done more to enhance the performance image of General Motors than any other single individual. From the perspective of a petrol-head, Heinricy has for many years held what is probably the coolest job at GM as the director of the Performance division and top-dog test driver. We found out today that Heinricy is retiring after 38 years as an engineer and test driver for GM. In his off time, Heinricy has raced a wide variety of cars at many different levels and captured 11 SCCA national titles. Much of his best known work has been at the wheel of the last several generations of Corvettes along with the Cadillac CTS, but this year he got the most attention for his exploits in the new CTS-V. Specifically, he became the first driver to record a sub-eight minute lap time at the Nurburgring in a production four-door sedan with the new Cadillac CTS-V. When we attended the first track preview of the CTS-V a few months ago, Heinricy was on hand with the record setting car to talk about the big lap. You can check out video of Heinricy's chat and the record lap after the jump.


[Source: Cadillac Driver's Log]

Click above for more shots of the CTS-V on the 'Ring

The badassery going in inside the supercharged LSA V8 stuffed under the domed hood of the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V appears to translate well on the Nordschleife's graffiti-marked tarmac. GM announced today that John Heinricy exercised his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of a record time by wheeling a CTS-V with production-spec performance mods around the Nürburgring's north loop in 7:59.32, which is believed to be the "fastest documented lap time" for a production sedan. Even if that turns out not to be the case, it's pretty freakin' fast. GM shot video of the whole thing, which should be released in the coming days. Somewhere, Nissan engineers with furrowed brows are shoving the GT-R's 3.8L V6 into a G35 sedan...


[Source: GM]