1972 Gmc With 1967 Chevrolet Front Clip on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Weekly Recap: Volvo buys Polestar, makes performance a priority

Volvo is taking its performance business in-house, and the Swedish carmaker announced Tuesday that it bought tuning company Polestar, which has long been known for producing sporty Volvos. The move allows Volvo to ramp up its performance business, and it plans to increase Polestar-branded vehicle sales to 1,000 to 1,500 annually, up from the 750 total projected for this year. The companies have been working together on motorsports projects since 1996. Financial terms of the sale were not released, and Polestar workers will move over to Volvo. Former Polestar owner Christian Dahl will keep control of the Polestar racing team and operate it under a new name. In addition to sales volume, Volvo has ambitious plans for other parts of Polestar, including its aftermarket business. Volvo also said it will use its twin-engine hybrid technology for Polestar models in the future, though specifics and timing were not revealed. Meanwhile, Volvo announced it will offer a run of 265 total Polestars in the United States for the 2016 model year, with S60 and V60s available. "Driving a Volvo Polestar is a special experience. We have decided to bring this experience to more Volvo drivers, placing the full resources of Volvo behind the development of Polestar as the model name for our high performance cars," Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in a statement. OTHER NEWS & NOTES 2016 Chevy Silverado, GMC Sierra, get nose jobs Automakers tend to refer to light updates as 'facelifts,' and that's exactly what Chevy gave the 2016 Silverado and GMC Sierra. Chevy slightly changed the front end of the truck. Using the one photo released of the new Z71 model as a guide, we can see that the headlights went from a stacked vertical design to single bulbs, and they are set on top of LED running lights. The grille has more body-colored elements instead of shiny metal, and the hood has a new line running down the middle (look really closely). The design theme will be similar across the portfolio, though materials and details will vary, a spokesman said. Some models, like the High Country and LTZ will have more chrome, and the LEDs are only for the upper trims. Chevy also said it will use the eight-speed automatic transmission on more versions of the Silverado, and it updated the MyLink feature to support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

The Tesla Model S was the best-selling EV of 2015

According to numbers crunched over at Hybrid Cars, the Tesla Model S was the best selling pure electric vehicle last year with 50,366 deliveries. These numbers might not tell the whole story, since Tesla reports deliveries made in 2015 that might have been sold in a different calendar year, while other makers are tallying sales. However, it's inarguable that the Model S ended up in more worldwide driveways than the second-place Nissan Leaf, which did about 43,000 sales. In the US alone, Leaf sales were down 42.8 percent year-on-year, from 30,200 in 2014 to 17,269 last year, and that decline also increased throughout the year. That marks a great finish to a great start to 2015, when Tesla took the lead in EV sales in the US for the first quarter. On top of that, as of last year the Model S becomes the second-best selling EV ever, with 107,148 deliveries since the middle of 2012. It trails the Nissan Leaf, with well over 200,000 worldwide sales. The Chevrolet Volt/Opel Ampera combo takes a close third, with about 106,000 sales. The Nissan and Chevy rivals both launched at the end of 2010, a 16-month head start on the Tesla. Down the charts, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV which continues to be forbidden fruit for our market notched 39,000 sales. The BYD Qin PHEV sold 31,898 examples in China, and BYD would take the overall victory from Tesla with 58,728 deliveries if you counted all of its EV and PHEV production, such as its electric buses. The BMW i3 nabbed fourth place with 24,057 global sales. In 2011 the Munich automaker said it wanted to sell 30,000 i3s annually by 2014, but by the time the car launched the company considered 15,000 annual sales 'great for now,' so the 2015 number seems a fine place to wind up. Related Video: News Source: Hybrid Cars Green BMW Chevrolet Mitsubishi Nissan Tesla

Very first Chevy Camaro found and restored

Restoring an important classic car can lead people down rabbit hole upon rabbit hole of discovered history in a process that's essentially automotive genealogy. Take the recent rejuvenation of the very first Chevrolet Camaro as an example. The owners started with a strong hunch that the vehicle might be something special and spent years researching to figure it all out before the mechanical work even began. Fisher Body kicked off work on the first Camaro on May 17, 1966, and it was delivered to General Motors just a few days later for final assembly. While the model has earned a place as an American performance icon since then, the original was built more to develop the production process and boasted just a 230-cubic-inch (3.8-liter) inline six and 3-speed transmission. After spending its first few months appearing in promotions, a Chevy dealer in Oklahoma got the gold car in December of '66. It was touted on the sales floor there for years, and the first private owner didn't come until 1969. This short documentary goes into astonishingly comprehensive detail about every bit of the first Camaro's history. If you just want to hear the story of the latest owners and their work to get the vehicle restored since 2010, skip about 11 minutes into the video. Or, of course, you could just enjoy the whole thing. News Source: PilotCarRegistry via YouTube, Camaro NewsTip: Chris P. Chevrolet Automotive History Auto Repair Maintenance Coupe Classics Videos history