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Filed under: Coupes , Etc. , Buick , GM The car you see here is not a GNX. Hell, it's not even a Buick. You'd be forgiven if you thought it was, though, and it does sport a turbocharger underhood. David Morad was so enamored with the 6.6L LB7 Duramax diesel in his truck that he wanted to put it into something lighter and more fun. He decided to build a Grand National around the engine, and started buying up whatever applicable Buick body parts he could find -- right down to legit GNX dash plates. Next, he bought an '82 Buick Regal diesel that was to be the subject of the transformation. Unfortunately, that car literally self-immolated as he drove it home, sending Morad straight back to square one. He subsequently found and bought an '81 Olds diesel and got to work. The car was cut in half so that a Regal rear end could be welded on, and then a laundry list of major modifications followed. To retain the stock Buick exterior appearance while incorporating the new powertrain...
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Filed under: Car Buying , Buick , Cadillac , Chevrolet , GM , HUMMER , Pontiac , Saab , Saturn Wow, there are some great deals to be had at the moment from General Motors. Not the least of which is on the Corvette, specifically the Z06 model, which we've had nothing but good things to say about, even at its $72K asking price. Now that GM is offering all of its models at employee prices, that cost drops by about ten grand! A Z06 for $62,653? Yes please... if only our meager blogging budgets would allow it. Similarly, a Caddy XLR-V can be had for $84,771.80 -- about a $15,000 discount. Need an SUV? May we suggest a Hummer H3 for about $23K? Those in the market for a luxury sedan could certainly do worse than a Cadillac STS-V for $66,640.88 after some $14K in savings. Of course, practical shoppers can take five-grand off their Saturn Aura XR sedan and end up paying just $21,634.28 for the privilege. We're having way too much fun with this and there is plenty of other news we need to...
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Filed under: Car Buying , Marketing/Advertising , Buick , Cadillac , Chevrolet , GM , GMC , HUMMER , Saab , Saturn It is no secret that the automotive industry is hurting for sales to close out 2008. Over the past few months incentives have been thrown out left and right to draw in more buyers. The deals have not done enough to bring folks into the showroom, though. With all the media talk of bleeding Detroit, consumers know that the domestic manufacturers have been holding out on their best offers. Perhaps the memory of 2005's employee pricing incentives has kept many waiting on the fence. With 2009 models heading to dealerships as we speak, General Motors is hoping to end the stalemate. It will be testing the waters of employee pricing yet again beginning Wednesday, August 20th and running through September 2nd. The employee discount program will apply across all 8 GM brands. Buick, Pontiac and GMC dealers will mark down 91 percent of their inventory on all 2008 models, along with...
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Filed under: Buick , Chevrolet , GM , GMC , Pontiac For the past several years General Motors has been using the Athens Coney Island Restaurant on Woodward Ave as a base of operations for the Dream Cruise. The parking lot this year is again filled with classic, wannabe classic, and future classic GM machinery, much of it brought out from the GM Heritage Center in nearby Sterling Heights. For those that haven't yet seen the new Camaro in production form, the red RS that we saw a few weeks ago is on display here in the parking lot along with a ZR1 in police markings and what must be one of the most yellow first generation Camaros anywhere. The powertrain tent at the back of the lot is filled with past present and future powertrains from the Z11 427 to the two-mode hybrid and even a fuel cell stack. The parking lot area is open to the public all day. Gallery: Woodward 2008: GM at Athens Coney Island Gallery: Woodward 2008: GM engines Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Filed under: Sedans/Saloons , Wagons/Estates , Crossovers/CUVs , Buick , Cadillac , Chevrolet , GM , Saab Click any image for a slightly larger shot. Earlier in the week, a handful of tiny images from General Motor's presentation to employees leaked onto the Web, providing a glimpse into the future of Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick and Saab. As the General's spin-meisters try to console both Wall Street investors and tepid consumers after Black Tuesday's depressing announcements , they've finally released these all-too-small pics into the wild. Aside from GM's plans to reduce white-collar expenditures by 20-percent, eliminate salaried employee's health care after age 65 and a cut its way to liquidity to the tune of $15 billion by the end of 2009, Bob Lutz dropped the bomb that the current iteration of the Beat isn't coming to the U.S. and that the 40+ mpg Chevrolet Cruze won't be immediately available to North American consumers after it debuts at the Paris Motor...
