GM VP Alan Batey explains Chevygate – Click above to watch video
Chevygate 2010 continues. By now, you’ve probably heard all about the love/hate relationship with the Chevy nickname for its bread and butter brand. At first, the company seemed to be on America’s pet name for the Bow Tie brand before turning around and saying that the company downright when the American people use the Chevy name, but it would be using Chevrolet in all of its branding and messaging for “branding consistency.” The whole dust-up centered around The General’s attempt to build a more easily identifiable brand in emerging markets. Or something.
Now GM’s social marketing guru Joe LaMuraglia has turned out a video featuring Sales VP Alan Batey to attempt to quiet the teaming masses. You can to see the full flick for yourself, just beware, shaky hand-cam ensues.
Batey says that Chevrolet is one of the fastest growing brands in the world, and that for every one Chevy model sold here in the U.S., the company moves two units overseas. In order to stifle any confusion as to whether or not Chevrolet and Chevy are the same brand, the company is simply going to use Chevrolet moving forward. Simple as that.
How BP handles a coffee spill – Click above to watch the video
Recent estimates put the spill in the Gulf of Mexico as growing by anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 barrels of per day – making the slick four times as large as the Valdez incident. After multiple failed attempts to stem the flow, the public is beginning to get the idea that has no idea how to contain this disaster. With widespread ecological destruction already in full swing and growing by the second, it’s hard not to wonder just how bad this is going to get before a workable solution comes to light. In the mean time, the residents of the gulf coast continue to watch as one slip up from a global corporation threatens to end their current livelihoods.
As dark as the situation is, we could all use a little laughter, and the have taken it upon itself to give the petroleum giant the ribbing it deserves with a new video. The quick flick asks the question: How would BP handle a conference room coffee spill? Hilarity ensues. to see for yourself.
Make your own parking spot – Click above to watch video
Having just survived a trip to New York, we know all about the challenges of trying to find a space in the world’s busiest cities. Nabbing a spot for your car is one part luck of the draw and two parts being ruthless enough to swoop in and nab an open space no matter how many lanes of traffic you have to cross in order to do it. But that’s if you want to play by (most) of the rules. What if you had the power to manifest a legal-looking parking spot out of thin air?
We’re guessing life would be considerably less stressful, at least until the authorities caught on to your game and put a stop to creative parking all together. We can’t quite tell whether the video after the jump is the real deal or a cleverly-staged spot by one group or another, but it doesn’t really matter. to see how one smart young Beijing driver does when she needs to find a spot for her .
2010 Saab 9-5 hits the handling track – Click above to watch the video
For a while there, it seemed like the might have never seen the light of day. Thankfully, that worry has been wiped away, and we’ve now had our chance to in Gothenburg, Sweden.
In this video, available , Saab’s performance integration manager of vehicle dynamics, Stefan Rundquist, pilots the new sedan around a Swedish handling track, pointing out the different features that make the 9-5 an enjoyable steer (complete with footage!). Maybe it’s not the most interesting footage ever released – “We have a high level of front-end grip… Um, we also have a very high level of rear-end grip…” – but it’s always nice to see a sporty sedan being put through its paces.
We know we’re pretty impressed with now the 2010 9-5 turned out, and we’re eager to get another stint behind the wheel, this time in America.
Gallery:
Photos by Chris Paukert / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.
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Unless you’ve spent any time overseas during a celebration, you really can’t comprehend how crazy fans go for their respective teams. With the event only coming around once every four years, everyone has plenty of time to let their craziness build up, and as a result, localities explode with flags of every origin and diehards take to the streets to profess their team pride. Naturally, that includes hanging out of every available car window and sunroof with air horns in hand.
Now, we don’t speak German, so we have little to no idea who initiated this video , but it’s worth checking out. A safety organization wanted to show just what happens when a vehicle gets into a low-speed accident with its occupants dangling outside of the body structure – a World Cup . As you might imagine, it doesn’t go well for a bunch of crash-test dummy fans when their Avant meets an immovable object.
So remember kids, keep your hands, heads and torso inside of the vehicle at all times, or the ze Germans will ruin a perfectly good long roof as punishment.
