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

Among the MANY things that bothers me about the "Fast & Furious" franchise are the innumerable technical errors. I mean, come on, these are movies about cars made for car guys.  How do they get so much stuff wrong?  Nitrous isn't explosive, blowing the intake manifold (how do you do that?) won't cause your diamond-plate floorboards to pop out, 2G Eclipses only have 5 gears, Nissan SR20's don't go into Honda Civics (Ted!) and I bet some people do like the Tuna. But the most annoying to me, at least from the first film, was when the mousey little white kid character Jesse pops the hood of the junked Toyota Supra that Paul Walker brings to Dominic Torreto's shop, and exclaims "...2JZ, no @#%$!!"  Jesse, a

The world's filled with boring, mundane, unremarkable automobiles. For every SVO Mustang, there are 10,000 Camry LE's.  For every Alfa Romeo Guilia Super sedan, there are an untold bazillion Honda Fits.  That's just how it is: mainstream sells.  As it turns out, very few people actually want the diesel, all wheel drive, manual-transmission station wagon that internet car enthusiasts say would sell like hotcakes. Sometimes, though, some of the most interesting cars out there are born out of some of the most dishwater-dull transportation appliances.  Here's my top ten - as always, feel free to leave a comment telling me what I left out at the bottom!  On we go. 10) Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 Mitsubishi's Galant sedan is... hold on, let me go to Wikipedia, I can't

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

When the Chevrolet Camaro debuted, fans of the Pontiac Firebird immediately started wondering about a Pontiac-badged model. That never came, and recently the Pontiac brand was closed, a victim of the economic crisis and GM's financial difficulties.

As can be expected, there are many very loyal devotees of the Firebird (and indeed the Pontiac brand) that still aren't satisfied. They want a new Firebird. Aftermarket to the rescue!

For those fans, various companies are working to fill that demand. Lingenfelter is one of the latest companies to do that, with it's new Camaro LTA set to debut at SEMA

All that is out now is this preview, with the look of the car sketched out similar to Firebird Trans Ams of the past. It seems to be pretty

Lately, a couple of friends and I have been throwing around the idea of starting a racing team. Of course, since none of us have very much money, this would normally be impossible.  But, if you've been living under a large rock for the last few years, I have good news - there's a solution to this problem!  It's called the 24 hours of LeMons (as opposed to the real deal, the 24 Hours of LeMans), and it's just about the best thing to happen to grassroots racing since Spec Miatas. You can get all the nitty gritty details at the 24 Hours of LeMons website, but I'll lay out the basic premises of the series.  It's a 24-hour (mostly) endurance race that takes place over

One of the casualties of the loss of the Pontiac brand was the Holden-sourced Pontiac G8. It was a critically acclaimed vehicle and sales began to pick up significantly once the brand's cut was announced. When asked about the possibility of a the G8 being sold as a Chevrolet, GM's CEO Fritz Henderson said that the reason was because he "doesn't like rebadges." Besides that comment not making sense for a variety of reasons, it was discouraging to hear that such a great product would not be sold here. Bob Lutz followed Fritz Henderson's comments by saying what everyone else thought - that it was "too good to waste." After getting everyone's hopes up with those comments, he responded soon after with “upon further review and careful

Editor's Note: this is a new series I'm starting, called "You're Doing It Wrong."  It's focused around cars that look good on paper, but in the real world it just doesn't add up.  Let me know what you think. To most domestic enthusiasts, the moniker "SS" carries some weight with it. Chevrolet has been using the SS (Super Sport) designation for it's hot-rod versions of standard models since the dawn of eternity.  Or at least the 60's.  SS has always stood for large amounts of horsepower, some blinged-up trim, nice wheels and tires, and some more horsepower. Classic SS Chevy's like the Camaro SS396, Chevelle SS454, and Nova SS's demand unusually large values for what are essentially overmuscled underdeveloped cars.  People these days are nostalgic for cars built

Reporting on this story is really too bad. Remember the excitement around the Solstice Concept and the ensuing production vehicle? It really created a wave of goodwill for General Motors and the Pontiac brand. In production it proved to be no less successful, selling out quickly. Even as the initial excitement wore off, it overtook the Mazda MX-5 Miata in sales - no small feat. GM's Bob Lutz was one of the car's chief champions and it paid off. That's why it's sad to hear that production of the two vehicles based off the Kappa platform - the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice, has been stopped. There was some talk that possibly an independent buyer could come in and make a deal to GM for just the Solstice