Cadillac will stop building the CT5 at the end of 2026, and the CT5-V Blackwing goes with it. What that removes from the American market is not a manual transmission and not a V8, but the version of them with a back seat you can reach through its own door.
Two cars carry the combination forward, and they are both Mustangs. Whether that counts as a replacement depends entirely on which half of the Blackwing you were buying for.
What Is Actually Ending
The 6.2-liter supercharged V8 makes 668 horsepower and 659 pound-feet, and it is assembled by hand, with the builder’s name on a plaque bolted to it. Cadillac quotes 3.6 seconds to 60 mph with the manual and a track top speed beyond 200 mph. The manual is the standard gearbox and the ten-speed automatic is the extra. It starts at $98,900, and Cadillac is down to limited availability on what is left.
Cadillac
Cadillac
Cadillac
The first 250 cars sold out in minutes when it launched in 2021. The last of them are being built now.
The end date comes from Cadillac itself. In a letter signed by Global Cadillac vice president John Roth, the company said the current CT4 and CT5 would be retired after the 2026 model year, with CT5 production running until the end of 2026, and that the legacy of the CT5 would continue as a next-generation combustion car in a future model year.
That letter says nothing about V-Series, nothing about Blackwing, nothing about a V8, and nothing about a manual. A second-generation Blackwing has been reported by outlets citing sources inside GM, but Cadillac has made no public statement in the ten months since. Nobody outside GM knows whether the drivetrain comes back, and Cadillac has had ten months to say so.
The closest thing to a comment came in February, when the car took another award and GM put up a quote from Brandon Vivian, the executive chief engineer running V-Series strategy. The win, he said, “validates what we’ve been doing with V-Series and V-Series Blackwing.” Present tense, four months after the retirement was announced, and nothing at all about what follows.
Why The List Of Candidates Is Two Cars Long
Nothing else on sale here pairs a V8 with a clutch pedal and four doors. Give up the doors and two cars remain, both parked in the same showroom.
| CT5-V Blackwing | Mustang GT | Mustang Dark Horse | |
| Engine | 6.2L supercharged V8 | 5.0L V8 | Modified 5.0L V8 |
| Output | 668 hp, 659 lb-ft | 480 hp, 415 lb-ft | 500 hp, 418 lb-ft |
| Six-speed manual | Standard | Standard | Optional |
| Body | Sedan | Coupe | Coupe |
| Starting price | $98,900 | $47,795 | $64,080 |
The GT does the job for $51,105 less, and it does it Cadillac’s way: the manual is standard and the automatic costs money. On the Dark Horse, the faster car of the two, that order reverses.
Ford
What Neither One Gives You Back
The doors are the obvious one. If the point of the Blackwing was that it could carry four adults somewhere quickly and quietly and then do a track day on the way home, a Mustang manages the second half of that and not the first.
Neither Mustang is supercharged. A great deal of the Blackwing’s character comes from the blower, and a blown 6.2 delivers its power differently from a high-revving atmospheric 5.0, whatever the horsepower column says. The gap in that column is 188 horsepower and 244 pound-feet against the GT, and 168 horsepower and 241 pound-feet against the Dark Horse.
Ford has not abandoned the manual as a default. On the GT it is the standard gearbox and the automatic costs extra, exactly as Cadillac arranges it. On the Dark Horse, faster and dearer, the automatic becomes standard and the Tremec an option. Ford treats the third pedal as the norm on its cheaper V8 and as a preference on its serious one.
Ford has also said out loud what Cadillac has not. Asked at the Australian Grand Prix in March what happens to the Mustang’s manual, chief executive Jim Farley said it would go “out of our cold, dead hands.” At GM, Tony Roma, the executive chief engineer for performance cars, was asked the same thing about the Corvette at the 12 Hours of Sebring and said the company had “no plans to talk about a manual transmission.” Nobody has put the question to Cadillac about the next CT5 and had it answered either way.
Then there is everything about the Blackwing that has nothing to do with drivetrains: the interior materials, the ride quality on a bad road, the badge. A $47,795 coupe is not trying to deliver those.
What The Market Is Doing About It
Cadillac has not spent this year behaving like a company winding a car down. It opened a one-off commissioning program, released a paint package in numbers it calls extremely limited, and in May built 26 cars for its Formula 1 debut with 685 horsepower, the most it has ever put in a Blackwing. V-Series had its best sales year on record in 2025, and GM says the division has since posted its best quarter and best first half ever.
The used market has already priced this in. The 2022 Blackwing launched at $84,990. In the first week of September, a 2022 automatic with 18,000 miles was listed at $86,990 and a 2026 with 251 miles at $159,995. Options explain part of that, and these are asking prices, not sales, but four-year-old cars advertised above what they cost new is not how this market usually works.
It has happened here before. Only 13 percent of second-generation CTS-V sedan buyers took the manual, according to Hagerty, and the manual cars are the ones worth money now. The people who made them rare were the ones who did not want the gearbox.
So Which Buyer Are You
There are two kinds of Blackwing buyer, and only one of them has been left with something to buy.
If you wanted a V8 and three pedals, the answer is on sale now for roughly half the money, and the Mustang GT is not a consolation prize. If you wanted that combination with four doors, there is nothing, at any price, after December.
If the doors are non-negotiable, buy now and expect to pay sticker or more. The successor is a rumor with no date attached. If they are negotiable, the Mustang will still be there next year, and it will not be scarce.
Which of those two buyers you are is the one part nobody else can settle.
About the author
Adam Lynton
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Autoblog