Susie Stoddard and the Mercedes-Benz E63 Estate – Click above to view the video
The Estate gives its lucky owners both the neck-snapping thrill of a 518-horsepower, 465-pound-feet-of-torque V8 and the utility of a sizable wagon. Sounds just about perfect. Race car driver Susie Stoddart has the skill to kick your ass on the track and the looks to leave you speechless. Combine the heavenly wagon with the sexy race car driver, and you get the made-for TV video
You still haven’t ? Okay, here’s the crux of the flick. Stoddart walks up to the E63 Estate in a sensible outfit, but decides that the badass Benz wagon calls for something a bit more…. edgy. Soddart then puts the big, brawny wagon through its paces on a wide-open track while continuing to look very attractive the entire time. If you still haven’t hit the jump to watch the video, we don’t know what else we can tell you.
A day in the life of an Internet car forum – Click above to watch video
Forums are great places for the like-minded to gather and to get information from those who know a subject best. They can also, as comically demonstrated in this vid, be great places for non-enthusiast newbies to get incomprehensible advice and a tonguekeyboard lashing to boot.
As created using Xtranormal text-to-movie, the guy on the left has a friend who’s a single mother of two and she needs needs reliable transportation. He’s come to the forum looking for recommendations. The first suggestion he gets from the guy on the right: a Lotus Elise. It only gets better from there. to watch an animated exchange that we’re guessing you’ve witnessed – or participated in – at least once.
Polestar Volvo C30 – Click above to watch the video
Earlier this year, and Polestar debuted the hot hatch, showing what would happen if a Swedish touring car were tuned down for road car use. It’s a menacing little devil, what with its turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-five boosted to 405 horsepower, Haldex all-wheel drive, massive brakes and raft of other performance add-ons.
The team at Autocar recently had the chance to flog the Polestar around Volvo’s proving grounds, saying that the hatch feels like a well-sorted version of or even a “junior .” High praise, indeed, and we don’t doubt them. Obviously, we won’t be seeing a production version of the vicious C30 anytime soon, but this exercise mostly shows what sort of performance machines could come from a partnership between Volvo and Polestar. This would certainly give ’s M and ’s S/RS divisions a run for their money, and we’ll never complain about having too many hot hatches on the market.
to watch Autocar’s test of the Polestar C30, and head back to our to read all the details about the road-ready touring car.
Simona de Silvestro’s fiery rescue at the Firestone 550 – Click above to watch video
If you happened to catch the at the this weekend, chances are you saw one of the scariest motorsports moments in recent history. On lap 99, 21-year-old rookie wound up hitting the wall, her car erupting into a fireball as it slid along the crash barrier before coming to a stop on the apron. While rescue crews were on the scene in moments, it took them more than 25 seconds to begin extracting de Silvestro from the flaming wreckage, and even longer to get any sort of suppression on the inferno due to some apparent equipment issues.
One safety worker managed to rescue the driver from her car, but it took some serious yanking. De Silvestro managed to walk away from the incident with only minor burns to the palm of her right hand, which is pretty amazing considering how long she was sitting in the fire.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, de Silvestro’s car simply got a little too loose as it came out of the corner and she hit the wall as a result. to see some frightening video of the crash.
Motor Trend is keenly aware of the readership shift to online sources for up-to-the-minute automotive news, that’s why it has a blog, a YouTube channel and a presence in social media. Despite the changing paradigm, there are still things that print outlets do more brilliantly than anyone else. There’s no way to beat the compact form factor and high-quality display of a blissfully battery-free magazine. Carefully-edited copy, glossy photography from some of the best lenses in the business and eye-catching layout, it all gels when the right cars power onto the pages.
As the web and print find their natural symbiosis, one trend may be toward more specialization and niche focus for magazines. Putting premium, rearview-gazing content into a new vehicle, Motor Trend is relaunching Motor Trend Classic. This has been tried before, but this time around, MT is giving more pages (some penned by our own Jonny Lieberman!) fewer ads, and an aversion to posting the content on the web. So far, the sneak peek has us wanting more, though it’s a near certainty that it’s just going to take one punk with a scanner to burst MT’s bubble about this content never showing up on the web.
