Tarted-up production cars revealed at the SEMA show aren’t exactly the stuff of shocked gasps and hurriedly sent text messages to friends, but there’s often some useful gear to come out of the annual trade jamboree.

The blue window tinting and wheels on the pair of Blue Line “concepts” trotted out by Chevrolet ahead of the show likely impressed no one, but it’s what lies beneath that matters. Starting next year, the bowtie brand will let owners of its newly redesigned compact gain some extra horsepower in a manner that won’t void the warranty.

Yes, the Cruze is joining the tuner scene. (Read More…)

The sport package, long associated with entry-level vehicles boasting questionable rear spoilers and not much else, remains a puzzling fixture in the automotive landscape.

For low-end imports — rebadged or otherwise — this package historically meant a swoopy graphic plastered along the bodyside, supposedly meant to alert bystanders to the vehicle’s blistering, paint-peeling speed. For others, it simply meant nicer wheels and a spoiler. Ideally a large one, so those same bystanders could ponder the downforce needed to keep a midsize, front-wheel-drive sedan’s tail planted. Rarely was there an addition of a single extra horsepower, and most lucid people knew this.

Chevrolet is keeping this tradition alive, resurrecting the sport package for its 2017 Malibu. However, while the current generation Malibu bowed to positive press, several changes coming for 2017 contain hidden downsides. (Read More…)

General Motors is surprisingly boastful when it speaks of the upcoming Chevrolet Cruze Diesel, especially its newfound role as a warm Linus blanket offered to disenfranchised Volkswagen owners.

We’ve been told there’ll be manual transmissions galore, and lets-just-pretend-it’s-a-wagon hatchback variants, too. Now, GM claims a sporty RS version is in the works, which it believes will have VW owners scrambling to trade in their peace signs for bow ties.

Will buyers be kind to the new (and legal) “Whisper Diesel” or is this just an oily pipe dream? (Read More…)

At the end of September, some of my auto journo colleagues busied themselves with the French delights of Paris, covering new reveals at the Paris Auto Show.

Me? I was somewhere much more in line with my personality, surrounded by heavy-duty trucks at the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway. With both Ford and Ram cresting the 900 lb-ft of torque mark, the General needed to play catch-up.

Enter Chevy’s new 6.6-liter Duramax Diesel.

(Read More…)

Chevrolet has lifted the curtain on its next-generation Equinox, revealing a host of technological and styling updates for a long-running model that had grown long in the tooth.

The changes coming for the 2018 model year put the Equinox as a proper compact SUV, as the slimmed-down model sheds significant weight and adopts a trio of turbocharged four-cylinders. Going out on a limb in the red-hot market segment, Chevrolet plans to offer a diesel. (Read More…)

Chevrolet has hauled the axe out of the “break in case of low sales” box, chopping prices on almost all 2017 Camaro models.

The revised prices, effective today, apply to all 2017 model year Camaros — not just those yet to be built, GM Inside News reports. The move comes after a rocky summer for the recently restyled model, which saw the Camaro battle to stay out of last place in the pony car standings. (Read More…)

Sometimes a manufacturer churns out a base trim that is — all things considered — the primo choice for that particular model. Here’s an example.

For years, there’s been a chorus cry from the internet: “Buyers can’t get a simple pickup truck anymore!” Well into the ‘90s, customers could waltz into many a dealer and drive off in a Spartan, four-cylinder, stick shift, rear-wheel-drive pickup with the footprint of a Twinkie.

(Read More…)

I could live with this car … under a couple of conditions.

Air conditioning is a must have, and I may have told you about the need for an aftermarket shifter solution.

But GM Canada’s $9,995 2016 Chevrolet Spark LS, which lacks A/C and a tolerable shifter, is nevertheless an acceptable place to spend time. Though it drives with far less verve than the not-sold-in-Freedomland $9,988 2016 Nissan Micra S, the Spark is the more comfortable and refined option.

Up the price with an array of options and the argument for North America’s second Chevrolet Spark falls apart. As a $10,000 car, however, there’s a case to be made. (Read More…)

We told you — yea, we even showed you — that the most basic 2016 Chevrolet Spark you can buy has manual locks, but also a power lock.

