Archive for Chevrolet

According to a published report by Reuters, struggling American auto makers General Motors and Chrysler may end up getting funds from private institutions, if the U.S Government decides not to provide further funds to both companies, that will then force the auto makers to file for Chapter 11 which basically mean that both companies will go into restructuring, to become viable businesses.

A number of external advisers to The Treasury are rumored of trying to secure the funds from private institutions, which will be needed to restructure both companies. The amount which is rumored to be about U.S $ 40 billion, and to be backed or guaranteed by the government would also be used to pay back the U.S $ 17.4 billion the government initially lent General Motors and Chrysler late last year.

This means that the U.S Government would not tap into “the people’s” money to give a helping hand to both auto makers. However, this brings us to the next question; will these private institutions be able to extend the above mentioned amount during such uncertain times? If both companies file for Chapter 11, they would also be temporarily protected from creditors.

GM has just shut down its equivalent of BMW M and Mercedes-Benz AMG, in efforts to conserve money and stay afloat. GM’s High Performance Vehicle Operations are responsible for cars such as the Cadillac CTS-V and the SS-badged Chevrolets. All engineers in the HPVO division will be moved to other divisions and will work on regular GM cars such as Cadillacs, Buicks, Chevys and Pontiacs. GM’s spokesman Vince Muniga says the HPVO division might be brought back to life in the future when GM is in better financial health, but right now in line with its pledge to the U.S. Treasury Department to deliver more fuel efficient cars in the future, there is no room for low-volume niche high-performance products.

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If you’ve got loads of cash and really want to drive a Chevrolet Camaro in Malaysia with the help of your friendly neighbourhood parallel importer, you’ll have to sit on the left side of the car, as GM has just announced that it will be scrapping plans to reengineer the car for right hand drive to help preserve cash. However it seems that Chevrolet will still be selling the Camaro in the UK as a LHD car in a RHD country, but only in limited units of less than 100 in order not to trigger type approval regulations.

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The Maxximus G-Force accelerates from 0 to 60mph (96.6km/h) in just 2.1 seconds. If you want to get to 161km/h, that’s takes just 4.54 seconds, faster than some automatic transmission cars take just to get 1st gear done with and get to 2nd gear.

Braking power is equally impressive – 0 to 161km/h and back to 0 takes 8.86 seconds. Now that beats the Bugatti Veyron’s 0 to 60mph time of 2.46 seconds, and the 0-100-0mph time of 9.9 seconds.

As for top speed, there are no official quotes yet but it will have to beat the SSC Ultimate Aero TT record holder which has touched 257mph (413.6km/h), thanks to its 1,287hp 6.35 liter twin-turbo V8 with 1507Nm of torque.

The Maxximus G-Force’s engine sounds even more massive – a 7.0 liter twin-turbo V8 built by Chevrolet that they claim to be putting out a scary 2,100 horsepower (1,600 at the wheels claimed) thanks to its Turbonetics turbochargers. Since the car is supposed to be lighter than the Ultimate Aero TT, it may just surpass the Aero TT’s top speed and hold the new record for the faster street-legal car around.

The men behind the car are an Indiana businessman financier David McMahan and a race car-driving chauffeur designer, Marlon Kirby. The price for one of these? US$3 million. The car is based on the Ultima GTR 720 but with the engine and gearbox replaced by the new units. And it’s just insane.

Click here to read the rest of Maxximus G-Force’s 7.0L twin-turbo V8 takes it up to 60mph in 2.1 seconds

The Chevrolet Stingray Concept is a design study with no current plans to be produced, though never say never – there is always a small possibility of it being used in the future when GM goes to the drawing board for a next generation Corvette.

It seems that Michael Bay was touring the GM styling studios looking for cars to be made into new characters for the Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen movie and liked the car so much that he decided to use it for a new character – Sideswipe.

We don’t know if there was any plans to display the Stingray to the public originally, but whether it was because of the movie character or not, the new Stingray concept Corvette made its debut this week at the 2009 Chicago Auto Show. The Stingray Concept takes the Corvette down the retro-futurism road with elements from both the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray and the modern day Corvette. Even the Sting Ray badge has been updated.

Look after the jump for a video of GM’s Global Design Vice president Ed Welburn taking us through a walkthrough of the concept.

Click here to read the rest of Chevrolet Stingray Concept: Autobot Sideswipe debuts at the 2009 Chicago Auto Show

The Autobots go on a cross-continental convoy in this new trailer of the Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen movie. The convoy goes from Long Beach all the way to some desert area with pyramids, damn! It’s a massive GM marketing exercise featuring cool new upcoming GM cars such as the blue Chevrolet Volt, the now-production Chevrolet Beat and the equally as cute Chevrolet Trax concept car. There is also a new concept car just introduced at the Chicago 2009 show called the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Concept, which is called Autobot Sideswipe in the movie. Watch the video after the jump and stay tuned for coverage of the new Stingray Corvette.

Click here to read the rest of New Transformers 2 Trailer: Autobot Fleet Convoy

Finally the Chevrolet Spark, a model that was allegedly shamelessly cloned to become the Chery QQ, will be able to have a unique design again! The new Chevrolet Spark will be unveiled at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, smack in the heart of Europe where small and fuel efficient hatchbacks like this are popular.

The new Spark is based on the Chevrolet Beat Concept, one third of a trio of cute compact concept cars that GM exhibited sometime ago. While the Beat was a 3-door hatch, it has been translated for production into the 5-door design you see here. The new Spark will also be making an appearance in the new Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen movie, a smart marketing move as potential young and gimmick-loving European first time car buyers could be swayed to buying “that car that was in Transformers” when picking among the many choices out there.