2011 Aston Martin V12 Vantage – Click above to watch video
If you’ve felt an unexplained disturbance in the automotive force recently, it can probably be attributed to the scheduled arrival of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage on American shores. We’ve been lusting after this thing since it first cropped up as concept way back in 2007, and now the ridiculously wealth or the fantastically in debt can finally get their paws on the car here in the U.S. The recipe is simple – take the brawny, 510 horsepower 6.0-liter V12 from the , cram it into the engine bay of the lithe Vantage, add louvers and call it a day. Sorta.
has taken it upon itself to prime the collective American pump for the V12 Vantage debut by releasing a quick teaser video. It’s dipped in sweet, slow-motion glory shots of the car doing what it does best – sending tires to their smoky grave and conning otherworldly speed out of seemingly plebian strips of asphalt. There are even a few shots of the race-derived version loftily beating its way around the Nurburgring. We’re in love. to see it for yourself.
Marc Gene goes joyriding the Ferrari California – Click above to watch video
During a Ferrari event at the Yas Island Formula 1 circuit, test driver Marc Gene took some willing participants out for laps of the track, going high on the oversteer and tire smoke. The ride of choice was a , and it’s good to see the hardtop coupe is still a leering stallion… but even so, it’s still a California. If that’s what you’re into, there’s 2:03 of goodness in the video . Enjoy!
Witness the Hoenshell Shutter – Click above to watch the video
Packing up from a good riding session or is never fun, and if you’re anything like us, the task may suffer from a bad case of the monotonous blues. If you’re looking for a way to put a new spin on the old routine, motorcycle stunt rider Eric Hoenshell has you covered.
During a film session for new motorcycle series Stealth Rider, the cameras caught Hoenshell as he shut the tailgate in host of Super Bikes and all around stunt superstar face. Britton and fellow stuntman Tony Carbajal were pumped to witness the invention of the new trick bearing Eric’s namesake, the Hoenshell Shutter. This is where we should give the don’t try this at home speech, but who are we to put the brakes on creativity? for the full video, just don’t break your neck spicing up your routine. Thanks for the tip, Allan!
Farrah Fawcett, a Mercury Cougar and a real, live Cougar – Click above to watch the videos
An automobile manufacturer doesn’t survive for 70 years without producing its fair share of television commercials. In fact, division has been around since well before the television was a common item to see in American living rooms. As such, there is a plethora of past and present advertisements available on YouTube from which we decided to assemble a video homage to the soon-to-be-departed interplanetary marque.
Some of our personal favorites include those that recite the long-lost “Ride with the cat!” tagline that we presume was tied to the brand’s popular Cougar model before being adopted across the line. Then there’s the classic Farrah Fawcett spot or two (she has multiple perfect hairstyles and the car has “glove-soft vinyl”) and a rather randy spoof from the braintrust at Saturday Night Live. Yes, the car is actually a but they call it the Mercury Mistress, so…
Speaking of which, did we mention that we think we now know how the term Cougar came to depict an attractive older woman looking for guys? They are all over Mercury Cougar commercials from the 1970s and ’80s.
In conclusion, we had to put on our list (and so we did, twice), and we couldn’t possibly overlook the 1971 Marquis that apparently rode better than both a contemporary $16,000 limo and an exotic European luxury sedan. Blind taste ride test for the win! See a slew of dated Mercury commercials .
The number of young on the road these days is steadily declining, according to research compiled by Automotive News, and while that may mean you’re less likely to get into a fender bender with a high school sophomore, it may also spell bad news for the automotive industry. The article says that in 1978, around half of all 16 year-olds and three-quarters of all 17 year-olds had their . Fast forward to 2008, and those numbers have dropped off to 31 percent and 49 percent, respectively.
That’s a significant drop, and its brought about in part by the fact that some states have moved the licensing age from 16 to 18, but Automotive News sites a few sources that claim the internet is to blame. With everything available at your fingertips, why bother with the expense and hassle of owning a car? Likewise, driving a car makes using mobile internet devices like smart phones and laptops less than convenient compared to .
