truth about domestics

General Motors has decided to release a bunch of new Corvette variants in order to keep customers happy.  Last year we saw the revival of the Grand Sport nameplate.  For 2011, Chevrolet is releasing 500 units labeled the Z06 Carbon.  This is basically a Z06 body on a ZR1 chassis, with carbon fiber body components thrown in to save weight.  The hood is the lightest ever featured on a Corvette they say, but it won’t fit on a ZR1 because of its inner structure.  For more details, head on over to Autoblog.

(Image source: GM via Autoblog)

This is what happens when someone who has no clue what they are doing gets their hands on a nice car.  Oh the shame…

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)

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.

Corvette Racing has decided to release a 12 part series of webisodes where they show you behind the scenes looks at the C6.R GT2 racing program.  Stay tuned for more, or head on over to Corvette Racing’s official website.

GM saw sales figures jump 12% over the February 2008 figure which was an encouraging sign.  For March, the General wants to keep that momentum going and is offering 0% financing on most 2010 models and almost all remaining 2009 vehicles.  For more details, head on over to Autoblog.

(Image source: The Torque Report)