General Motors is pulling the plug on the . 2013 will mark the ugly duckling’s last year in production, though the model will go out with one last special edition. The 2013 Black Diamond Avalanche will arrive with body-color trim work, special badging, and most importantly, lower prices. LT trim now boasts a standard rear-view camera, while LS guise adds in rear park assist, power adjustable pedals, fog lights and remote start as standard gear. GM has cut the base vehicle’s MSRP by $2,500, which means buyers can take one home for $35,980, excluding the $995 destination fee.
GM says the lower price is a way of saying “thank you” to the truck’s fans, though we suspect it may have more to do with getting the awkward machine off dealer lots. Last month, GM moved just 2,083 Avalanche units, and while that’s nearly 26 percent more than March 2011, the number represents a fraction of the 36,491 models that rolled out the door. It’s also less than half the number of units sold. Even the wee drove away with more sales. Last year, GM sold a total of 20,088 Avalanche units, down 2.1 percent compared to 2010 despite an overall industry recovery.
Will anyone miss the Avalanche? There are those who still miss the diesel Chevette, so anything’s possible.
Production of the upcoming Maserati Kubang may be set for the Jefferson North plant where builds the on which the high-riding will be based, but that doesn’t mean that the Trident marque is giving up on production in its home country of Italy anytime soon.
According to statements made by union officials, Maserati is gearing up to produce a new four-door sedan at a facility on the outskirts of Turin – although whether that is the larger replacement for the or its upcoming baby brother remains unclear – but that’s not all. Maserati, according to reports, has also been tasked with building the 4C sportscar for sister-brand Alfa Romeo, much like it had with the higher-end 8C Competizione that came before.
Between the two new sedans, the SUV, the ongoing production of the line and the Alfa 4C, Maserati sure seems to have its hands full – with a little game of musical factories – for a brand currently represented by two model lines.
is getting religion when it comes to light-weighting its vehicles. The company has entered into a new partnership with to develop carbon fiber that can be manufactured at affordable prices for high-volume applications. That, of course, is the holy grail of weight reduction, which is why other manufacturers like General Motors are also to try and achieve the same ends.
Now before you get too excited about the carbon-fiber in the photos, understand that it was just a limited-production car shown at in 2009, and it carried a price tag of $135,000. That’s the problem with carbon fiber parts – they are expensive because they are much more difficult to manufacture in volume than steel.
But if Ford and other carmakers are going to achieve the sorts of fuel economy improvements required by new regulations, they’re going to have to either scale carbon fiber or dramatically shrink the size of most vehicles. Ford says it’s targeting a 750-pound weight reduction per vehicle by the end of the decade.
In as male-dominated a sport as motor racing, women drivers are still a rarity – but not without their exceptions. Danica Patrick has become a household name in IndyCar and NASCAR, Vanina Ickx (daughter of legendary F1 driver Jacky) has contested Le Mans seven times, Sabine Schmitz is rightly known as the Queen of the Ring, and has made a name for herself in Formula 3 and GT racing. But the latest announcement revolves around one Susie Wolff.
Driving for in the DTM touring car series for the past several years, Susie has now been hired as a development driver for the Williams F1 team. In her new capacity, she’ll be helping the team work out kinks in their simulator, the aerodynamics of the FW34 chassis and even undertake a full track test at an upcoming grand prix.
Now if you’re thinking “Wolff and Williams – why do those names sound familiar together,” you’ve got a keen memory. Toto Wolff is a board member and part owner of the team – and just also happens to be her husband. for the official announcement.
Ever wish your 1971 Plymouth had just a wee bit more power and the ability to negotiate curves? Got an extra $180,000 laying around? That’s what this will cost you on eBay.
Don’t think it’s just an expensive engine transplant, though. Beneath that 40-year-old, long hood, short deck ‘Cuda body is all snake. The ’s 450-hp engine, 18-inch front, 19-inch rear wheels, suspension and even the two-seat interior were modified, customized and rearrangeified to attractively fit into what was a four-seat ’70s muscle car.
The transmission is a six-speed manual Tremec mated to a heavy duty 3.07 rear. Exhaust is a custom setup with dual pipes, glasspacks and resonators exiting the rear instead of the side. Dual Aldan coilovers assist the stock Viper suspension.
The hood is electrically operated to open and tilt forward for easy viewing of that massive V10. Topping off the package are the tastefully-done, flat black snakes on the rear quarter panels. It’s an impressive build, to be sure, but is it worth its asking price?
No matter how hard you try, you can’t out run the Internet. Just ask Bobby Patton. The man thought he could pull a quick one by representing a 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle as an incredibly rare, incredibly valuable Z16.
For those of us who aren’t soaked in obscure General Motors model history, Z16 models featured brakes lifted from full-size sedans of the day, a unique rear axle, a stiffer boxed frame borrowed from a convertible and a uniquely trimmed L37 396 V8. Other details like special trim work, badges, VINs and various engine and axle stampings help identify the hopped up Malibu models from their kin.
