Car News Articles

Our favorite climate change-denying British windbag is up to his old tricks. Recently, Jezza was out in Los Angeles where he was handed the keys to a Callaway Corvette C6. He and a friend took it to Orange County and the El Toro Airbase (where the NBC version of Top Gear is being shot) and then back up to the City of Angels. His verdict? “I absolutely bloody loved it.” With 616 horsepower on tap, we’re not surprised. But we’re not writing this here blog because of hyper Vette. No, we’re telling you about Clarkson’s review because of this: “When it comes to motoring, the English language makes more sense in Albania than it does in Alabama. Almost every word in the Americans’ automotive lexicon is different from ours, so when we talk about motorways, pavements, bonnets, boots, roofs, bumper bars, petrol, coupés, saloons, people carriers, cubic centimetres and corners, they have no idea what we’re on about.” Hey, he’s taking the Mickey! That said, not only do we know what cubic centimeters are, he spelled it wrong. There’s lots more piss and vinegar where that came from.

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Filming of the latest Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, has been put on hiatus after two stunt drivers were injured during filming. The crash apparently took place while performing a chase sequence where one driver in an Alfa Romeo crashed into a wall while chasing Bond’s Aston Martin DBS along the Gardesana, a curvy road that lines Lake Garda. The man behind the wheel of the Alfa was flown to the hospital in a helicopter and is in serious condition, while his passenger sustained only minor injuries.

This news comes within days of the previous crash that put one of the DBSs used for filming into the same lake, and despite the fact that filming was about to be wrapped today, the set remains closed until an investigation takes place. Thanks to all who tipped in.

[Sources: CNN, MI6.co.uk]

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At a briefing for the 2009 Ram, a Chrysler spokesman confirmed that a diesel will be offered in the half-ton next year, probably as a 2010 model, but declined to say which diesel it will be.

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So what are we to make of the aggressive display by the Chinese automakers at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show? Did we see a wake-up call for the west as a sleeping giant explodes into life? Or was it, to paraphrase Shakespeare, merely “sound and fury, signifying nothing”?

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Long before you see the new Alfa Romeo 8C, you’ll hear it. The Ferrari-based, 450-horse, 4.7-liter V-8 (a bored-and-stroked version of the 4.2 that serves in the Quattroporte) revs with a deep, resonant bellow-a guttural offshore powerboat to the Ferrari F430’s high-pitched hydroplane. As it amplifies, the sound will chomp into your ears and spin your head around. And then you’ll see…those curves.

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General Motors Corp.’s global sales fell 1 percent in this year’s first quarter, with sales in the critical North American region dragging down record gains around the world, the automaker announced Wednesday.

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Hooray for that old warhorse Bob Lutz, a car boss prepared to speak his mind. Just before the Geneva motor show, Lutz – General Motors’ head of product and the most entertaining figure in the car industry – said publicly what he’d been telling many journalists privately for years. Man-made global warming, he reckoned, was ‘a crock of shit’.

GM’s PR machine, carefully nurturing the image of a loving, ecologically friendly General – never mind the horrible Hummers, vast fuel consumptive pick-ups and a century-old reputation for energy profligacy and anti-environmental lobbying – swung into action to remind us this was Bob’s ‘personal view’ and did not represent corporate policy. When recent press conferences have been devoted to ‘green tomorrow’ (but when?) hybrid electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, you don’t want your big car boss to come out and question the whole raison d’être of this new enviro-focused thrust.

Car industry bosses - the public face

Lutz’s views are, of course, privately shared by many car bosses. They just don’t say it publicly. Better to toe the company’s ‘thin green line’ – never mind how insincerely – than say what you think. Car bosses become ever more like politicians, dictated by spin rather than sincerity. If the people want you to believe in man-made global warming, thou shall (at least in public). Disbelief is no longer a politically correct option. It’s almost sacrilegious.

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