1979 Chevy 1/2 Ton Short Bed Pickup Truck on 2040-cars

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GM 6.2L V8 claims most powerful light-duty truck engine title

General Motors has officially captured the horsepower crown for mainstream pickup trucks with its 6.2-liter V8. The big mill, available in both the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, comes to market with 420 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque, handily outdoing its two cross-town competitors, Ram (5.7-liter V8, 395 ponies and 407 lb-ft) and Ford (6.2-liter V8, 411 hp and 434 lb-ft).
The new GM 6.2 will take a bit of an investment, though. Those that want the extra thrust will need to go with either the LTZ or High Country trims from the Chevy, or the SLT and Denali trims from GMC, which are the two highest trim levels for the respective vehicles. Trim levels aside, if you're in the business of towing, GM has you covered. Optioned with the 6.2-liter V8 and the Max Trailering Package, owners will be able to pull 12,000 pounds, a hugely impressive figure.
We still aren't certain as to what sort of economy the new engine will get, but it'll probably be a bad bet for the fuel conscious. As for availability, expect to see the 6.2-liter trucks in showrooms later in the fall.

GM recalls nearly 1 million vehicles for airbag defect

WASHINGTON — General Motors said on Friday it will recall nearly 1 million sport utility vehicles in the United States because the driver's airbag inflator may explode during deployment. The recall covers 994,763 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, and GMC Acadia vehicles from the 2014 through 2017 model years with modules produced by ARC Automotive Inc. Dealers will replace the driver's airbag module. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a driver in Michigan of a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse was in a crash in which the front-driver airbag inflator ruptured during deployment causing facial injuries. An April 25 inspection confirmed that the front driver airbag inflator ruptured in the vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) demanded the recall of 67 million air bag inflators because it believes there is a safety defect, but auto supplier ARC Automotive Inc rejected the U.S. regulator's request, documents released on Friday show. The auto safety agency said the inflators pose an unreasonable risk of death or injury. Even as ruptures mount, "ARC has not made a defect determination that would require a recall of this population," NHTSA said in its demand letter to the Tennessee-based company. "Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflating the attached air bag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury." GM said it was still investigating the issue with the assistance of a third-party engineering firm. "GM is taking this expanded field action out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our customers as our highest priority," the Detroit automaker said. GM said it was aware of two prior ruptures of ARC-manufactured airbag inflators in 2015 Chevrolet Traverse vehicles, and GM conducted two earlier small recalls of about 3,000 ARC inflators. All three rupture events in Chevrolet Traverse vehicles involved the same inflator variant. ARC noted in a letter made public Friday that no root cause for those ruptures has been identified by ARC or GM. ARC said it was assessing the scope of GMÂ’s recall.  Government/Legal Recalls Buick Chevrolet GMC Safety Crossover SUV

Nissan Leaf is now the best-selling plug-in vehicle of all time in US

Numbers don't lie. And in some instances, you can see their truth from miles away. As everyone expected, the Nissan Leaf is now officially the best-selling plug-in vehicle in the US. While the two vehicles aren't direct competitors (one's a pure EV and the other is a plug-in hybrid), they certainly dominate the plug-in vehicle sales charts. When we do a little math on those charts, we see that since the two vehicles went on sale at the end of 2010, the Volt has sold 75,231 units while the Leaf is now at 76,407, giving the Leaf a 1,176-vehicle lead. The Leaf trailed the Volt by just two units at the end of February. This is the first time the EV had held the overall lead since the end of February 2012, when it was ahead 10,847 to 9,623 and for a while there at the end of 2013, the Volt was up by around 12,000 units. Times have changed, though, and we don't expect the lead to switch back until the next-gen Volt goes on sale later this year, and even then nothing is certain. The Leaf sold 1,817 copies last month, a drop of 27.5 percent from last year. Year-to-date, the Leaf has sold 4,085 units, down 21.2 percent from the same time period in 2014. There were 639 Volts sold last month, a 56.8-percent sales decrease compared to March 2014. So far this year, Volt sales are down 48 percent. Green Chevrolet Nissan ev sales hybrid sales