1985 Chevorlet Blazer K5 on 2040-cars

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GM pickup truck plant in Flint to add 1,000 assembly workers

FLINT, Mich. — General Motors said Tuesday it will add 1,000 workers to build new heavy-duty pickup trucks at its plant in Flint, Michigan, and will give priority to GM workers who were laid off elsewhere. The announcement comes the day after GM said it was starting to hand pink slips to about 4,000 salaried workers in the latest round of a restructuring announced in late November that will ultimately shrink its white-collar workforce in North America by 15 percent out of 54,000. GM has come under fire from U.S. President Donald Trump and Midwestern lawmakers for its plans to stop production at five North American factories and cut up to 15,000 jobs in all. The automaker has said it is trying to find new jobs for 1,500 U.S. hourly workers at the affected plants. Flint's truck plant could be a haven for many of these employees. Sales of heavy-duty pickups in the United States have grown to more than 600,000 vehicles a year, up more than 20 percent since 2013, according to industry data. Prices for luxury models can easily top $70,000. GM on Tuesday will celebrate the launch of a new generation of heavy-duty GMC and Chevrolet pickups at the assembly plant in Flint, Michigan, that is now building all such trucks for the company. Elsewhere in the company on Monday, two people briefed on the cuts in the white-collar salaried workforce said GM is cutting hundreds of jobs at its information technology centers in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Michigan and more than 1,000 jobs at its Warren, Michigan Tech Center. GM is filing new required mass layoff notices with state agencies and disclosed the cuts to lawmakers. The largest U.S. automaker announced in November it would cut a total of about 15,000 jobs and end production at five North American plants. The cuts include eliminating about 8,000 salaried workers, or about 15 percent. GM cut about 1,500 contract workers in December and said 2,300 salaried workers accepted buyouts, officials said. "These actions are necessary to secure the future of the company, including preserving thousands of jobs in the U.S. and globally. We are taking action now while the overall economy and job market are strong, increasing the ability of impacted employees to continue to advance in their careers, should they choose to do so," GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said, adding the bulk of the cuts should be completed in the next two weeks. Morrissey said GM would provide salaried workers with severance packages and job placement services.

2016 Technology of the Year Finalist: 2016 Chevy Volt

The 2016 Chevy Volt is in all ways an improvement over the Volts that came before. It's got a new powertrain, a new look, and new (and better) fuel economy figures. What's not to like? For the second generation, GM used the last few years of automotive battery improvements and customer data to deliver a car that took what people liked about the first Volt and offered up more of that. This means a longer all-electric range (from 38 miles to 53) and better gas-burning fuel economy (37 miles per gallon up to 42 mpg – oh, and you're not required to use premium any more, either). All of this for less money than the outgoing 2015 Volts. Chevy's new plug-in hybrid will start at $33,995, which is not only lower than the 2015's MSRP of $34,170 but it's also just a few hundred dollars higher than the average new car price in the US. In other words, the new Volt (and many other plug-in vehicles) is not out of the price range for most car shoppers. The interior has been updated as well, losing some of the oh-so-futuristic touch-sensitive center stack in favor of more realistic tactile buttons. This along makes the new Volt better than the first generation, but when it's wrapped up in the new exterior design, it just feels more appropriate for a car that's not trying to be from the future. Instead, the new 2016 Chevy Volt wants to be the best plug-in car for right now.

Corvette Stingray Convertible images mysteriously appear on web, so we add our own

It was inevitable that we'd see the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray topless at some point, but that didn't make us any less interested when a pair of supposedly leaked official images showed up on theautoinsiderblog.com last week. We posted them on our Facebook page, but held off reporting on them here until we could get a little more information.
Those images, which feature a dark red car on a sterile black studio background, supposedly first appeared on the website of diecast model maker Maisto. A Chevrolet spokesman has been reported saying that they are "not official images released by Chevrolet PR," which isn't a denial they're the real deal, but neither is it a confirmation.
Close examination of the photos suggest they could be official shots of the Corvette Stingray Convertible, and while some have doubted their authenticity due to a lack of vents (which were seen on the C7s that debuted in Detroit last week), it could be that the images are of a base model car without the Z51 package that doesn't require the extra venting and cooling.