Car Throttle

In Part 1 of this article, I covered 5 recent sales failures of the automotive world.  This time we dive into some more odd, idiotic, or just misjudged cars.  Onto the list... 5) Lincoln Blackwood

Luxury Pickup Truck.  That should be a contradictory term.  Pickup trucks are made to haul things, do work, go off-road: these are not luxurious attributes.  A Luxury Pickup Truck is a fairly stupid idea.  Yet, ask Cadillac: people buy stupid.  In their case, Escalade EXT's: an Escalade with a pickup bed.  Considering this is just a Chevrolet Avalanche (admittedly a pretty clever, if ugly, pickup truck) with some Cadillac trim glued on and a larger price tag, they sell quite a lot of them.  Sales were their highest in

I always make it out to Raleigh's Cars & Coffee event the first Saturday of every month. It's always worth it, even though I abhor waking up early, because there's always awesome stuff to see.  A lot of the same cars show up, so I won't show pictures of stuff you've already seen - for those you can check previous Cars & Coffee coverage here, here, and here. For starters, here is one of 337 Porsche 959's ever built, which was Porsche's rolling technical showcase that blew everything else out of the water in the 1980's, and set the standard for supercar performance.  None were ever imported to the US; it's likely this one has been fitted with the Canepa Design engine

The Pontiac wind-down process is ongoing, after it became a  casualty of General Motors' financial difficulties and brand reorganization. For car enthusiasts the closure of Pontiac came as particularly disappointing, especially given the recent launch of the G8, the best Pontiac product in years. The G8 a rebadged Holden Commodore imported from Australia. Sales of the G8 in went up significantly after the announcement of Pontiac's closure. That is very unusual thing to happen for a brand about to be shuttered. Anyhow, the wind down process for Pontiac is almost complete and stocks of new Pontiac cars are running low. Pontiac recently announced on Twitter the total stock left, broken down by each model. There are 550 G8 GTs remaining and only 16 (!) examples left of the top-shelf

Well, that's that. It was nice while it lasted, eh? The Pontiac G8 is an excellent product, receiving critical acclaim for being a true performance vehicle for Pontiac. It could have opened a whole new chapter for the brand, but alas it was not to be. Blame the economy. If the business case ever worked for Pontiac (which I never thought it did), it certainly should work for Chevrolet as a new Caprice. Bob Lutz, seemed to agree when he said the G8 was just "too good to waste."  Today though, he walked back on those comments. Direct from GM's product guy - no. Not maybe, not we're considering it. He says it will not show up as a Caprice and now with his new "marketing hat" on that

Bob Lutz, bearer of good news! He is fresh off his "unretirement" and back, better than ever. The reshuffling retains his position as Vice-Chairman of GM and actually adds responsibilities: he's in charge of “creative elements of products and customer relationships.” Bob Lutz is known famously in the auto industry for his propensity to speak his mind, and that hasn't changed. Pontiac's G8 has seen new life in it's sales numbers since the announcement about the Pontiac brand cancellation. Clearly the product has potential; it was critically acclaimed in the press. Not only that, there is multiple other reasons for keeping the car, like Australian production revenue that is vital to GM's Holden subsidiary. The logical reasons are there, which is why the response of GM's CEO Fritz

Hurst and Pontiac have a long history over the years together, producing high-performance Pontiacs for the consumption of performance enthusiasts. The company was particularly big in the 1960's, heyday of the muscle car, modifying vehicles for AMC, Chrysler (Plymouth), Ford, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. It's fitting then that they would be producing two new models for Pontiac now. The models getting the Hurst treatment are the G8 and G6. The G6 seems like an odd one but the G8 is perfect for it, with it's excellent RWD performance. Limited edition? You bet.  Called the 2010 Hurst/Pontiac H.O and referred to as the "Executive Hot Rod", there is to be only 52 of the cars produced. A lot of the details are set to be released on August 1st, but we do know a