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We've had an abnormally high number of pickup truck first drives recently — the 2009 Ford F-150 , the 2008 Toyota Tundra , the 2009 Chevy Silverado and the 2009 Dodge Ram . Why? Because we've been working in conjunction with PickupTrucks.com to bring you a full blown comparison on the 2009 models of every half-ton truck currently for sale in the 'merican market and here it is. It's got all the numbers on towing, handling, braking and acceleration — everything a serious truck buyer could ever need. Frankly, that's the easy part. The subjective determination of which one's the best? That's harder to nail down, but it's what we're here for. galleryPost('09pickupcomparo', 12, '2009 Pickup Testing Spectacular'); 2009 Pickup Truck Comparison: Auto Cross 2009 Pickup Truck Comparison: Braking Challenge Results 2009 Pickup Truck Comparison: Drag Strip Acceleration Results 2009 Pickup Truck Comparison: Towing Results The competitors...
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With Ben all by himself at the Paris Motor Show , we've been back here across the pond bringing you his on-the-ground coverage. Here's everything revealed so far on the second day of the show, compiled in order of popularity from most trafficked to least. Be sure to visit the full posts where you'll find more pictures, press releases and analysis for all the best Paris has to offer from the day's coverage. And check back later when we'll bring you even more. Subaru Boxer Diesel galleryPost('subarudiesel', 6, ''); Subaru Impreza Diesel, Forester Diesel and Legacy Diesel galleryPost('imprezadiesel', 3, '');galleryPost('foresterdiesel', 3, '');galleryPost('legacydiesel', 3, ''); Chevy Volt, Plugged In galleryPost('voltplugin', 3, ''); Venturi Volage Concept galleryPost('venturivolage', 6, ''); Lotus Evora Interior galleryPost('evoraintparis', 6, ''); Chevy Orlando...
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The recent collapse of Bill Heard Chevrolet , the largest chain of Chevy dealerships in the world, has left former customers with a slew of problems. I spent an afternoon outside the now barricaded entrance of Bill Heard Chevrolet in Ike-ravaged suburban Houston speaking with former customers left hanging in limbo for this exclusive story of the fall of Bill Heard's dealership empire. galleryPost('bheard1', 6, 'Inside A Collapsed Dealership'); Nothing Leaves On any other Saturday at Bill Heard in Sugar Land, Texas, the dealership's main sales lot, one of the largest in the state, would be filled with salespeople and prospective buyers. This Saturday it's empty but for two armed security guards who claim they were hired by GM to make sure that "nothing leaves" the lot full of product. The two guards were out-of-state, called in to guard locations affected by the recent Hurricane Ike, and were reassigned to this shift last Thursday after the last dealership...
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Edmunds Inside Line is reporting the Chevy Volt apparently doesn't use the engine to recharge its batteries while driving, going against what every media outlet — CNBC , the buff books and every web site including this one — have reported as fact for the past two years. Confusion apparently stems from a press release issued when the concept version of the Chevy Volt was first revealed in 2007 indicating: "When the battery is depleted, a 1-liter, three-cylinder turbocharged engine spins at a constant speed, or revolutions per minute (rpm), to create electricity and replenish the battery." Instead, we're now being told, via the press release from last week's production reveal : "a gasoline/E85-powered engine generator seamlessly provides electricity to power the Volt's electric drive unit while simultaneously sustaining the charge of the battery." So, after some portion of the initial 40 miles of all-electric driving depletes the battery, the...
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When Chrysler dropped its bevy of extended-range electric vehicles in our laps today as part of the company's new ENVI program, we wondered how coincidental it was that Chrysler was claiming the same all-electric range as the much ballyhooed Chevy Volt . The Volt makes concessions to seating and obsessively maximizes aerodynamics to get its 40 mile range, but the Chrysler EV and the Jeep EV both claim 40 miles as well. No funny-shaped center consoles, no wacky aero-trickery, just batteries and electric motors. So what's the deal? Not surprisingly, it's mainly the batteries that make the difference here. Battery storage capacity is measured in watt-hours, more or less the total amount of energy used over time. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is simply a thousand watt-hours and this is what's used to measure big batteries, the kind used in modern hybrids.The Chevy Volt uses a 16 kWh battery and only really functions within a range of 50-80% charge in order to extend battery life. In...
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Yesterday's reveal of the production Chevy Volt got us thinking we should take a closer look at the design features, both inside and out, that make GM's plug-in hybrid unique. We've picked out what we think are the five exterior and an equal number of interior design elements we feel are most important, and taken a little deeper look at each. Without further ado, hit the jump for our top ten key design elements that make the Volt so...eclectically electric.
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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The 2010 Chevy Volt has been a landmark project not only for its daring powertrain and breakneck development cycle, but also for GMs general openness with the media during the process. Along the way we've been invited in to see the development first hand, even spending a whole day with the Chevy Volt. But despite the buddy-buddy, easy-publicity PR maneuvering, up until the wee hours of this morning, we still didn't know what it looked like. Now that we've seen it in all but minute detail, it's time to compare the concept against the reality. Front End Given that the original concept body had terrible aerodynamics, a radical change to the front end was not unexpected. In truth, the front corner of the Volt has been getting the Lutz-style sneak preview for months now; so too the smooth, swept-back corners and flush-mounted headlights. It appears the intake detail at the base of the windshield is retained and the lower grille grows to the main intake, with the side intakes...