Click for enlarged image

This is the first time we’re looking at the Spark’s interior and it seems that Chevrolet has implemented a motorcycle-style instrument cluster positioned in front of the driver. It is mounted on the steering column like the new MINI and uses a combination of analog and digital instrumentation to display information.

Despite being a small (likely low-end) model, there is considerable attention paid to detail with the exterior design. It’s not easy/cheap to stamp metal into the shapes required for the body, and the rear door handles are hidden near the C-pillar much like the Alfa Romeo 147 and 156. The interior dash lights up in a colour similiar to the Jaguar XF.

The new Chevrolet Spark is 3,640mm long with a 2,375mm wheelbase and will be available with either a 1.0 liter or a 1.2 liter engine, both DOHC engines with 4-cylinders for smoothness that’s hard to achieve with a 3-cylinder. The car will (depending on markets) be available with front, side and curtain airbags, ABS, and even stability control.

The Spark is expected to hit European dealers by early 2010. Stay tuned for more updates on this new compact car once Geneva rolls by, then we’ll have full specifications including power output and more photos of the interior.

UPDATE: Added a video of Dave Lyon, director of GM Design, explaining the exterior and interior design of the all-new Chevrolet Spark

For now, two more shots are available after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of 2010 Chevrolet Spark production car based on Chevrolet Beat Concept set for Geneva debut

GM is no longer than world’s largest automaker in terms of sales, ending its 77-year claim to that title. GM only sold 8.36 million units in 2008, which is slightly less than Toyota’s 8.97 million units. Who knows what will happen in 2009 though, GM may overtake Toyota again, Toyota may leave GM even further behind, or GM may just cease to exist. Now is not the time to be bothered about such titles, especially since GM has not posted a profit since 2004. More profit per car is what needs to be achieved, not more cars sold.

The new Chevrolet Equinox for the 2010 model year is here, and seems to be based on an enhancement of the old Equinox’s front wheel drive GM Theta monocoque chassis as the wheelbase is the same (a shortened version is used for the Captiva), but there are some changes including a wider front track for better stability.

Two engines are available, a 2.4 liter direct injected inline-4 engine producing 182 horsepower, and a 3.0 liter DOHC V6 producing 255 horsepower. GM claims an achievable mileage of over 800km per full tank on both these engines, though this is probably with highway driving.

Safety features include 6 airbags which consist of dual frontal airbags, head curtain side airbags and pelvic/thorax seat-mounted side airbags. The interior features a center stack similiar to the one on the Chevrolet Cruze. The rear seats keep its predecessor’s “MultiFlex” feature which allows it to slide fore and aft by 203mm to vary 2nd row legroom and rear luggage space according to your needs. Maximum luggage space with the seats pushed the most foreward is 889 liters.

GM claims 30mpg highway and 21 mpg city for the 2.4 liter version, while the V6 gets 25mpg highway and 18 mpg city. That’s 13 liters per 100km, which is acceptable considering that’s city driving for a large engine powering a large vehicle.

Look after the jump for more photos of the 2010 Equinox.

Click here to read the rest of 2010 Chevrolet Equinox Crossover SUV

They’ve done it, the Detroit boys have managed to secure federal emergency loans to execute their plans to stay afloat. Initially their request for money was rejected by the US Senate, but the Bush administration has decided to take money from the US$700 billion that was allocated to bail out their failed banks.

The amount to be given to GM and Chrysler (Ford doesn’t need the money apparently as they build cars that people actually want to buy, thanks to their extensive European involvement) totals up to US$17.4 billion. US$4 billion will go to Chrysler this month and GM will get the same this month, with the remaining US$5.4 billion set to fall into their hands next year pending the release of the other half of the US$700 billion by the congress.

George Bush says the bailout was because he and the American people did not want the indigenous auto companies to fail, and he also did no want to hand over the administration over to Barack Obama next year with the auto industry in shambles.

The two companies have until March 31st 2009 to become “financially viable”, otherwise the loan will be recalled and all funds are to be returned to the U.S. Treasury. In this case, financially viable is defined to be “having a positive net value, taking into account all current and future costs, and can fully repay the loan.”

Other terms and conditions include: firms must provide warrants for non-voting stock, firms must accept limits on executive pay and eliminate perks such as corporate jets, debt owned to the government would be placed at higher priority than other debts to the extent permitted by law, firms must allow the government to examine their accounting books and records, firms must report any transaction greater than US$100 million and the government has the power to block any of these transactions greater than US$100 million, firms must comply with Federal fuel efficiency and emissions requirements, and firms must not issue new dividends while in debt with the government.

Ford, the healther of the Detroit 3, is still asking for a US$9 billion government line of credit in case conditions worsen or one of the other Detroit 3 fails. But they do not need any money immediately at the moment, unlike as claimed by GM and Chrysler.

Canada has also extended help to the Canadian arms of GM and Chrysler. The Canadian government will provide C$2.7 billion while the Ontario state government will top up another C$1.3 billion for a total of C$4 billion. Of this total, C$3 billion will go to GM while C$1 billion will go to Chrysler. Canadian production capacity represents 20% of total North American auto production capacity, but this aid amount only represents 16% of all total aid offered by North American governments.

So far the response from the industry have been mixed, but the positive ones so far are only coming from pro-Detroit government officials and GM dealers and other industry-related people who stand to benefit from the loan. Standard and Poor equity analyst Efraim Levy expects GM to quickly blow the billions they are getting and then request another multi-billion dollar loan on March 31st 2009. Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds said this bail-out is much like the government infusing the blood in on arm while it’s bleeding out the other arm in attempt to keep them alive.