You’d think that all the Malaise Era Montes would have been crushed 15 years ago, but you still see the occasional survivor chugging around these days. I spotted this battered-but-solid example in a Denver park a few months back. (Read More…)

Not many of us wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, “I think I’m going to shorten and narrow a ’57 Chevy wagon, give it a truck bed, and install a 427 with a 5-speed!” (Read More…)

While ice cream trucks can be quite menacing, an ex-ice cream truck crudely repurposed for a home health-care business should make you want to flee in terror. (Read More…)

So far, the feared Chinese car exports were nothing to write home about. Imports to China are outpacing exports from China by a wide margin. In units and especially in value. While China manages to sell a few cheap pickups to developing countries, it has become the #1 market for the (imported) Mercedes S Class. The German car industry in particular is running extra shifts to keep up with the Chinese appetite for German imports. One carmaker is determined to change that gross trade imbalance. Not Chery. Not Geely. It’s General Motors. (Read More…)

It’s hard to believe that The General was once so dominant that it sweated over the fear of being split up by the federal government via antitrust regulations, and that GM’s divisions cranked out more than 25 separate passenger-car engine types (counting Opel and Holden models) during the decade. Why, The General boasted ten different car V8s during the 1960s (not counting earlier models intended for warranty replacements, industrial use, etc); eight of those engines were being built in 1965 alone. Imagine a manufacturer today so mighty that it could offer eight totally different V8 engines (in 14 displacements) for sale in its new cars! (Read More…)

So we now know that GM’s failure to create a decent subcompact during the, oh, forty years in which doing so would have saved the company from certain ruin… well, do we really need to get into that rant right now? (Read More…)

I see a fair number of total beater 1960s Detroit convertibles on the street, and nicely restored examples show up from time to time, but I’m not sure what to make of this clean-but-nowhere-near-show-quality Impala SS parked on a freezing night in downtown Denver. (Read More…)

Motor Trend gets three GM sources to confirm the return of the Pontiac G8 (Holden Commodore) to the North American market… only this time it’s coming as a Chevy. One exec even brags

We have a good name for it…

…and no, it’s not “Impala.” Nor is this simply a civilian version of the Caprice police model, which is based on the long-wheelbase version of the Zeta platform. This will be a limited-numbers affair and V8-only, reports MT, because currency fluctuations have made shipping cars from Australia more expensive. Should GM even be messing around importing the the Antipodean Driving Machine? The numbers might say no, but the fanboys are already screaming “hell yes” (or, more accurately “what about an El Camino ute version?”). Check out Michael Karesh’s reviews of all three versions of the Pontiac G8 (you can even read Liebermann’s Take Two on the GT if you must), and let us know what you think of the return of the G8.

We’ve been hearing about the Chevrolet Volt for so long that it’s hard to believe that it is finally here. Or almost here. Close enough for a preview drive. And?

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Well, there’s nothing quite like being wrong, is there? Exactly a week ago I registered my (somewhat hesitant) support for Chevy’s new tagline, “Chevy Runs Deep,” and though I still believe that the tagline itself is better than anything else GM’s marketers have dreamed up in a while, I probably should have waited for the brand’s ads to come up out before weighing in. After all, any good (or good enough) idea is only as good as its execution… and these ads really don’t seem to move the game past some of Chevrolet’s previous cornball ad efforts. The main ad in the series (above) is as bland as an Impala’s interior, and does nothing to inspire respect for Chevy in contemporary (read: post-bailout) terms. Can “the strength of the nation” be found in every Chevrolet? If so, does that strength refer to something other than the government money that kept Chevrolet from the scrapheap of history? Instead of inspiring a bold approach, it seems that the “Don’t call it Chevy” moment simply pushed Chevy’s advertising back into gauzy pseudo-patriotism of its recent past. But don’t take it from me… hit the jump for a sampling of the latest Chevy Runs Deep ads.
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I had the pleasure of spending part of a dinner at last week’s Volt press launch chatting with GM’s marketing honcho Joel Ewanick, better known for his work as “marketer of the year” at Hyundai. Ewanick’s a confident, engaging guy, and when the “Don’t Call It Chevy” mini-embroglio came up over desert, his eyes took on a mischievous twinkle. As other GM communications and PR staff recounted their stories of the 24-hour madness that followed the release of a memo which indicated that the term “Chevy” was no longer a welcome marketing feature, it became clear that neither Ewanick nor any of his staff had any regrets about accidentally launching a full-blown public debate over the value of the term Chevy. The very debate, it seems, reconnected the brand that had tried everything marketing-wise with its hidden core: consumers care enough about Chevrolet to have a popular and affectionate nickname for it. And what started as an unnecessary PR blunder seems to have given birth to Chevrolet’s newest marketing tagline: Chevy Runs Deep. Or, as Chevy’s ad man Jeff Goodby puts it

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For a vehicle named after a unit of measure, the Chevrolet Volt is a difficult car to pin down. From its drivetrain to its efficiency rating, the Volt defies categorization. From price point to performance, it defies comparison. It’s a rolling contradiction, this car, part electric car and part gas-burner, part high-concept moonshot and part workmanlike commuter. And yet for all its mysteries, contradictions and (yes) compromises, the Volt is also a deceptively simple car to use. Which makes it what exactly?

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The feared takeover of the world by Chinese cars so far was a non-starter. We’ve always said that cars built at Chinese joint ventures with Western (or Japanese) companies would be best suited to break that spell. But so far, the Western (or Japanese) joint venture partners wouldn’t play ball. Why invite a Chinese joint venture abroad where it competes in your markets? Now the first international brand will export a low-end car it developed for China to Latin America. For starters.  Guess who? (Read More…)

If the recent flap over the Volt’s drivetrain has taught us anything it’s that A) GM’s internal-combustion-assisted plug-in is more complicated than we thought, and B) GM is fine with simplifying its complex reality in order to make it appear as attractive as possible. Which is just fine: they’re the ones trying to sell a $41k car, and as such they’re entitled to do what they can to make it seem worth its many shortcomings. What the automotive media needs to take away from the brou-ha-ha isn’t necessarily that GM’s hesitance to bring forward “the whole truth” is an intrinsically big deal (let’s just say this wasn’t the first time), but rather that knowledgeable writers should focus on explaining the Volt in ways that are both comprehensible and fully accurate. In this spirit, the most important question isn’t “what should we call the Volt?” but “how efficient is the Volt in the real world?”And on this point, there’s plenty of room for some truthful clarification.

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A longtime critique of General Motors here at TTAC is that it needs to pick enduringly appealing names for its products and stick to them, instead of shuffling through some eighty nameplates for midsize and smaller cars since Toyota introduced the Corolla. Still, this approach doesn’t advocate simply freezing time, and calling every compact Chevy a Cruze from here to eternity. If you’re going to stick with a name, it has to be good, and it has to mean something.

Enter the Aveo, which is about to be replaced by another Daewoo-developed hatchback (made in the US this time), but should (if GM can be believed) represent an improvement over the unlovable outgoing model.GM’s North American supremo Mark Reuss is still wavering on the name, refusing to commit to Aveo, but unwilling to suggest an alternative nameplate. Which brings us to today’s question: is it nobler for the car to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor associations with the name Aveo? Or should GM put the name to sleep, perchance to dream up a better, more enduring one? Is consistency good even if it means keeping one of the most maligned nameplates this side of “Sebring”? Aye, there’s the rub.