Car Throttle

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 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

The DeLorean is iconic and recognized worldwide. It's placement in the movie "Back to the Future" guaranteed widespread notoriety. Regardless though, for a small company that fizzled out it's pretty amazing to be remembered like this. The original car's creator, John C. DeLorean, worked at General Motors (and specifically Pontiac) before he ventured off to create his own, one-of-a-kind car company. How ironic would it be now that a car from Pontiac might be saved by the company bearing his name. When GM debuted the Kappa twins, most specifically the Solstice, it was met with much fanfare. Bob Lutz intended the cars to show a different GM, and they were developed at great expense. In it's short model life the Solstice had a lot of success, even

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

The cutting of Pontiac and Saturn has a lot of implications for various models and plants that produced those models. Nowhere is that more apparent then in Wilmington, Delaware. The plant produces two models; the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. Both are being cut and GM doesn't seem to have any plans for the plant in the future. If all goes to plan, this plant along with the jobs (and sales) that go with it will dissappear. GM CEO Fritz Henderson revealed on Monday something that - for once - is common sense! He said the company would be "very open" to a proposal on the plant and the tooling to produce the two roadsters. The Solstice and Sky have proved in their short lifetime to be successful

Welcome to Derailed Design, and yes once again, I'm using a feature that was started by another writer here at Car Throttle, James. This particular feature will illustrate the top 10 Reasons why Pontiac Failed as a car company. Yes we all know Pontiac isn't dead yet. However, it is no longer a GM Division, just a "niche" brand, according to General Motors executives. Most of the failures at Pontiac happened within the decade, but there were at least a couple of real stinkers that happened earlier. Counting backwards from 10 to 1, here's why Pontiac Failed. 10 - Badge Engineering: The Excitement division of General Motors was doing quite well throughout the 80's, even with a questionable product line. Advertising of the period showcased the