Patton missed the memo on those details, apparently, opting instead to slap some 396 badges on the fender and call it a day. While that may have been enough to fool a local car show judge, it became an issue when he listed the coupe on an auction site for $100,000. Jeff Helms, the owner of a site dedicated to nothing but Z16 models, quickly pointed out that the Chevelle boasted a fake VIN copied from a photo on his website. Patton then attempted to defend himself, saying he bought the car that way.
Patton closed the auction after four days, but not before the Ohio State Patrol got wind of the suspicious ‘65. Officers contacted the previous owner, who proved the car had been sold with 327 emblems. It didn’t take long for Patton to face charges of Tampering with Records, Possessing Criminal Tools, Telecommunications Fraud and Attempted Simulation. He pleaded guilty to the first charge and received two years of probation. Head over to for the full tale, and remember, the Internet is watching.
It’s no secret that the is an Americanized version of the Opel Insignia, and even uses this fact to try and persuade the public that the car is a European sport sedan rather than just a way to try and make some profit from the black-ink-challenged Opel unit. The Opel Insignia is headed for a mid-cycle facelift very soon, and camoflaged test cars have been snagged by spy photographers.
While the models in the photographs are a European-spec hatchback and a wagon, there’s clearly a new grille in the works, and the headlights and tail lamps will be changed, plus some other minor nips/tucks. The Insignia will debut the changes first, and we’d expect the Regal to pick them up soon after.
Plenty Improved But Facing Stiffer Competition Than Ever
lost much of its credibility with enthusiasts after killing off what few performance cars it offered years ago, and yet the average car buyer still seems drawn to most anything wearing one of its badges. Even so, there has been one vehicle in the Toyota lineup that enthusiasts and cars-as-appliance shoppers have seemingly agreed upon for all the wrong reasons: the .
The subcompact Yaris has never taken hold here in the U.S. like its larger and stablemates – its awkward shape and unmemorable driving characteristics combined to keep this little Toyota from the top of the sales charts. The Yaris has always remained far behind the monthly sales talliess of the more engaging and practical .
Toyota has gone back to the drawing board for the 2012 model year, combating the dullness of the old Yaris with a combination of more expressive styling and the promise of improved driving dynamics. It has even tuned the Yaris SE with a stiffer suspension and bigger tires as an olive branch of sorts to budget-minded enthusiasts, so we couldn’t resist taking the reins of a five-door SE for a week-long test to see if Toyota’s new, greener branch is worth taking.
It may be a bit of stretch to call a McLaren F1 “priceless”, but finding an owner willing to part with his can be a challenge for even the most determined (and cash-rich) collector. But just such an opportunity is coming around the corner at Bonhams’ upcoming auction at the Quail Lodge in August. While every McLaren F1 is a rare bird indeed, this one is even more so.
Even more extreme than the road-going supercar on which it was based, the McLaren F1 GTR emerged as a dominant force in endurance racing in the late 1990s. The F1 GTR proved so successful, in fact, that despite being categorized in the GT classes of production-based racers, it eclipsed the purpose-built prototypes to claim overall victory at the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans.
All told, McLaren only built 28 examples of the F1 GTR – of which only ten were the aerodynamically-optimized Longtail versions – and this was the very last of them. Built in 1997, chassis 028R contested the FIA GT Championship at the Nurburgring, the A1-Ring, Donington, Spa, Mugello, Sebring, Laguna Seca and Suzuka.
Decked out in Gulf and Davidoff race livery, it’ll go to the top bidder at The Quail, but we dare not venture a guess as to how much he or she will have to pay for the privilege – but the last time this car went up for sale, the asking price was nearly $4 million. Feel free to read more about the car in the press release .
“Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht,” goes the old Yiddish proverb. Man plans, God laughs. And that certainly applies to motor racing, where engineers, mechanics, strategists… entire teams spend day and night over the course of months preparing to campaign their new race car, only for it all to go horrible wrong at the last minute. And that’s what the folks at Motorsport GmbH in Cologne, Germany, are apparently facing now.
After having their Formula One program shut down a couple of years ago by corporate headquarters, Toyota Motorsport has been hunting for a new project ever since. That new project turned out to be the TS030 Hybrid, an advanced Le Mans prototype which they’ve been gearing up to campaign in the new FIA World Endurance Championship and its headline event, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Only those plans were set back some – if not ground to a halt – last Wednesday when the only working example of the TS030 crashed while undergoing testing at the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France.
In the statement , Toyota doesn’t specify exactly what happened or who was driving at the time, but you can be sure he’s feeling pretty morose right now, because the chassis was damaged so extensively that the team won’t be able to repair it in time for the Six Hours of Spa where the car was supposed to make its race debut on May 5. Toyota does, however, expect to be up and running again in time for Le Mans in June, although whether that will leave the team with enough time to build the two cars it was expecting to field there or have to revert to a single entrant remains to be seen.
