Car News Articles

• Competes with: Dodge Magnum, Honda Ridgeline, your uncle’s old El Camino
• Looks like: GM is serious about pleasing its mulleted buyers
• Drivetrain: 361-hp, 6.0-liter V-8 with six-speed automatic
• Hits dealerships: Late 2009

We’ve been expecting the G8 Sport Truck for some time, but finally seeing the real thing, even if just in the photos here, is something else entirely. GM actually went out and built a car with a truck bed … in the 21st century!

The sport truck is clearly reminiscent of the classic El Caminos many of us remember from our youth. Seeing one again nearly 20 years later is jarring in some respects. Helping ease our minds is the modern car it’s based on: the Pontiac G8 sedan that recently went on sale.

The sport truck shares the same powerful V-8 engine and rear-wheel drive as the G8 GT, and GM says it will get to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds. It also has 18-inch wheels standard, with 19s optional. A color-coordinated soft tonneau cover is also standard. We’d still expect there to be various accessory tops to choose from when it goes on sale late in 2009.

It might not look like it, but there is a cargo area behind the seats that measures 8.5 cubic feet, which is pretty surprising. Stability control, side curtain and side thorax airbags are welcome standard safety equipment.

That late on-sale date is a killer, but it does give GM time to name the sport truck, an honor it will bestow upon one lucky consumer. If you go to www.pontiac.com/namethiscar you can submit your own idea for a name. The famed El Camino-ologists over at Jalopnik spent some up close time with this inheritor to the Camino throne and have a video and exclusive photos besides the ones provided by General Motors. Pickuptruck.com also delivers a video here. Give them both a visit and you can check a gallery of manufacturer photos and a few extra Jalopnik exclusively shared with us.

Americans love their large utes, or trucks as they’re called in the US.

But they’ll soon get a taste of a relatively compact ute – at least by American standards – when the Holden Commodore Ute goes on sale in the States towards the end of 2009.

To be badged a Pontiac, the Commodore Ute-based vehicle – similar to the Pontiac G8 GT that just went on sale in the US – has not yet been named.

General Motors is looking to the public to come up with a name for the so-called Pontiac sport truck. But the competition is only open to Americans, who can win one of the first Pontiac “sport trucks” to arrive in the US.

Click here to see the competition.

So we thought we’d open it up to you guys, the Drive readers, to see what you thought. What do you think the Pontiac ute should be called when it goes on sale in America?

And do you like the look of the new Holden Commodore-based ute.

Toby Hagon

Davison stunned at taking down the big guns in debut win.

Will Davison grew up dreaming of Formula One and hearing about the successes of his grandfather Lex, who won the Australian Grand Prix in the 1950s.

The third-generation racer never made it to F1, but it didn’t seem to matter a bit when he broke through for his first V8 Supercar win at Eastern Creek yesterday.

Davison led Dick Johnson’s team back from the edge with a racy, mature and professional performance as he racked up a win, a second and a sixth to take top spot in his Jim Beam Falcon from Mark Winterbottom and Garth Tander.

He made the big breakthrough when he won the second of three heats, but then had to battle immense pressure and a hobbled car to take the DJR team’s first win since 2001.

“I didn’t cry but I was completely stunned inside when I went over the line,” Davison said. “The last race was tough. I was just hanging on. To beat these guys is just fantastic.”

He admitted he still owes a bundle from his failed attempt on Formula One — believed to be more than $500,000 — but was not thinking about the past as he looked to a bright future.

Winterbottom should have been closer at Eastern Creek, but blundered in qualifying and did not have quite enough to challenge for the overall win.

“We didn’t do enough on Saturday and we paid for it,” he said. “But I’m still on the podium.”

Defending champion Garth Tander also made it to the podium after a mixed weekend, which netted pole position and a win, before a major setback.

“We made some changes for the second heat and the car was not that flash,” Tander said.

“We also saved our best tyres for the last race and that hurt us.”

“We had to fight through.”

Even so, he rebounded from a disaster at the season opener in Adelaide to move up to eighth in the championship standings.

The series is still led by Jamie Whincup, who was fifth in Sydney after a clean sweep at the Clipsal 500 with his Vodafone Falcon.

The top 10 in Sydney included Rick Kelly, who stayed out of trouble on the way to fourth, and old sparring partners Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife.

The next event for V8 Supercar teams is the AGP, when they will race three times, before the championship resumes at Hamilton in New Zealand from April 18-20.

The top ten

Championship points (after two of 14 championship rounds)

1. Jamie Whincup (Ford)………..540

2. Rick Kelly (Holden)…………….432

3. Lee Holdsworth (Holden)…..426

4. Mark Winterbottom (Ford).382

5. Will Davison (Ford)……………..356

6. Craig Lowndes (Ford)………..339

7. Greg Murphy (Holden)……….330

8. Garth Tander (Holden)………326

9. Mark Skaife (Holden)…………322

10. Todd Kelly (Holden)………….308

- The Courier-Mail

Payload and price make Citroen’s Berlingo an attractive option for businesses in need of a small van.