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Getting the first photo of all three of Detroit's new muscle cars was no easy task — taking time, hard work and more than a little luck. Want to see what transpired? The folks from Garage419 showed up to create the above "behind the scenes" video showing just how it was done. We'd also like to point out while the PR folks on the ground weren't very happy with us showing up with the competition, the GM and Chevy brand PR teams back in Detroit found the stunt humorous and took it in good stride. We give them a lot of credit for doing so. And why not? It ended up making it all across the auto enthusiast online world, with even Motor Trend picking up on the story — although they seem a little bit baffled by how it all happened . But whatever. Enough words, hit the play button above! ( Hat tip to Craig Lieberman, Garage419 and Ned! ) galleryPost('MuscleCarWarSanDiego2', 6, 'The Muscle Car Wars Are On!');
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The 2009 Corvette ZR1 is the best car ever made. It redefines what performance cars are capable of, not by its numbers (the 0-to-60 in 3.3 seconds and a 205 MPH top speed figures are no longer noteworthy north of $100,000), but by how it makes those numbers so accessible. Simply put, the ZR1's most remarkable achievement is how easy and unintimidating the chassis makes exploiting the car's 638 HP. The only problem is I'm not good enough a driver to fully do so. galleryPost('zr1reviewroad', 9, '2009 Corvette ZR1'); newVideoPlayer("/ZR1review.flv", 494, 290,""); galleryPost('ZR1reviewtrack', 9, ''); Halfway through a day's lapping, halfway around the Lutz Ring and full throttle at the top of third gear is bringing me and a red ZR1 into a 180-degree corner way too fast, while the blind crest just before it — taken at maximum power and maximum cornering — has us way off line too. In any other supercar, especially one as hairy...
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Yesterday evening we saw the Specter Werkes C6 Corvette GTR make its public debut here at Cauley Ferrari in West Bloomfield, MI. It's rare to have the chance to cover a car from its earliest concept sketches , through the build process and all the way until its public unveiling. But yesterday evening we completed that cycle with the Specter Werkes' special Corvette. The GTR shares only the roof, rear hatch and glass with the exterior of the 2008 Chevy Corvette Z06 upon which it is based and has a footprint widened by four-and-a-half inches.The overall design effect is one of taking the C6 Corvette, mixing it with a touch of Viper RT/10, and adding a liberal dash of kick-in-the-pants. galleryPost('spectergtrunveil', 9, 'Specter Werkes C6 Corvette GTR Unveil'); After the nine-foot-tall leggy models pulled the wraps off the GTR, buyer number one Rollie Purifoy pulled the car into the crush of an enthusiastic crowd, giving us an opportunity to spend a couple of minutes...
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The most striking feature of the unveil of the new Camaro was how strikingly similar the 2010 Chevy Camaro is to the Camaro Concept . We enlisted the help of GM designer Jeff Perkins, who worked extensively on the new muscle car, to help us with the magnifying glass and determine what those changes were. Hit the jump as Jeff guides us through sort of virtual walk-around, pointing out each of the individual tweaks and changes the designers made to bring the concept to production. The New Camaro's Front "Our philosophy from day one was [to capture] the essence and philosophy of the first-generation Camaro, but with modern execution and modern materials and modern fit-and-finish. From a design standpoint, we want the Camaro faithful to recognize and love it, but we also want to have a new generation love the car for the way it is, without a history lesson." — Perkins galleryPost('2010camarofron', 6, 'Click For Front Details'); Click the photos above to see...
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Did you ever notice how big badges on the front of cars are getting these days? Have you ever wondered whether it's out of a need for automakers to "compensate" for their prospective buyers lack of size? We did. So, trusty ruler in hand, we hit the dealer lots at the mega-motor-mall up the street to find out whether size really does matter and to answer the important question: Which automaker has the biggest badges, and do they correspond to the bulge in the pants of the male members of the target buying demographic? Let's find out. For starters, we've set up some ground rules: 1) Measurements are taken across the major axis of the badge vertically or horizontally, none of that diagonal baloney. 2) Script logos where not considered. Spreading letters out is too easy. So sorry Hummer, Jeep, GMC, Land Rover and others with the name spelled out in long-hand, get a real badge. 3) Only vehicles on the dealer lot of the Troy Motor Mall in Troy, MI where considered. Thus...
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We're celebrating Independence Day with a week-long automotive Amerigasm heading down two diametrically opposite roads. The first, started yesterday, is a salute to the best car commercials — a celebration of the conspicuous over-consumption that made this nation great. The second road is one we'll be traveling at government-mandated speeds — a salute to the police car. While The Man may always be trying to keep us down, we salute him for having some killer vehicles with which to do it. You can take both roads this week here . —Ed. We've compiled a list of the greatest American police cars in honor of our patriotic, week-long Independence Day celebration. Whether on the big screen or the rear-view mirror, the radio car is as much a part of the ubiquitous American landscape as the golden arches of McDonalds or the billboards offering "Color TV" to road-weary travelers. Though they represent different things to different people, and we don't always...
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