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Filed under: Car Buying , Buick , Cadillac , Chevrolet , GM , GMC , Pontiac , Saturn During a dealer teleconference today, General Motors announced it would be launching a zero-percent financing sale beginning tomorrow, while simultaneously raising the prices of its 2009 vehicles. The "72-hour sale" will run from June 24th through the 30th, and will offer customers 0-percent interest rates for 72 months on most Chevys, Buicks, Pontiacs and GMC vehicles. So far, there's no word on whether the offer will extend to Cadillac and Saturn. GM will also offer $500 in "bonus cash" to buyers who opt to purchase GM products outright rather than leasing them. At the same time, the General is going to be raising the prices of 2009 models by an average of 3.5-percent "across the board," something that was bound to happen, according to Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of vehicles sales, service and marketing. On the production front, GM will be adding a third shift...
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Filed under: Buick , Cadillac , GM , GMC , HUMMER , Pontiac , Saab , Rumormill This has been a big year for GM's organization alignment, with President Fritz Henderson opening up about the brand issue snafu and the appointment of four brand czars . HUMMER was meant to join forces with Cadillac and Saab in a premium channel, but while HUMMER is still in the family, it's apparently been put out on the lawn . GM Inside News (GMI) reports that GM is treating HUMMER as a goner, saying that the H4 program is on life support for handover to the next buyer, and the H3 GMT-700 program is kaput. The bigger hearsay is that GM's board is considering euthanizing GMC or Pontiac. Those two brands were to be aligned in a brand channel with Buick (PBG). Getting rid of GMC could make some kind of sense, since it's entirely brand-engineered vehicles with some of the worst mileage numbers in the fleet. Shunning Pontiac would be a surprise to us since the Solstice and G8 have given it a nice...
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Filed under: Etc. , Buick , Cadillac , GM , Misc. Auto Shows Click above for a ghres gallery from The All GM Car Show On sunny 90-degree day that felt like a lot more than 90 degrees, Autoblog made the trek to a park in Van Nuys, California for The All GM Car Show. Old mingled with new, with a 1911 Buick sitting across the aisle from a Cadillac Allante, and a 1950 Oldsmobile next to a Shelby Series 1 supercar. And age didn't stop anyone from winning prizes: in fact, a 2008 Pontiac G8 GT took home one of the day's awards. The show also featured concept cars, customizations, and some absolutely superb hood ornaments and detailing. Follow the jump to get the scoop on The All GM Car Show, and be sure to check out the gallery of hi-res images below. Gallery: California All GM Car Show Photos Copyright (C)2008 Jonathon R. Ramsey / Weblogs, Inc. Continue reading Autoblog visits The All GM Car Show Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Filed under: Sedans/Saloons , Buick , GM The current Buick Lucerne shares its underpinnings with both the Cadillac DTS and the Chevrolet Impala , but all three vehicles are set to go their separate ways when they're refreshed in a couple years. Last month we told you that the Impala was staying FWD, and now Motor Trend is reporting that the Lucerne could still receive RWD, but it won't be as big as the DTS/STS replacement. GM is looking into the feasibility of producing a smaller Lucerne that will ride on a wheelbase several inches shorter than the 118.5-inch spread slated for the future Caddy. The move to shrink the Lucerne will have a lot to do with stricter CAFE standards in the years ahead. MT wisely points out the fact that the Pontiac G8, which already sits on a smaller Zeta platform, shows that RWD isn't always a fuel drain. The current Lucerne is pulled with the front wheels, and gets 16/25 with the ancient 3.8-liter V6 and 15/22 with the 4.6-liter Northstar, while the...
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Filed under: Concept Cars , Buick , GM Click above for high-res gallery of the Buick Invicta Concept GM Vice Chairman Bob "Maximum" Lutz published a new post today on the corporate GM Fastlane Blog that addresses the automaker's newest concept that debuted recently at Auto China 2008 in Beijing: the Invicta . The concept heavily hints at what the next-generation Buick LaCrosse will look like, but Bob points out that the global architecture underpinning the vehicle will be the basis of new cars for Chevy, Saab, Opel/Vauxhall and more. In the past, we would've expected those accompanying models to be rebadged versions with different grilles, headlights and taillights, but Bob explains how GM's new global platform sharing process is different than the rebadging of old. In a nutshell, he says that the money saved from sharing common platforms see will be put into making everything that customer's will see - exterior and interior design, specifically - completely different...
