Project Truck Partially Restored With 2008 5.3 Liter Motor, Transmission Mounted on 2040-cars

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2016 Chevrolet Camaro powers up, slims down

Don't be fooled by its familiar appearance, the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro is vastly different than its iconic predecessors. It has a new chassis, a fresh engine lineup, and is loaded with clever technologies that promise to invigorate and improve the sixth generation of Chevy's legendary sports car. It was revealed Saturday before a crowd of enthusiastic Camaro revelers on Belle Isle in Detroit. Redesigning the sports coupe was a heady task, especially as its archrivals, the Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger, drive better and are more powerful than ever. But the new Camaro is aiming to be the best combination of handling and raw performance, with quick acceleration and competitive fuel economy. "Redesigning the Camaro is thrilling and challenging all at once, but the secret is to offer something more," Mark Reuss, General Motors executive vice president of product development, said in a statement. It all began with a weight-loss plan. The new Camaro shed more than 200 pounds compared with the outgoing car, with 133 pounds coming from a lighter body-in-white. Then engineers culled weight nearly everywhere, using aluminum for the instrumental panel frame and some suspension components to trim as much fat as possible. The slimmer body rests on new bones. The Camaro's rear-wheel-drive platform is lighter and stiffer in a bid to improve handling. It's a modified version of the underpinnings used by the Cadillac ATS, though about 70 percent of the architecture is unique to the Camaro. Chevy said structural rigidity is improved by 28 percent. As you'll see, healthy doses of Cadillac and Corvette technologies have been used to bolster the Camaro's drive character and performance. The new car is also expected to handle better thanks to a slightly smaller footprint. It is about two inches shorter in length, with most of that due to the more compact wheelbase. It's also an inch shorter in height and an inch slimmer in width. So yes, the Camaro will be leaner, but it will still be plenty mean. The Camaro SS tops the range (for now) with the Corvette's 6.2-liter V8 pushing put 455 horsepower and 455 pound-feet of torque. Known as the LT1, is has a cast aluminum block and cast aluminum cylinder heads, and it's fortified with direct injection, variable valve timing, and cylinder deactivation. About 20 percent of the engine's parts are said to be unique to the Camaro, including the exhaust manifolds.

GM cutting production at two plants

General Motors is continuing to adjust to excess supply of some of its brands' models. To get production more in line with the vehicles' actual demand, the automotive giant is idling two of its factories in North America in the coming months. The Orion Assembly plant is going to be down from March 9-13, according to an anonymous plant worker and another insider speaking to Automotive News. The factory builds the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano, but there are plenty of both models sitting on dealer lots, including 216 days worth of Sonics, according to AN. The factory already had two idle periods announced to reduce the excess. In addition, downtime is scheduled at GM's "Flex" line at the Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, plant from April 13-17. This affects supply of the Chevrolet Camaro, Impala, Buick Regal and Cadillac XTS. Among them, the automotive giant has the largest supply of Regals ready for dealers with 213 days worth of them, according to AN. The future for the whole Oshawa factory is cloudy in general, though. There are rumors that it could close entirely in the future because the Camaro is leaving and the Regal and XTS might not last much longer than 2017. The Canadian government and the labor union there intend to put up a fight, though. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images Plants/Manufacturing Buick Cadillac Chevrolet GM orion assembly oshawa plant idle

Vert-A-Pac train cars kept your Chevy Vega's price in check

Our apologies to those who've seen this before, but for the rest of the class, how awesome are these pictures of the Vert-A-Pac shipping system General Motors came up with to ship the Chevrolet Vega back in the 1970s? Developed along with Southern Pacific Railroad, GM was able to double the amount of Vega models it could ship by packing them into the unique storage cars vertically.
At the time, rail cars could fit 15 vehicles each, but Chevrolet was able to lower shipping costs by making it possible to ship 30 Vegas per rail car, in turn allowing the price of the Vega to remain as low as possible. Each rail car had 30 doors that would fold down so that a Vega could be strapped on, and then a forklift would come along and lift the door into place. All the cars were positioned nose down, and since they were shipped with all of their required fluids, certain aspects had to be designed specifically for this type of shipping, including an oil baffle in the engine, a special battery and even a repositioned windshield washer reservoir. See for yourself in our image gallery above.