Fascinated? We were. After driving around in a car with manual locks that automatically locked its driver’s door at 8 miles per hour and unlocked its driver’s door when the key was removed from ignition, we were spooked and amazed and perplexed. We asked GM for comment but initially did not hear back.

Now we have. (Read More…)

Sales of midsize trucks are heating up, and General Motors doesn’t want its slice of the pie to grow stale.

Changes are coming to the 2017 Chevrolet Colorado by way a host of powertrain updates aimed at squeezing better performance and fuel economy out of its volume model. (Read More…)

Are you sure you want to save the manuals?

In theory, of course, you want to save the manual transmission. You enjoy driving. You enjoy enhancing the man-machine connection by synchronizing movements between your left foot, right hand, and right foot. You value the art of a perfectly timed shift, of properly holding a gear through a corner when even the most intelligent automatic would upshift. You know the corner. You know driving. You know how to get the best out of a Ford Fiesta ST half an hour before sunrise on Italy’s Stelvio Pass, even though you’ve never set foot outside Iowa, even though you drive a RAV4 Hybrid.

“What? I would’ve gotten a manual if Toyota offered one,” thou doth protest too much.

As we approach greater degrees of autonomous driving, as roads fill up and speed limits are not altered to reflect our vehicles’ huge improvements in stopping ability and safety, saving the manuals sounds like a noble campaign. Preserve that last shred of pure driving already forsaken by Ferrari, by performance-oriented Porsches, by the general populace that believes their right hands are better off holding a skinny cinnamon dolce latte than a leather-wrapped shifter.

But I’m driving proof, a $9,995* 2016 Chevrolet Spark, that we shouldn’t paint with such a broad #SaveTheManuals brush. We should save some of the manuals, but certainly not all of them. (Read More…)

General Motors’ 2016 Chevrolet Spark LS does not have power locks.

Correction: as shown in the high-production-quality video embedded below, the 2016 Chevrolet Spark LS has a mysterious power lock, singular.

For an advertised Canadian base price of $9,995, or $11,595 with destination charges, the 2016 Chevrolet Spark is at once both very well equipped and decidedly spartan. This is not the Ford Festiva you inherited from your ex-girlfriend’s uncle. “The bumper and hood are no good,” he told you, having recently run into a deer. “But she runs pretty good.”

No, in the base 2016 Spark, there’s a backup camera, for example, and antilock brakes, a bundle of air bags, decent seats, Bluetooth, and WiFi availability.

There’s also a bit of magic. (Read More…)

Sometimes a manufacturer churns out a base trim that is — all things considered — the primo choice for that particular model. Here’s an example.

A couple of weeks ago, Tim spelled it out for us: Americans finally bought more SUVs than cars.

Now, a good many of these weren’t real SUVs: Rouges, RAVs, and RDXs are pathetic shadows of the segment’s forebears. The Suburban, however, has been unabashedly truck based since 1935. The current model is powered by a 355-horsepower V8 engine fuelled by ground up Priuses and oiled with the tears of David Attenborough. Cargo space is measured in acres instead of square feet.

(Read More…)

“I do see people buying Chevy trucks all the time, but I call them victims, not customers. That’s different than what I’m trying to do.” Thus spake Scott Adams, known to most of us as the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip. As someone who has made his living as a commercial UNIX sysadmin, I’m not much of a “Dilbert” reader, for approximately the same reason that Jodie Foster probably doesn’t read The International Journal Of Pinball Table Collectors. There’s only so much trauma that anybody should be forced to relive.

I do, however, read Mr. Adams’ blog, mostly because I’m fascinated by his particular approach to understanding the current Presidential election. In a pair of recent posts, he has taken a break from discussing the “Master Persuader” strategy to complain about the process of buying a new truck from a Chevrolet (or Ford) dealership. Mr. Adams describes himself as a “certified genius,” but as you will see below, the old dealership chestnut that “buyers are liars” applies to even those of us who find the WAIS-IV to be a trivial challenge.

(Read More…)

General Motors just released pricing and performance figures for its 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, and unless Ford comes up with a hotter Mustang, it looks like Dodge still holds the domestic performance crown.

Billed as the most powerful production Camaro ever, the 650-horsepower ZL1 comes with an MSRP of $62,135 for coupe models, $69,135 for drop-tops. Lower-end models stand to benefit from Chevy’s 1LE performance package. (Read More…)