Car Moon

At a recent event called “Charged 2011 – EV Symposium Silicon Valley”, General Motors’ western region group manager for environment and energy communications, Dave Barthmuss, told Brad Berman from Plugincars that the company may surprise us at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show with a new model, hinting at a plug-in hybrid crossover. Read more »

The Buenos Aires Motorshow is proving to be an important event for GM as after the debut of the Chevrolet Cobalt Concept, the Detroit automaker released the first details on its second design study, the Colorado Rally Concept.

We first saw the Colorado as single-cab concept truck at the Bangkok International Auto Show earlier this year.

The Argentine study is a double-cab racing version of that concept fitted with a bevy of off-road accessories and components such as the front and rear bumper hooks and tow winches, an adjustable suspension that allows the driver to increase the ride height by 5 inches and special acrylic windows.

Here in the good ‘ol US of A, General Motors replaced the Chevrolet Cobalt compact car with the new Cruze sedan. In South America, however, it’s another story as the Detroit brand has given birth to a new Chevy Cobalt that is being revealed in pre-production form at this week’s Buenos Aires Motor Show (June 17 to 26) in Argentina.

Developed by General Motors Technical Center in South America, the four-door sedan Cobalt Concept is slated to enter production within the next year. GM’s press blurb doesn’t mention anything about the Cobalt’s underpinnings, but judging from the size of the car, it appears to be based on the Chevy Sonic (Aveo in Europe) saloon.

Here lies Bertone, the famed Italian automotive design house, bankrupt and on almost on the verge of death. The once legendary company was forced to sell its most prized possessions – six concept cars – to appease the bankruptcy commission and also to remain afloat. RM Auctions of London handle the sale at this past weekend’s Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2011.

So what delectable concepts were the vultures able to get their beaks into? Well, there’s the 1967 Lamborghini Marzal that once graced the Monaco Grand Prix and is often cited as the inspiration for the Espada of the following year.

Coachbuilt Corvettes are a dime a dozen these days, but only a select few builds manage to stand out from the crowd. The most recent Corvette-based proposal to pop up in the news is the new SC-1 from Endora-Cars, a company based in Karlshuld, a municipality in the district of Neuburg-Schrobenhausen in Bavaria, Germany.

Now, seeing that the SC-1 captured the attention of you, our readers (albeit in a sort of love-it-or-hate-it kind of way), we came in contact with Endora Cars and asked their spokesman, Björn Marek, a few questions about their Corvette-based build. Follow the jump to read our Q&A session with Marek.

The Corvette is not only a popular sports car among buyers but also among individual coachbuilders. Over the years, we’ve shown you tons of Corvette-based builds ranging from the bad-ass Rossi SixtySix and the Genadi LSR Roadster to the more recent Soleil Anadi. In other words, there’s a Corvette for every taste, however outlandish you can imagine.

The latest company to jump onto the Corvette coachbuilding bandwagon is Endora Cars, which is based in Germany. Their build is called the SC-1 and it’s styling is inspired by the American and European sports cars of the 1960s and early 1970s. Seen here in the first official renderings, the SC-1 blends certain elements of the Corvette such as the Coke-bottle profile and sweeping roof, with a sharp front nose and a unique rear end along with partially covered rear wheel arches.

[Updated] This week’s 2011 Top Marques car show in Monaco (April 14-17) welcomed the world premiere of the Soleil Anadi, a coachbuilt Corvette that is the brainchild of Ugur Sahin, a Turkish designer based in the Netherlands. Sahin sold the rights to the design of the Anadi to a company called Soleil Motors, which then joined forces with Ercole and Paolo Spada from Spada Concepts and Will Castro from Unique Autosport to complete the project.

The transformation of the Corvette to the Anadi takes place in Italy, with the company having opened its first showroom in Milan. Like the car it is based on, the Anadi comes equipped with a detachable roof but features new sheetmetal with a profile that brings to mind the Ferrari 599 and a bespoke rear end. The interior has also been fully customized but the show car seen in these photos, courtesy of our friends from Autoblog.nl, had tinted windows. The company said it will release pictures of the cabin at a later date.

Making its world premiere alongside the regular variants of the all-new Chevrolet Sonic sub-compact at the Detroit Show today is a Z-Spec-badged concept study of the five-door hatchback model.

Here at Carscoop, we love us some Corvette design studies. Heck, if we wanted to we could probably serve up a new one every day of the week.

Today’s CAD mock up comes from transportation design student James Robbins. Think of it as a C6.5, a stopgap measure between the current gen Corvette and a future C7 model. The design brief required Mr. Robbins to use the basic proportions of the C6, which limited what could be done with the design.

How do you replace a motoring icon? In the years leading up to 1968, U.S. automaker Chevrolet was dealing with this very problem with their venerable Corvette. The first and second generation Corvettes, designed by Harley Earl and Larry Shinoda respectively, were stylish and innovative creations that drew countless fans from the automotive community.

The answer lies, in part, with the Aerovette: a mostly forgotten concept that made just two auto show appearances before being relegated to the GM Heritage Museum.

In the late ‘60s, GM engineer Zora Arkus Duntov and his team were toying with the XP-882, a mid-engined design and engineering exercise built on Oldsmobile Tornado underpinnings. Though fascinating from a design and engineering standpoint, Chevy General Manager John DeLorean saw no future for the XP-882 and canceled the project in 1969. It was simply too expensive and too impractical for the impending 1970s America.

