This is the first official photograph of the new Chevrolet Volt – GM’s landmark petrol-electric plug-in hybrid car, unveiled today to mark the General’s centenary. CAR Online dropped into the centenary event and has the full photographs and details of the Chevy Volt and the other announcements made today.

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Just past the curve in which Bruce McLaren bought it, and right before the corner where Niki Lauda had his face burned off, we ­realize the truth: General Motors must still be mad about our review of the 1980 Olds Omega Brougham. The company is trying to kill us.

Back in 2004, GM rolled the last steaming clod of asphalt onto its Milford Road Course (MRC), a 2.9-mile handling circuit at the company’s proving grounds an hour northwest of Detroit. The “Lutzring,” as employees have dubbed it in honor of GM’s meat-eating vice-chairman, Robert Lutz, plunges 135 feet from hilltop to trough and was pieced together like bathroom plumbing from some of the more treacherous corners in motor­sports. The 20 elbows, kinks, and blind whoop-de-dos are crowned by the 45-degree banked “Toilet Bowl,” which resembles the Nürburgring’s Karussell and which has already had its guardrails replaced at least twice. Only 16 of GM’s 266,000 employees are permitted to drive the MRC.

Naturally, a man-eating track you’ve never seen before is just the place you want to be in a 638-hp Corvette you’ve never driven before. Read more »

Here’s one more reason, besides the gas prices and congestion taxes, to be glad you don’t live in Europe: the awesome new Corvette ZR1 will sticker for twice as much there as it does in the United States.

Dutch importer Kroymans, which handles Corvette sales in Europe, said the ZR1 will have a sticker price of 136,000 euros. At current exchange rates, that equals $214,146.64. In the United States, the ZR1 will sticker for $105,000, which includes shipping charges and a gas-guzzler tax–but good look finding one for sale at that price.
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Neo-retro? Déjà new? Chevy freshens the bloodlines of an old breed.

So here it is, the third and final entry in the 21st-century pony-car-revival derby. Get your bets down early because we don’t expect to see any more resurrections of famous makes from the galloping go-go Sixties—Barracuda, Firebird, Javelin, et al.—and even gloomier, we think it likely that, given fuel prices and other concerns, this revival is likely to lack the fervor and duration of the original movement.

The first production version of the new Camaro we’ve seen and touched is this yellow car displayed in our gallery. “Touched” includes sitting in, briefly, but did not include driving. And “production” means production sheetmetal but not a showroom-ready car. That happens much later. New Camaros will appear in Chevy dealerships in March, arriving as 2010 models. Convertibles (softtops, no folding hardtop) are due about a year later.
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Saving the best for last might not have been GM’s intention when it finally introduced the fourth and final version of its acclaimed Lambda full-size crossovers—the others being the Buick Enclave, the Saturn Outlook, and the GMC Acadia—but after our short first drive of the 2009 Chevrolet Traverse, that seems to be the case.

The New Malibu Maxx

The Traverse we first saw at the 2008 Chicago auto show was clean and classy, and the production version enters virtually unchanged, save for an ever-so-slight reshape of the headlamp lenses to claim a segment-best 0.33 coefficient of drag. Not accidentally, the Traverse’s fascia bears a resemblance to that of the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu, which is great-looking itself. Other nice details include an upswept rear window, flush-mounted roof rails, and mirrors with LED turn signals on LT and LTZ models.

Malibu influence can be found throughout the Traverse’s interior. The center stack cascades down toward the shifter and is tastefully decorated with silver trim. Illumination patterns also follow those of the Malibu. Read more »