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Filed under: Car Buying , Buick , Cadillac , Chevrolet , GM , GMC , Pontiac , Saab We don't normally cover every little change an automaker makes to its lineup as the model year clicks over, but General Motors has some significant features its adding for 2009 that shouldn't fall through the cracks. For one, Bluetooth will finally become on nearly all of GM's cars and trucks. For the longest time, only the Cadillac STS was available with Bluetooth phone integration, which ends with MY2009. Second, the six-speed automatic transmission that before was not widely available in the General's half-ton trucks and SUVs has spread like wildfire across the GMT900 lineup and will now be standard or optional in such vehicles as the Avalanche, Silverado and Sierra 1500, Suburban, Yukon and Yukon XL. Curiously, though, it's still not available on the Tahoe. Other items of note include a new 6-speed automatic for the Pontiac G6 to replace its underwhelming 4-speed, the replacement of...
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Filed under: Buick , Cadillac , GM , UAW/Unions When the American Axle strike began , GM had a 106-day supply of pickup trucks on dealer lots, and even a month-long strike likely wouldn't have hurt the Detroit automaker. It has now been more than a month, the strike isn't any closer to ending, and now GM's car plants are joining its truck plants in the unemployment line . Friday marked the last shift at the General's Hamtramck, MI plant, which builds the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS, due to a lack of parts coming from American Axle. According to Automotive News the pain may not stop there, either, as the Lordstown, Ohio plant may have to shut down production of the Chevy Cobalt and Pontiac G5 due to a lack of brake components. GM may not have been all that concerned about the American Axle strike when it began in February, but now after a month with barely any talks and a quickly growing list of shuttered plants, we're guessing things are getting a bit tight over at...
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Filed under: Recalls/TSBs , Buick , GM , Pontiac Normally, we get our recall notices directly from NHTSA, but since the fed's search section is down for maintenance, we'll rely on Kyle's tip to point us to GMInsideNews. The forum for all things General-related has posted a directive addressed to all Buick and Pontiac dealers regarding an upcoming recall issued by NTHSA that affects the 1997-2003 Buick Regal GS and the 1997-2003 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP fitted with the 3.8-liter supercharged V6. Both models apparently have a problem with oil leaking onto the exhaust manifold under hard braking. If the oil makes it underneath the manifold's heat shield, it's possible that it could ignite a small flame which could spread to the spark plug covers. The engine fire normally happens five- to ten-minutes after the vehicle has been shut down, and GM is suggesting that all of the 207,542 vehicles affected shouldn't park inside garages, carports or other parking structures until...
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Filed under: Sedans/Saloons , China , Buick , GM A new, small sub-Lacrosse Buick luxury sedan could fit the bill to meet future federal regulations requiring an average fuel economy of 35 mpg by 2020. If given the go-ahead, General Motors would build the new car based on the upcoming Buick Excelle, itself set to debut in China by early 2009 and thought to look like the car you see above. The Excelle is a small, Toyota Corolla-sized sedan that will be manufactured on GM's new global rear-wheel drive Alpha architecture developed out of Germany. If General Motors decides to proceed with the plan, executives will have to determine what North American plant gets to build it, but its proclivity to be driven by its rear wheels should set the small car apart in a sea of FWD compact sedans. [Source: AutoWeek , Photo courtesy of Sina.autonet.com ] Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Filed under: Hatchbacks , Buick , GM , Pontiac , Saab We've learned a multitude of things working the automotive beat on the 'Net. Among them: the German press is great for rumors and GM will badge engineer damn near anything. A piece from Auto Motor und Sport lives up to both expectations, with a story saying that the impending arrival of the Saab 9-1 hatch in Geneva will spawn a Saturn derivative and possibly a Pontiac version. According to AMuS , The Saab is likely to be powered by a hybrid system soon after it's launched and the Saturn version could feature a removable roof between the A- and B-pillar. Other blatant speculation includes the possibility of a (God help us) Buick version. We're going to stop laughing and get back to work. [Source: Auto Motor und Sport ] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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