Cadillac CTS VIN Check

Which build runs owners report most

Characters 1–11 of a VIN identify the production run — plant, model year, body and engine — which splits the Cadillac CTS into 649 distinct batches rather than one nameplate. On the Cadillac CTS that distinction is not academic: its 649 runs average 2.9 complaints each, but the worst one — 1G6DM57NX30, a 2003 build — carries 30. That is 10.3× the model average, and the difference is invisible if you only look up the model name. The five runs at the top of this table hold 7% of every CTS complaint on file.

Match the first eleven characters of your own VIN against these 12 runs. A hit means the fault reports below describe your exact build; no hit means yours sits among the 637 Cadillac CTS runs that drew fewer reports than any listed here.

Which model years to check twice

Ranked by complaints per production run, not by raw count — a raw count only tells you which year sold well. On the Cadillac CTS the spread between build years is 14.8×: a 2003 car draws 14.8 complaints per run, a 2018 one 1. Same badge, same factory in most cases — different year.

Heaviest year here is 2003 at 14.8 complaints per run; lightest is 2018 at 1. Every year listed is old enough to have finished collecting reports — the newest Cadillac CTS here is a 2019.

What to inspect on this car

One system accounts for 21% of everything Cadillac CTS owners report: Power Train. Put it at the top of the inspection list — power train is where 412 of the 1,910 complaints on file landed, and a mechanic given a named part finds more than one told to «look it over».

Open recalls to verify

NHTSA has 27 recall campaigns on the Cadillac CTS, covering build years 2003 to 2018, and every one of them is free to fix at any franchised dealer, for the life of the car, whoever owns it now. The work only happens if someone books it, though — and a used car that changed hands may never have been brought in. Check each campaign below against your VIN.

The digits in a campaign number carry the year it was opened. Take 14V394000 above: opened in 2014 on cars built from 2003 — 11 years of that fault on the road before anyone acted.

How serious were they

A complaint count on its own is a weak signal — a rattling trim panel and a stalling engine both count as one. Of the 1,910 reports on the Cadillac CTS, 8.2% involved a crash against 5.8% across all vehicles — above the norm, and that ratio matters more than the raw total.

Crash-related reports run 41% above the all-vehicle rate. That does not make the car unsafe on its own — but it does mean the faults owners report here tend to be the kind that end in an accident, not a squeak.

How this check works

The file behind this page holds 1,109,349 complaints filed with NHTSA between 1981 and 2026, across 297,579 production runs. The Cadillac CTS share of that is 1,910 complaints over 649 runs — 0.17% of everything on record. Each one carries the reporter's VIN prefix, the systems involved and whether the incident produced a crash, a fire or an injury.

Grouping those 649 runs by prefix is the whole point. Counted at model level the Cadillac CTS averages 2.9 complaints per run, which hides the fact that one run carries 30 of them — a 10.3× difference the model name alone will never show you. We publish the eleven characters in full — they identify a batch, not a car, since the six-digit serial number naming the individual vehicle is not part of them.

Everything above is built from those 1,910 safety records and nothing else, so title brands, odometer readings, auction history and insurance write-offs are not in it — they live in DMV and insurer databases rather than NHTSA's, and no free tool has them, this one included.