1966 Pontiac Lemans on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Junkyard Gem: 2010 Pontiac G6

What makes a discarded car a gem? Sometimes it's a car we all agree is very cool, and other times it's a car that tells us something about automotive history. Today's Junkyard Gem is the latter type: one of the very last Pontiacs sold, before The General shut out the lights forever on the storied marque after 84 years. The G6 was Pontiac's Epsilon-platform-based car, sibling to the Chevy Malibu, Saturn Aura, and Saab 9-3 (plus a bunch of Europe-only machinery). The very last Pontiac ever built was a white 2010 G6 sedan like this one (all '10 G6s were sedans, the coupe and convertible having been nixed in 2009), though that car was built in January of 2010 and this one came off the line in July of 2009. They build Bolts at the Orion Assembly plant these days. The higher-zoot G6s came with V6s or even V8s, but this car has "fleet machine" written all over it and has the base 2.4-liter Ecotec four-banger making 164 horsepower. Pontiac shoppers in the United States could buy the Vibe as a 2010 model as well, while Mexican Pontiac dealerships also sold new G2s (known as the Spark here) that year. The G6 was The Final Pontiac, though, bookending a run that began with the 1926 Pontiac Six. This one will go to its grave with the original owner's manual still inside. Even the cheapest 2010 G6s came with an AUX jack for the radio, a feature that was still maddeningly hard to find in rental cars a decade ago. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Before the bankruptcy and the gloom, optimism surrounded the G6. Related Video: Featured Gallery Junked 2010 Pontiac G6 View 19 Photos Auto News Pontiac Automotive History Sedan pontiac g6 Junkyard Gems

What's driving the spike in air-cooled Porsche 911 prices

Classic car prices have been racing skyward in general, but prices for air-cooled (pre-1999) Porsche 911s are ascending like they're strapped to rocket boosters. It's been going on for years, and every year people are surprised by how outrageous it's getting: Classic Driver covered it this month, as did The Truth About Cars who included this example of a "scruffy" 1993 RS America with 215,000 miles asking $80K; Mike Spinelli at Drive riffed on it at length last year along with a host of classic-car-market observers; Porsche forums were at it two years ago; and let's not even get into the 993 Turbo, going for prices so high you have to lie down to look at them. Speed Academy has run a piece looking at why it's happening, one theory being that regular-guy owners are hopping on the runaway-price wagon without any good reason. As in the example of that high-mileage, scruffy 911 RS America at Bring a Trailer, the owner sees pristine examples valued by Hagerty at $170,000, and even though the average value is $93,238 he thinks something like, "Mine's got to be worth half of top dollar ..." The tide - even one rising on air - makes it hard to find decent prices. Then there is the flood of money into the market. In spite of articles that try to temper investors' outlooks on collectible cars, other articles in places like the Financial Times and the Guardian promote vintage metal as a safe place to put money and reap astonishing returns. Speed Academy thinks one side effect of high 911 prices is that responsible enthusiasts are turning their attention to cars like the BMW 2002, E30 M3, and E9 3.0CS, saying their prices are "sharply on the rise." The entire article is worth a read since it goes into markets far afield from pricey German steel, but incredibly, the entire piece was actually inspired by a 1997 Acura Integra R that sold for $43,000 on eBay. So while this could be the best time to get into the classic car market if you know what you're doing, it is certainly the best time to do your homework. Related Video:

German prosecutors have recorded calls between VW bigwigs talking dieselgate

It's barely possible to believe how poorly Volkswagen continues to handle dieselgate. Depending on which day you catch the news, the German carmaker embodies the corporate venality of "Michael Clayton," the comic blundering of the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading," and the every-man-for-himself vengeance of "Reservoir Dogs." Today is Tarantino day, with news that German prosecutors have recordings of phone calls between former Audi and Porsche development boss Wolfgang Hatz, ex-Volkswagen Group executive Matthias Muller, and current Porsche executives Oliver Blume and Michael Steiner. Hatz made the calls to the trio in November 2015, two months after Volkswagen admitted its diesel-particulate sins to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hatz was still employed at the time, and in his company car. Who recorded the calls? His wife. Hatz and his missus apparently saw the storm coming and started stacking defenses early. Hatz's wife, who can be heard encouraging Hatz during at least one call, sent the recordings to Hatz's attorney from her mobile phone. According to a Google translation of the German newspaper Handelsblatt's report, she included the note, "Here is a very long, but quite informative conversation on the current situation with useful formulations." The report in Handelsblatt said that in Germany it is generally "not allowed" to record a conversation and pass it on to a third party. We don't know how the authorities will handle this matter, since prosecutors found the recordings in e-mail attachments on Mrs. Hatz's mobile phone. Remember, when the diesel scandal broke, VW spent months saying that only a small number of low-level personnel were behind it, and all of the higher-ups had been blindsided. Ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn claimed to be "stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group." Winterkorn successor Matthias Muller said, "according to current information, a few developers interfered in the engine management." Former VW USA honcho Michael Horn told a congressional committee that "a couple of software engineers" programmed the software for reasons no one could understand. In the recorded conversations, Hatz apparently called Muller to find out how VW planned to treat him.