Its $15,990 price tag makes it the cheapest little guy in the one-tonne bonneted market and it can carry 800kg, giving it the biggest payload in its class.

The Berlingo bounced into Australia five years ago and by 2003 had pushed the Holden Combo off pole position. It was a newer product at the time compared to the older-model Combo. However, Holden launched a fightback with a newer, bigger model and this year is back at No.1 with 373 sales, compared to Berlingo’s 186 for the first four months of 2005.

In the all-important price war, the cute-looking French van is still winning. However, the $15,990 tag, a $2000 price cut which has remained for more than a year, does not include the sliding door, which costs an extra $750.

The side sliding door gives delivery people quick access to the front of the loading area. The back doors can swing open 180 degrees to allow a forklift to load a pallet. Citroen has given the van a 1.4-litre engine, single overhead-cam four, which pushes out 57kW of power at 5500rpm and 111Nm of torque at 3400rpm.

This is plenty of get-up-and-go for city deliveries. Citroen says the Berlingo is one of the few vans designed purely as a van.

“This was purpose-built for a van and isn’t just a box added to a passenger vehicle,” a spokesman says. “The seating is much higher.”

The small cabin in the Berlingo required a little time getting used to and I had difficulty finding the small, button-like pedals.

The smooth soles of my boots slipped off the small pedal and it took a while finding the right pedal because they are positioned closer together than other van pedals.

However, when I swapped work boots for runners this wasn’t a problem. Although it is designed as a van, its car-like styling gives the vehicle loads of comfort and it handles well in city traffic.

The load area is large for its size, measuring 1.8m in height, with a total 3cum.

One of the nice hi-tech touches is how the radio adjusts its volume according to how fast you are going. The wipers are also speed sensitive and move faster when you put your foot down.

- The Daily Telegraph

It might look like a classic 1960s Ferrari but there’s not a lot of Italian in it — this P4 was made in a back street factory in Thailand.

 It has a Subaru engine, but could pass for one of the three genuine versions made in 1967.

The bright red copy of the one that took the chequered flag at Daytona more than 40 years ago is not a replica, but a bid to fool a buyer that it is the real thing. It was shown at the Fakes Cost More anti-counterfeit summit in Belgium this week to show just how extensive the rip-offs have become.

Yasmin Le Bon, the wife of British pop star Simon, was at the summit to launch a global campaign to combat the rising tide of counterfeiting and piracy of well-known, top-brand goods. And she issued the warning that counterfeiting is a really serious problem.

“We are no longer talking about just fake watches, but the counterfeiting of car parts, aircraft parts and even complete cars, such as this Ferrari, which could have very serious consequences — not just in terms of fraud but in terms of people’s safety,” she says.

About 10 per cent of all car spares in the European Union could be counterfeit, statistics show.

The theme was that fakes cost more than the real thing — whether they are brake pads for cars fabricated using sand, medicines with unauthorised ingredients, or toys with dangerous parts.

- The Daily Telegraph

There’s a passel of Passat pictures and videos from VW out today, and a Scirocco shot or six. So we’ve bundled them together for convenience sake. First up: two videos of the new Passat CC sedan (you remember, the Passat-based Mercedes CLS lookalike) which include a fair number of interior shots. On the go, it looks pretty good. If VW doesn’t muff the pricing, the CC should prove chi-chi. Secondly, Volkswagen has a bunch of “feel the heritage” pictures of the new Scirocco with a first generation 1970s Scirocco. I still think Vw blew it with the Scirocco (so to speak). It should have been a fun, light $18k car with VW’s 1.4 liter TSI engine (turbo’d and supercharged); a competitor to the Scion tC. At least the Portuguese VeeDub does look better in these images than in the original media set. Why do the rear seats completely destroy rearward visibility though? Looking at all these pictures and videos gives a good perspective on where VW is right now: lost. They’re doing a GM-grade job of selling extremely similar products next to one another. Why not just take the better looking of the two and sell ONLY that one?

Click here for Pixamo gallery 

The New York Times, fresh of the exposure, er . . ., disclosure of former New York Governor Spitzer’s maledictions, has disclosed the latest reason to believe that Chrysler is down to counting the remaining pennies in the jar:

The mandatory “vacation.”

You may figure that when you work for a company, you get to pick the time of your vacation.

But not at Bob Nardelli’s Chrysler.

Chrysler, according to the Times, has informed all of its employees in “non-critical” positions that they’re going to take a two-week lay-off in the middle of July. The lay-off extends to hourly and salaried employees and, further, the employees are required to take it as vacation time.

(more after the jump)