truth about domestics

Check out this video of a lawn mower with some unintended acceleration – it’s hilarious!

The 2011 Ford Super Duty stands once again atop the heavy duty truck heap.  Even with new offerings out or on the horizon, Dodge and GM can’t seem to keep up.  There are many reasons for this, two of which happen to be Ford’s dedication to truck buyers and their desire to build the best products money can buy.  Just look at this beast!  The all-new, in-house developed 6.7L Scorpion diesel engine cranks out 390 horsepower and a mind-numbing 735 pound feet of torque!  That’s the same amount of torque as 7 Toyota Priuses!  The even more impressive feat is that the new Super Duty is capable of pulling 24,000 pounds when properly equipped, or almost 8 Toyota Priuses!  These new rigs even manage 22 miles per gallon on highway drives.  For the full story, head on over to PickupTrucks.com or Autoblog.com.

(Image source: Ford)

One of the men behind Ford’s One Ford transformation process over the last few years, Derek Kuzak, Chief of Product Development, has been given the 2010 National Academy of Engineering award.  This award is said to be the highest honor in the engineering community.  Well done Mr. Kuzak and congratulations to everyone at Ford for their remarkable turnaround.

(Image source: thechromepony.com)

General Motors and its CAW workforce have something to celebrate!  Less than a year after production started, the 100,000th Camaro rolled off the assembly line in Oshawa, Ontario just last week.  The car was an Inferno Orange Camaro SS.  So far in 2009 the Camaro was outselling the segment leader, the Ford Mustang, but that was before a powertrain upgrade.  Now the 2011 Mustang is packing nearly identical horsepower ratings in its V6 and V8 engines.  We’ll just have to stay tuned to see which car ends up on top of the Muscle Car sales heap.  For more, head on over to Camaro5 or Autoblog.

(Image source: Stephen Panoff for Truth About Domestics)

Autoblog has all the luck!  Check out these photos from their visit of Pratt & Miller’s shop in Wixom where they build up the C6.R GT2 cars for Corvette Racing.  Then head on over to Autoblog for the full story of their development.

(Image source: Autoblog)

In an strong economy, automakers are careful not to send too many cars to fleet customers.  The reasons behind this are many.  The cars people rent are typically pretty well worked over and worn from the hundreds of customers they see during their time in service.  This can give renters a bad impression of those vehicles, making them seem cheap, of poor quality and just plain bland (many rental cars are white or beige.)  This tends to keep people away from the same vehicles when they look in the showroom for a car of their own.  Well, to keep sales up, Chrysler shipped a shocking 58% of its February sales to fleet customers.  GM had a similar story with 31% of its new cars going to fleet buyers.  For the full story, head on over to Autoblog.

(Image source: HowStuffWorks.com)

The German tuner, Geiger Cars, seems to be fascinated with American muscle cars.  Karl Geiger just can’t seem to get enough of them…and speed…and power for that matter.  His latest project involves the Shelby GT500.  The GT500 Ford Mustang already comes from the factory with 540 horsepower but that wasn’t enough, so changes were made.  What kind of changes you might be wondering?  Well, how about a larger Whipple supercharger, larger throttle valves, upgraded fuel injection system and ported cylinder heads.  Some modest suspension tweaks were made as well.  What does all of that get you?  How about 799 horsepower and 697 pound feet of torque.  Yowza!  Geiger predicts a top speed of somewhere around 220 miles per hour.  For more details, head on over to Autoblog.

(Image source: Geiger Cars via Autoblog)

GM donated more than 4,600 vehicles to assist with the 2010 Winter Olympic games up in Vancouver.  Those vehicles were lightly used as shuttles to move athletes and officials to and from various events.  Those vehicles are now headed to dealers all over Canada and are available for purchase at a “special price” says GM.  For more details, head on over to Autoblog.

(Image source: flickr)

In what can only be seen as great news for GM, its employees, customers and dealers, General Motors has announced that they will be sending out letters of intent to reinstate over 600 dealerships.  661 to be exact.  This is over half of the nearly 1,100 that appealed GM’s decision to close them down after Congress forced GM to make cuts to its dealer network.  GM originally announced that it would be closing 2,000 of its nearly 6,000 dealers across the country.

The thing that bothers me here is the members of Congress.  First they tell GM to shed 1/3 of its dealers in a four month window.  GM figures out which ones to cut and sends out the letters.  Then the dealers complained and Congress passed a law requiring an appeals process for the dealers.  Maybe Congress should have just made up their mind and say close the dealers within a year, or close them and be done with it.  Instead they rush to tell GM what to do (like any of our politicians have any business sense inside their greatly over-inflated heads) and then back pedal when dealers started to complain.  Maybe they should have thought about those dealers before jumping to conclusions and assuming they knew what the automaker needed to do to survive.  For more on this story, head on over to MSN Autos.

(Image source: bloggingvegas.com; thanks for the tip Megster!)

S.O.B!  What does a 16 year old need a brand new Camaro for?  Oh well, better than getting him a Hyundai Genesis Coupe or some other foreign garbage like that.