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Chip Foose is bringing life to a Cadillac sketch from 1935

General Motors, automotive home of Harley Earl, was a pioneer in the early days of car design. But for as many wild concept cars and even production cars as the company's studio created, there were still many that never got off the paper. Chip Foose is working to change the fate of one of those designs. According to Foose Design, Chip Foose's latest project is based on a sketch from 1935. Car dealer Wes Rydell and his wife Vivian commissioned a custom Cadillac coupe that was sketched out by GM designer Art Ross. It would take an existing Cadillac sedan, shorten it, lower it and give it a removable hardtop. The drawing is as far as the project got. Now Chip Foose is working on realizing the design in real life using a 1939 Cadillac Series 60 Sedan. He plans to follow the initial design brief, but with his own unique touches. He has also named the project "Madam X" in honor of what Harley Earl would call client projects. It is scheduled to be finished and ready for unveiling at the end of the summer. Foose is a well-known designer who has won some of America's most prestigious custom car awards such as the Ridler Award and designed vehicles for the TV show Overhaulin'. The final product should be quite a striking machine. You can see how it's coming along, as well as Foose's sketch of what the car will finally look like, in the gallery above. Related Video: Featured Gallery 1939 Cadillac Series 60 by Chip Foose View 13 Photos Image Credit: Foose Design, Inc. Auto News Celebrities Design/Style Cadillac Classics chip foose overhaulin

GM executive chief EV engineer says reducing cost of plug-in vehicles is 'huge priority'

As we know, another major automaker investing heavily in electrified vehicles is General Motors, and it's doing things much differently than rivals BMW, Ford or Nissan. The Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV is a modest seller at its $35,000 sticker price but a huge hit with owners. The Chevy Spark BEV, still in limited availability, puts smiley faces on its owners and drivers. The just-introduced Cadillac ELR, a sharp-looking, fun-driving $76,000 luxocoupe take on the Volt's EREV mechanicals, has admittedly low sales expectations. With this interesting trio in showrooms and much more in the works, the third vehicle electrification leader I collared for an interview at Detroit's North American International Auto Show (see #1 and #2) was Pam Fletcher, GM's executive chief engineer, Electrified Vehicles. ABG: Why do your EREVs need four-cylinder power to extend their range when BMW's i3 makes do with an optional 650 cc two-banger? "We designed [the Volt and the ELR] to go anywhere, any time" - Pam Fletcher PF: I get that question all the time: why not something smaller? You don't really need that much. You use the electric to its ability, then you just need to limp. But we designed those cars to go anywhere, any time, and we don't want their performance to be compromised. If you're driving through the mountains, we don't want you to be crawling up grades, or to be limited on any terrain. So it's optimized to be able to travel literally the biggest grades and mountain roads around the globe at posted speeds. Because what if you can't? Another good reason: when the engine is on, you have to run it wide open throttle, max speed, most of the time. And while we can do a lot with acoustics, and the ELR has active noise cancelation, a small-displacement, low cylinder-count engine at high speed, high load all the time isn't something you want to live with. That's how we came up with the balance we did among the key factors of performance, NVH [noise, vibration and harshness] and range. ABG: Where you go from here? Is the range-extender engine due for an update? PF: We know and love the current Volt, and there is still a lot of acclaim about it, so we think it's a good recipe. But we are heavily in the midst of engineering the next-generation car, which I think everyone will love and be excited about.

2014 Cadillac CTS images leak out yet again

It seems the 2014 Cadillac CTS just doesn't want to stay under wraps. For the second time in as many days, Caddy's next sedan is showing a bit more sheetmetal than the automaker would like before it is officially debuted tomorrow at the New York Auto Show.
This time, the leak comes from USA Today, and we've gone ahead and added them to our gallery of 2014 CTS images. As you may know, Cadillac will bestow the next CTS with an all-new twin-turbo V6 engine that will offer up an impressive 420 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque.
USA Today also mentions a new Vsport model but doesn't give any more details other than the fact that it will boast the twin-turbo engine and an eight-speed automatic transmission. Of course, all you have to do is come back to these pages for the official unveiling tomorrow afternoon for all the sordid details. In the meantime, check out the images above.