Owners of full-size 2016 General Motors crossovers will get a welcome present in the mail to make up for the automaker’s window sticker snafu.
About 135,000 retail customers will receive debit cards worth between $450 and $1,500, Automotive News reports, making GM square with owners of affected Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia models. (Read More…)
General Motors filed a trademark application for the “ZR1” name, reports AutoGuide, once again fueling rumors of the second coming of Jesus a mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette.
The last time a Corvette wore the ZR1 designation, it came packing 638 horsepower thanks to a blown 6.2-liter LS9 V8. The next ZR1, however, may just eclipse the 707-horsepower Hellcat duo for the Horsepower Wars Output Crown.
It looks like the fling between Google and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will end up being a brief affair.
Despite partnering with FCA to test autonomous technology on a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica Hybrids, the tech giant says it has no plans to take it further with the automaker, according to Reuters.
Really, it doesn’t mean anything, Google wants other companies to know. Just two self-driving Pacificas passing in the night. (Read More…)
Volkswagen can’t wait for the day when it doesn’t have to spend time and resources dealing with a huge, stressful scandal.
Grey skies will clear up eventually, so the automaker has 250 employees busily crafting its Strategy 2025, a plan designed to carry the company out of its darkest chapter and into future prosperity, Bloomberg reports.
Volkswagen has big, expensive (but not too expensive) things in the works, so say goodbye to the boring, sensible company you thought you knew. At least, that’s the implied message. (Read More…)
Mini, the British brand built atop the idea of British fashionability, has been incredibly style conscious ever since BMW brought it back from the depths of English oppression. Its iconic Cooper still wears a silhouette that harkens back to the original, but offers modern safety equipment and enough room for life-sized humans. You can order the Union Jack placed on virtually any body panel. And those center-mounted speedometers — as much as they put Flava Flav on notice — were a charming touch, if completely useless.
Yet, posh Britons are a fairly easy bunch to embarrass. For example, flatulence is met with mortified exclamations of “My word!” before said flatulator escapes to another room to make tea.
So, with that in mind, how the hell did the Clubman’s tow hitch make it past the censors?
Everyone and their 90-year-old great aunt knows that Tesla is putting all of its might into reaching a volume target of 500,000 vehicles in 2018, but more voices are now calling CEO Elon Musk’s timeline impossible.
Musk wants high-volume production to start in less than two years, but suppliers tell Reuters that the accelerated target is a pipe dream. Will delays in parts sourcing and other nitty-gritty issues throw cold water on Tesla’s plans (and customers’ Model 3 ownership dreams)? (Read More…)
Perplexing. Mysterious. But most of all, masculine. If Matthew McConaughey wasn’t already human, he’d be a cologne.
Everyone’s favorite slow-talking actor is back, and he’s ready for more puzzling and cerebral Lincoln ads. What unfathomable essence lurks within the heart of this man, you ask. (Read More…)
In the first paragraph of Car And Driver’s first full test of the 2014 Cadillac ELR, K.C. Colwell wrote, “The ELR’s entry price is nearly double that of the Volt.”
By paragraph two of the New York Times first ELR review, the Grey Lady called it, “bracingly expensive.”
AutoGuide called the ELR, “Surprisingly good, disappointingly expensive.”
Money undeniably played a big role in bringing the Cadillac ELR’s short life to an end. We knew months ago that the ELR wouldn’t make it through to a second-generation. Now we know that production of the Cadillac ELR, only 29 months after launching in December 2013, has come to an end. (Read More…)
For most of the 1960s, the forward-control, mid-engined small van, with the driver sitting atop the front axle and crowded against the door by an engine-containing box known as the “doghouse,” was quite popular in the United States. These things were bouncy, ill-handling, dangerous steel boxes, but they could haul absurd loads with their 1904-technology solid axles and leaf springs all the way around and were easy to maneuver in tight spaces.
Nearly all these vans were used up or crashed decades ago, but xillion-mile survivors still trickle into wrecking yards to this day. Here’s a rare long-wheelbase late-’60s ChevyVan that I spotted in Denver last week. (Read More…)
Rarer than an albino squirrel, the slow-selling Cadillac ELR was apparently shuffled into the afterlife three months ago.
Cadillac confirmed to Automotive News that the Chevrolet Volt-based luxury coupe ended production at GM’s Hamtramck facility earlier this year, with remaining units now dwindling from dealer lots.
Tell this news to any random person on the street, and you’ll very likely hear back, “What’s a Cadillac ELR?” (Read More…)
The complaint most often tossed at Formula 1 is that despite being the (alleged) pinnacle of motorsports, its relevancy to road cars has disappeared.
That same feeling is what brought us to the current formula of tiny 1.6-liter turbocharged six-cylinder engines, all coupled to a complex hybrid system. Since that move, the racing series has focused more on engine development that in almost any era before, and with that comes a breakthrough in the way we look at thermal efficiency. (Read More…)
Volkswagen must be enjoying watching its rival squirm on the end of the same hook.
German regulators have singled out GM’s Opel division over carbon dioxide emissions from some of its vehicles, but the automaker says it isn’t in the wrong.
Facing accusations that it used a ‘defeat device’ to shut off emissions controls, Opel must now submit information to an investigating committee. During a meeting yesterday, Opel executives admitted that the popular Zafira model has software that shuts down exhaust treatment systems at high speeds and altitudes. (Read More…)
On May 4th, my friend “Jenny” (whose name is changed for the sake of her privacy) could not contain her excitement. She posted the photo seen above to Facebook, sharing with her friends that she had just bought what she believed to be a brand-new 2014 Kia Soul from Orlando Kia West. She got what she also believed to be a rip-roaring deal, too, paying $4,000 under sticker.
Although the car was a 2014 model with 530 miles on the clock, Jenny said the dealer claimed it had never been sold to a private customer, but Orlando Kia West had to list it as a used car because it had purchased it from another dealer.
The minute I saw that, I immediately knew something was up. I contacted Jenny and asked her some questions about her experience. Fifteen minutes later, we were both furious.
It’s billed as the affordable electric car of the future, but 12,200 reservations have dropped off the Tesla order list since the company’s Model 3 came on the scene.
The new tally was revealed when Tesla announced plans to raise $1.4 billion through a share offering to boost its financial standing, Bloomberg reports.
Since orders opened, 4,200 duplicate reservations have been erased by the company, and 8,000 customers have backed out of their purchase. That leaves 373,000 reservations on the books, each backed by a $1,000 check. (Read More…)
$26,415. $36,470. $43,395. The jumps in price from the four-door Volkswagen Golf GTI to the Volkswagen Golf R to the Audi S3, three closely related cars, are not insignificant. Yet in spite of the dollar differences, or perhaps because of the dollar differences, the trio inevitably undergoes the value proposition comparison, as if “value” is […]
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