If wants to test out a new vehicle at speed – and you can usually bet that at any given time Porsche will be testing a new vehicle at speed – it’s got miles and miles of Autobahn at which to do it. Not enough? There’s the Nürburgring and all of its myriad turns and changes in surface. It’s also got at its disposal. But considering the quantity (and, for fans of the company’s products, quality) of Porsche’s vehicles, even that’s not enough. So what’s a sportscar manufacturer to do? Get a track in Italy, of course. And that’s just what Porsche has done.
Announced just today, Porsche has acquired the Nardo Technical Centre from Prototipo SpA, the Italian firm owned by Gian Mario Rossignolo (who has been hard at work reviving the De Tomaso marque). Now if the name Nardo rings a bell, that’s because it’s known for its 7.8-mile banked oval capable of handling high-speed runs in excess of 200 mph. But it also has a 3.8-mile handling circuit where a variety of automakers and tuners like to test out their prototypes.
And starting next month, they’ll need to rent space from Porsche (whose 918 Spyder prototype is pictured above undergoing testing at Nardo) to do so, assuming Porsche is willing to rent out the space. Something tells us that sister brands under the umbrella like and won’t have too much trouble getting some track time, though. Sroll down for the official announcement.
Many countries have produced supercars with price tags that dip into the six figures, but that rare breed of exotic that fetches upwards of a quarter million is all but completely exclusive to Europe: , and Pagani out of Italy, from France, McLaren and higher-end models of Britain, top-of-the-line offerings from Germany, Koenigsegg of Sweden and so on. That’s what makes the so exceptional. It extends beyond the Acura NSX and the that previously defined the top end of Japanese supercars and joins its European rivals at the very top of the market. But that, we’re reading, is only the beginning.
According to a shadowy anonymous source cornered by AutoGuide, Toyota is already working on a successor to the LFA, and their mole says the car will be even more exotic, more powerful and more expensive. Just what that entails when the LFA is already limited to 500 examples, packs a 552-horsepower 4.8-liter V10 and costs $375,000 has us conjuring up images of an animé take on the . AG suggests the car could nudge the million-dollar mark with production limited to just 100 examples.
Could it be a ? It’s probably too early to tell. In fact, we’re going to go ahead and take this entire rumor with a few shakers-worth of salt and advise you to consider doing the same.
When an automaker comes out with a two-door sportscar, you know what will come next: a roadster version. But while we haven’t heard anything from , its division or its partner in crime on the prospect of a GT 86// convertible, a California coachbuilder has stepped up to the plate with a concept version of its own.
The Scion FR-S Speedster concept you see here was worked up by Cartel Customs, a company with a history of chopping the roofs off of Scions. But while the lack of roof and chopped-down windscreen are what set it apart, Cartel hasn’t stopped there. The aftermarket outfit also installed a giant 61-inch rear wing and upgraded the suspension, brakes, rolling stock, exhaust and clutch, and gave the open cockpit a hot rod-style retrofit, too.
Although this appears to be a one-off chop-job, the fact that it’s set to kick off the festivities at the Toyota-sponsored Long Beach Grand Prix CART race this weekend has us raising an eyebrow like Cartel Customs has raised the roof on this beauty you can check out in greater detail in the high-res image gallery.
Hot on the bumpers of the , the oddball officially shows its ever-so-slightly redesigned face to the world. As we’ve discussed previously, it looks a whole lot like last year’s model, but distinguishing tweaks outside include the dashes of LEDs underneath the headlights and new side mirrors.
The momentous advances have come inside and under the hood. The along with a 544-hp, twin-turbo V8 G63, both of them sitting above a naturally aspirated 5.5-liter V8 in the carryover G550 (the G500 in Europe) and a diesel V6 in the Bluetec G350. Don’t get your hopes up for that G65, though – Mercedes-Benz has confirmed to Autoblog that the V12 monster will not be coming to the United States.
Inside, the dash and console get a thorough resculpture, with bezeled dials in the cluster and discrete control pods replacing the flat planes in the previous model. Additional comfort and luxury options can be checked if one wishes for radar-based cruise control, Blind Spot Assist and Parktronic. The ESP programming has even been reworked to play nicely with trailers.
The 2013 G-Class will be available at European dealerships in June with U.S. sales to follow in August. Prices for our market haven’t been released just yet, but we do know that the European version will start at €85,311 for the G350, which we also won’t get (along with the cabriolet models). The current G550 starts at $107,000, so you should plan on adding a few grand to that to get in the 2013-model-year’s big, square door.
to read all about the new G-wagen models and have a gander at the new celebrity hotness in the high-res gallery above.
