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24 Hours of Le Mans live update part one

We tasked surfing journalist Rory Parker to watch this year's live stream of the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. What follows is an experiment to experience the world's greatest endurance race from the perspective of a motorsports novice with a profanity-laden stream-of-consciousness writing style. Parker lives in Hawaii and spends far more time spearfishing than behind the wheel of a car. Jump ahead to Part Two here, and Part Three here. Big Money and billionaire hobbyists and rockets on wheels. Jets belching French color smoke overhead. Balance of power fuckery. Plenty of water on the ground this morning. Absurdly expensive motorcars lined up in the pissing rain. Fast twitch lunatics behind the wheel. Chomping at the bit. Let's go let's go let's go! Race hasn't even started, Ford #67 maybe dealing with clutch issues. Karma? That beautiful bastard Brad Pitt's out on the track, waving the tricolor flag. It's a standing start in "Noah's Ark" weather and the 2016 24 hours of Le Mans is go! First lap takes place behind the safety car, finished in a record setting 8 minutes 27 seconds. Wrong kind of record maybe, but this is the first time I've set my mind to watching the whole damn race. Feel like I'm part of history. 3:00 AM on Kauai, a little too early for life. Sucking down coffee like a maniac. Don't fall back asleep. Got my hands on four hours of rest, how much more can I need? Better be enough for the next twenty four hours. Gonna get kinda punchy toward the end. Jason Statham on the scene. Four feet of solid muscle, non-existent hairline. Lovely wife peanut gallery sitting next to me calls him the "best race car drive in the world." Not sure if she's serious. Toss up, could go either way. Statham's a funny guy. Heir to the Bruce Willis comedy action crown. Really good in the movie where the fat comedy lady plays a spy. Ford's on the road. Problems with gearbox pressure, apparently. Nearing a half hour in and the safety car is still on the track. Hellish amounts of water on the ground, in the air. Visibility is garbage. Getting better. Twitter wags, "Not with a bang but a whimper." Just building suspense. Mother Nature felt like killing some people today, race officials need to dial back the drivers until it dries a tad. Normal inclination would've seen 'em flying, guaranteed early lap wrecks. Sad news for that bloodthirsty part of my lizard brain I try and keep suppressed. Good news for humanity. #12 in the pit for a bit.

GM resumes production of its 3.0-liter turbodiesel straight-six

General Motors temporarily stopped taking orders for trucks and SUVs equipped with the 3.0-liter Duramax turbodiesel six-cylinder engine in August 2021 due to a supplier shortage. Reports claimed the pause would last through 2021, but the engine is already back in production. Enthusiast website GM Authority learned from sources inside General Motors that the straight-six is once again coming off the assembly line at the Flint Engine Plant in Flint, Michigan. There's no official word on precisely what the problem was linked to and whether it was related to the on-going chip shortage that's wreaking havoc across the automotive industry. All we know is that the pause lasted for about two weeks. Called LM2 internally, the six is available in Chevrolet's Tahoe, Suburban, and Silverado 1500 and in GMC's version of these trucks. It's also an option in the Cadillac Escalade. It develops 277 horsepower at 3,750 rpm and a V8-like 460 pound-feet of torque at 1,500 rpm in every application, and it allows these big behemoths to post surprising fuel economy numbers. Fitted to a rear-wheel-drive Tahoe, the Duramax returns 21 mpg in the city, 28 mpg on the highway, and 24 mpg in a combined cycle, figures that make it more efficient than a Blazer. Demand for the diesel-powered trucks is relatively high. While the shortage undoubtedly took a toll on sales, the Duramax represented 8% of Suburban sales and 6% of Tahoe sales in May 2021. There are no other diesel-burning full-size SUVs available new so they have the market to themselves. On the truck side, Ram still makes the EcoDiesel available on some 1500 trims but Ford abandoned the segment. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe RST View 24 Photos Chevrolet GMC Truck SUV Diesel Vehicles

Chevy 'committed to marketing Bolt the right way'

The 2015 edition of the annual AltCar Expo in Santa Monica, CA in September was a relatively quiet affair. Attendance felt light compared to previous years. But that didn't mean there wasn't something happening that might have just as big an impact on the plug-in scene as anything that's ever happened in previous years at the Santa Monica Convention Center. I say this because of what GM's Shad Balch told me about Chevy's plans to market the upcoming Bolt electric car. This is GM's next-gen electric vehicle, which will have a roughly 200-mile range and may cost about $30,000 after tax incentives (maybe). To say he's excited to start selling this car is an understatement. Set aside the obvious challenge Chevy will have with cars named both the Volt and the Bolt, especially when some languages exchange the pronunciation of the letters B and V. Set aside the fact that, for now, Balch is dealing with his own company actively advertising against the product he's trying to get people excited about. Balch, GM's manager of new product and public policy communications, is tremendously positive about the Bolt's chances in the marketplace when it arrives in 2017 or 2018. "Driving an EV is, in every proof point, better than a gas-powered car, except for charging." - Shad Balch AltCar and the concurrent National Drive Electric Week represented the Bolt's West Coast debut, and Balch told me that the car's arrival in California shows how "Detroit recognized that they need to send it out to their number one market." The car's appearance outside of the Motor City was "The most encouraging part for us out here, being in the market ... to be able to explain that we are committed to marketing this car the right way. ... We're trying to make that known as much as possible, because that is the number one criticism that we hear. That's why events like these are so important, because we can't wrap up into a 30-second spot what these cars are capable of. I can't even explain it to you in 10 minutes what it's like. But the thing is, driving an EV is, in every proof point, better than a gas-powered car, except for charging." Now, there's a fairly decent chance that GM will hit the 250,000-vehicle limit for the $7,500 federal tax incentive right about when the Bolt comes to market, so I had to ask how the Bolt gets marketed if the price tag jumps up a few thousand dollars. Balch was straightforward. "Well, we would sell fewer cars," he said. "It's pure and simple. ...