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Chevrolet planning low-cost Corvette under Stingray?

If you're burnt out on musings about the Chevrolet Corvette, you'll want to go ahead and skip this post. Motor Trend reports General Motors is hard at work on a low-cost version of the seventh-generation sports car for 2015. Rumored to be called the Corvette Coupe, the car will forgo the Stingray and skip the 450-horsepower 6.2-liter V8 engine in favor of a 5.3-liter V8 with under 400 ponies. If you're keeping track, that's a shade of the same engine found behind the headlights of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra.
The report also suggests the Coupe will receive a number of aesthetic tweaks to separate it from the Stingray, including different front and rear fascias as well as new front fenders and a rear diffuser. Motor Trend says the point of all this is to cut the car's price tag, which means we may see a Corvette on showroom floors for less than $50,000 if this car comes to fruition.

Mark Reuss: GM can't afford product 'misses,' has 'thought about' CT6 V-Series

Mark Reuss is a busy man. He oversees General Motors' global product portfolio, an all-encompassing task for a company that sold more than 9.9 million cars and trucks last year. When GM launches a well-received product, like the road-going rocket ship that is the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 – he gets credit. When the company stumbles with the slow-selling Chevy Malibu or grapples with fallout from the decade-old Saturn Ion and its flawed ignition switch, he gets blamed. GM owners, the press and sometimes the federal government, demand answers. Bob Lutz famously held the job before Reuss. So did Mary Barra, who's now GM's chief executive. There's a New GM, but the lineage is connected to a long history. When he's not thinking product, Reuss, an executive vice president, also runs the purchasing and supply chain for the company, which is still one of the largest industrial empires in the world. We caught up with Reuss on the floor of the New York Auto Show, where GM had just rolled out two crucial new products: the 2016 Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu. Speaking with a small group of reporters, Reuss delved into a variety of subjects, including the new Malibu, Cadillac's future (he thinks the ATS-V is going to "flame the M3 and M4"), and other topics. On fixing the Malibu: "We can't miss. We can't have those kinds of misses [like the previous generation] on our cars and crossovers and trucks. We can't do that. If we do that, we give a reason for someone to go buy something else. It's that simple. "On a car like the Malibu we have a chance to really fix all of that, which we have, and then lead. Then you've got a real opportunity there. So that's what we've really been focused on here – to fix those things." He later added: "We need that car here to transform Chevrolet desperately because it's the heart of the market. And when you think of Chevrolet, people will come back and think about what we did with the [new] Malibu and the Cruze... It's hugely important to us." On Cadillac: "If we go out and try and out-German the Germans, it's probably not going to work. We've got an opportunity here generationally where there's a lot of people younger than me that have parents that drove BMWs and Mercedes, and I think there's an opportunity there for those people to drive something different than what their parents did, and I think that's always been an opportunity in the auto industry if you look at the history of it.

The real costs of keeping a Chevy Volt on the road

The release of the new, 2016 Chevy Volt is sure to bring a surge of used electric vehicles to the market as early adopters trade their older models in. Many of these cars are selling for a fraction of their original price, thanks in part to federal and state incentives that lowered the initial cost to the first owner, which opens these cars up to a whole new class of consumers. While the prices are getting attractive, potential buyers are still hesitant to buy a used EV due to uncertainty about service and repair costs, but there may be some good news on the horizon. The Chevy Volt comes with a battery warranty that is good for at least 8 years and 100,000 miles, but many of the Volts popping up on the market have passed that 100,000-mile mark. The threat of needing a new battery can be a deterrent, especially with some dealers quoting prices as high as $34,000 for a full "drive motor battery replacement." That sum is more than the MSRP of a 2016 model. Some of the fear of EV maintenance and repair comes from the mystery of the individual pieces that make up the drivetrain and charging system. If we take a look at the Volt in terms of analogs to a traditional internal-combustion vehicle, the outlook becomes a little more friendly. The Volt battery pack consists of three lithium-ion modules in a T-shaped arrangement, each of which can be serviced individually. Module 1 is made up of 90 cells and corresponds to GM part number 22954462, which retails for $3,258.33; module 2 is made up of 72 cells and corresponds to GM part number 22954463, which retails for $2,930.00; lastly, module 3 is made up of 125 cells and corresponds to GM part number 22954464, and retails for $4,933.33. These part numbers have been added to the dealer order systems but have not shown up in the distribution centers at this time. Although all three of the modules add up to a fairly large $11,121.66 total and are still on hold for dealer ordering, the good news is that in most cases these battery cell modules do not need to be replaced. There are many other individual pieces mounted on the battery pack that are serviceable, such as the Battery Energy Control Modules (BECM) and the Battery Interface Control Modules (BICM). These modules control and monitor the battery packs and charging system and have been known to fail while the lithium-ion battery cells are not at fault. Some have been replaced under warranty, but if you are stuck buying one they run about $255 a piece for the part.