According to at least one unnamed source, is as good as done. Reuters reports that has taken a good hard look at Ducati’s books and found “no major stumbling blocks.”
Another source says Ducati’s largest shareholder, , has agreed to discuss the cyclemaker’s sale to no one but Audi.
Volkswagen’s annual shareholder meeting is April 19 and an announcement concerning Audi’s purchase of Ducati could come before then. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has reported that Audi’s bargaining exclusivity rights will expire April 15, at which point Investindustrial will then be free to shop around for a Ducati buyer.
As an American living in Italy, there are often entire month-long stretches where I drive nothing but European cars that will sadly never come out to play on American soil. Such is the case for the abundantly adored Audi A6 Allroad Quattro seen here. I was initially of the assumption that since the had already been confirmed for the U.S. that the A6 Allroad would be coming as well, but I am dismayed to report otherwise.
Such a pity, too. The business case for giving North America the whole range of Audi models that Germany offers apparently just doesn’t pan out financially – and for some of us, it’s the old predictable story of unrequited love across the chilly Atlantic.
Team Ingolstadt brought me into their home in Neckarsulm just north of hilly Stuttgart for this drive through the area’s precisely cultivated fields of hops. The aroma of beer is everywhere here, which may go some way toward explaining just why the new A6 Allroad felt so good under and around me as we freight-trained along the Swabian two-lanes.
A few years ago, we brought you on the speculative values of Pagani supercars. Whether as investments or frivolous purchases, those with the means, it seemed, were paying well above list price to get their hands on one of the rarest supercars on (or off) the market. But that was just as the world was on the brink of financial collapse. Surely with the global economy still in the drink years later, nobody’s paying those kinds of figures for something as extravagant as an exotic supercar… right?
Wrong. In fact, it seems, the value for Pagani models has only gone up. According to Evo magazine editor-in-chief (and Zonda owner) Harry Metcalfe, buyers with the means are paying as much as double the already grandiose list price to get their hands on a Zonda or Huayra. Apparently the white Huayra that Pagani displayed at the never reached the Middle Eastern buyer who ordered it a year prior and was supposed to take delivery after the show, having flipped it to another buyer who was willing to pay him an astounding 1.8 million euros for the car. That’s $2.35 million in American greenbacks, or twice the 900,000 euro ($1.18m) list price.
Think that was an isolated incident? Hardly. A Zonda F Roadster (said to be the last ever made), a 2008 Zonda F coupe and a used Zonda C12S were all, according to Metcalfe’s sources, recently sold for double their MSRPs. So if you’ve been scrimping and saving every dime to get your hands on a Pagani, better keep saving.
According to a report from Car and Driver, documents submitted to the California Air Resources Board and to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration both point to a new arrival in the line: a turbocharged hatch called the 500T Sport. The NHTSA document was a key for decoding a car’s VIN, the “500T Sport” moniker appearing in the Series classification. The CARB paperwork approved California’s certification of a boosted 1.4-liter engine for an unnamed product, along with the the Dodge Dart and , which use the same engine.
There is currently a 59-horsepower spread between the 500 and the 500 Abarth, as well as a $6,500 difference in MSRP, which is a chasm offering plenty of space to mine a middle model.
C/D figures the 500T Sport will put out something around 130 hp and debut sometime over the next year, and a fan site, Fiat500USA, has found the car we’ll get.
Because new wheels ain’t cheap, and spray paint isn’t permanent enough, Foliatec offers vinyl .
For only about $65 (plus shipping from Germany) a can, any kustom kar owner can get all fast-and-furious on their wheels, mirrors, bumpers, vinyl tops, dashboards, ex-girlfriends, etc. – pretty much anything metallic or plastic.
Foliatec says the “rubber-like coat” is fairly durable and protects whatever it covers. And when you tire of looking like a Vin-Diesel-wannabe, the street-racer “green silky matt” easily peels off to instantly return $500 to the resale value of your pocket rocket. Or choose one of the other two spray vinyl colors available: anthracite metallic and black matt. Either should last you well into your mid-20s.
As unlikely a rivalry as it might seem, Peugeot has set its sights on . The French automaker may not be going after Audi at Le Mans anymore these days, but its RCZ sports coupe is still eagerly pursuing the with the same vigor it has shown since launching two years ago. To take the fight home to Audi’s home territory, Peugeot has launched a special-edition RCZ available exclusively in Germany.
Called the Brownstone edition, the special RCZ gets a metallic brown paint job with silver racing stripe, black trim and 19-inch burnished alloys. Inside, the Brownstone is also all brown, with Cohiba leather and Alcantara trim. The special edition also bundles the Sport, Comfort and Xenon packages together into one, and is powered by a 1.6-liter 156-horsepower turbo four. Only 150 examples will be made available for German buyers for €32,650 – equivalent to about $42k at today’s exchange rates.
