Car Throttle

Well this one is a surprise! Chrysler's latest announcement is good news for performance enthusiasts and fans of the Viper sportscar. When Chrysler began to run into serious financial problems and began seeking governmental help (which it received), the company opted to sell all it's valuable assets in a bid to stay afloat. The "Viper brand" was one of those assets. With a brand name as iconic as Viper, I thought it was pretty likely that the brand would find a buyer, even in this current economic climate. That didn't happen though, and it was dragged into Chrysler's bankruptcy proceedings. There it failed to find a buyer as well and (according to Chrysler anyway) it only received one bid, a $5.5 million lowball offer from Devon Motor Works.

Like Autoblog pointed out, GM's Bob Lutz was often the most quotable auto executive out there, proving over and over again his propensity to say - interesting - things and get headlines because of it. Apparently Elon Musk thinks so as well. Free publicity! It all started with an original editorial in the New York Times, back in November of 2008. In the article columnist Randle Stross ripped Tesla. Witness: “It's all-electric technology remains woefully immature and don’t-even-ask expensive....The Roadster is not much more than a functioning concept car that sells for $109,000.” Needless to say, it was scathing. After a dustup with Tesla buyer and Silicon Valley tech guy John Calcanis, apparently NYT did a retraction and the article was rewritten. Why this is still relevant right now, I