Chevrolet's 2009 50th Anniversary Corvette Stingray Concept that made its way into the Transformers movies is one of those love-it / hate-it cars. On the one hand, it was sleek and muscular and pointed to the next generation Corvette. On the other hand, it owed a bit too much design-wise with the 2003 Cadillac Cien and the nods to the original Corvette Stingray appeared a little forced.

Still, I'd find it hard to believe that anyone, even lovers of the '09 Concept, would consider putting down over US$40 grand on this so-called replica. It's even harder to believe that underneath all that fibreglass is a 2005 C6 Corvette; it could just have easily been based on a twenty year old Mazda Miata / MX-5 like so many other eBay customs.

So what does the US$42,500 "Buy It Now Price" get us? For starters, the underpinnings from the C6 Corvette including its 440 hp LS2 V8 and 6spd automatic transmission. You get a clear title and 29,111 miles on the odometer to boot.

General Motors' Chevrolet division unleashed three prototype models fitted with bits and pieces from its forthcoming Z-Spec line of accessories at the SEMA Show today. The cars chosen to showcase the new dress-up parts were the 2011 Cruze compact, the new Volt extended-range electric vehicle and the soon-to-be-launched Spark minicar.

The Detroit-based automaker has not yet released details on its Z-Spec concept models, but from what we can tell by looking at the photos, all three cars receive similar upgrades including unique alloy wheels wrapped in chunkier tires, exterior graphics, mild body modifications and numerous touches inside like the sports steering wheel and niftier materials and colors. Photo gallery after the jump.

After the two Camaro concepts (see here), it's Corvette's turn to show up in style at the SEMA Show. Behold the Corvette Jake Edition and Z06X Track Car concept models.

First up is the Jake Edition Concept featuring the skull mascot known as Jake, which started off as a discrete logo on Corvette racing cars back in 2005. GM considers that it embodies the determination and triumphs of the Corvette Racing team, so it built a special concept vehicle to honor it.

The upcoming Orlando minivan, which shares its platform with the Cruze, is another one of Chevrolet's upcoming attempts to rectify its sub-par image as a brand. How has the MPV developed since it debuted as an attractive concept two years ago to woo European car buyers? Well, it still seats seven and will get both gasoline and diesel four-cylinder engines as promised, but unfortunately, it's put on some flab over the concept's original well-toned lines. While GM has yet to release photos of the interior, expect a modern Chevrolet cabin very similar to the concept.

Plain and simple: no mid-engined Corvette, maybe a hybrid, and a statement that GM is not testing any V6s in the Corvette (yet). That's from GM's global vehicle engineering VP Karl-Friedrich Stracke, and it's fine by me. Spend wisely, slowly upgrade the program, don't rock the boat.

The Mid-Engine and Dual-clutch Transmission:

Stracke decided to finally bury the mid-engine rumors once and for all by "quashing [them]" under his corporate boot heel. Also, he decided to let PR clarify that there is no dual-clutch transmission on the way. For those of you wondering about that, Autocar heard from a Saab source that just such a transmission was developed while Saab was still part of GM.

First of all, to put your taste buds at ease, the Chevrolet Spark Woody Wagon isn't a production model nor will its woodgrained vinyl paneling and whitewall tires be available as an option from the maker. The Spark Woody is a one-off art car that recalls the surf movement in the USA of the late Fifties and early Sixties - hence the surfboard, if you didn't notice.

One of show-stoppers of the 2006 SEMA gathering in Las Vegas, the Corvette Z06-based Genaddi LSR Roadster, is now up for auction on eBay Motors. Built by the Genaddi Design Group, the one-off custom roadster ditches most of the Corvette Z06's composite and carbon fiber body panels for ones made of aluminum. It also features a rather awkward-looking new rear-end design with protruding tail lamps that bring to mind the Ferrari Enzo and a customized interior.

In sedan form, the Chevrolet Cobalt will soon be replaced in the U.S. by the not-so-new for most readers, Cruze, which was formally introduced in production guise at the 2008 Paris Show, and went on sale shortly after in numerous markets around the world aside from the States. But what about the Cobalt Coupe? Will we see GM presenting a successor to the two-door version of the compact model?

It's very likely as in a recent webchat on GM's Reinvention site, Mark Reuss, the man in charge of the automaker's core North American operations, strongly suggested that a coupe variant of the Cruze could be on the horizon.

And while most of us would assume that a coupe model would basically translate to a reshaped Cruze with two-doors less and perhaps a sportier roofline and other unique styling cues, independent designer David Cardoso has a different idea in mind.

The new roadster version of the Corvette Stingray was caught on video along with the Bumblebee Camaro and what appears to be a Ferrari 458 Italia during filming of the Transformers 3 movie. In the previous Transformers film, the tin-top Corvette Stingray coupe took the form of Sideswipe. We're still short on details, but we assume that the roadster model will reprise the same role. The next Transformers movie is scheduled for release in July 2011. Watch the video clip after the break.

After we showed you some of the designs a few days ago, the plainly-named Chevrolet Volt MPV5 crossover concept has rolled silently out of the gates.

Big things first: power comes from GM's lithium ion T-battery and a 1.4 liter engine generator, as one would expect. The battery will provide 51.5 km / 32 miles per charge, while the gasoline generator contributes an extra 482 km / 299.5 miles.

So, what is it other than a smaller Orlando with a Volt nose-job and power train? An expander, that's what. This model is GM's next step in creating a new sub-brand within GM, much like Audi's upcoming e-tron line.