The article goes on to say that young folk also point to environmental concerns as one of the largest reasons for foregoing a driver’s license. Whatever the cause, manufacturers are likely looking at this information with a worried eye, just as Japan’s automakers have been doing for the last 10 years.
Coke Zero and Mentos-powered car – Click above to watch the video
You didn’t seriously think that the whole Diet Coke and Mentos internet meme would die out with nary a whimper, did you? Of course not. The little bits of candy and sudsy concoction – in this case Coke Zero in lieu of run-of-the-mill Diet Coke – are back in action as a replacement for those pesky fossil fuels.
Sadly, the economics of scale required to make Coke Zero and Mentos an actual substitute for gasoline and diesel make the newfound fuel unlikely to gain widespread acceptance. For what it’s worth, it apparently takes 108 two-liter bottles of Coke Zero along with 648 Mentos to travel exactly 221 feet.
While you won’t likely be filling up your own ride with the new wonder fuel, you can still enjoy the highly carbonated video . As for whether you should bother trying this experiment at home… well, we’ll leave that one up to you. But probably not.
The dangers of motorsport – Click above to watch video
Whether they’ve earned it or not, drivers often tend to have a reputation for being, well, less-than-charitable human beings. Maybe it’s their steadfast belief in the superiority of their vehicle or the fact that a single can cost more than most Americans will spend on their first home. Either way, drivers with a Porsche crest on their hood tend to have a bad reputation, even among other high-dollar sports car owners. The video won’t do anything to improve that impression.
From what we can gather from our Google Translator, the kindly gent behind the wheel is none other than Ronald van de Laar. While sitting on the grid during the ADAC GT Masters, the grid girl standing in front of his passes out, either from the sun or locking her knees, and goes down hard.
According to our tipster (who evidently speaks Dutch better than we do), van de Laar can be heard frantically telling anyone within earshot to check his car. As far as we can tell, both the Porsche and the weak-kneed lass were just fine. Thanks for the tip, Thomas!
Much to our chagrin, we’ve seen no shortage of polished, chromed or gold plated over the last few years. Until now none of those were either attractive or functional. But now, we have the Ferdinand GT3 RS.
While the recent demonstrated that an electromechanical flywheel hybrid system could boost both efficiency and performance, the Ferdinand relies on ultra-light construction to optimize efficiency. Everything non-essential was removed and what was left was stripped to the bare essentials. The revolutionary foil over (PCV) tube-frame construction yields a total mass of just 220 pounds, making the Lotus Elise look like a total porker. The slim tires feature exceptionally low rolling resistance and the simplified controls let the driver stay focused on the task at hand. The Ferdinand is not quite as swift as the hybrid, but sometimes thats the price you have to pay for zero emissions. Check out its maiden voyage at the Salzburgring in Austria . A tip of the hat to Raphael!
products are no strangers to hydraulics, but models that get the height-altering technology usually go by names like Impala or Caprice, not – and they are usually decades old, not 2010 models.
We say ‘usually’ because apparently an Arizona lad has gone and thrown some extra pistons underneath his gunmetal gray Camaro SS, and the result is a pony car that goes from limbo to lofty in a couple of secs. It nothing else, we can’t help but think it’d make a great doppelganger Decepticon for Transformers 3. to check out the vid, but sadly, there’s no three-wheel motion on display
advertising gurus have a big job ahead of them when it comes to supplementing their longstanding (and intentionally arrogant) “Ultimate Driving Machine” slogan with the company’s new “Joy” campaign. Bimmer fanboys had lived and died by the company’s proclamation of superiority for years, so it’s going to take some coaxing to get BMW loyalists to swallow the new ads. Fortunately, BMW has never been one to skimp on advertising dollars, and the company has pulled a stunt in to make sure the ball gets rolling in the right direction.
BMW has used two buildings for a massive, unique 3D projection display right in the middle of downtown Suntec City. Talk about cool. Two massive hands appear to disassemble the structures and rearrange them for their own diabolical, Joy-soaked plans. You can to see the whole shindig for yourself. Thanks for the tip, John!
