here's something to be said for being at the right place at the right time. Had our primordial ancestors evolved legs and lungs while the entire globe was still awash in warm sea water, they would have gone belly up and we might have never made it to the top of the food chain. At this point in history, our entire species can thank generations of ancestors for not being squished, drowned, beaten, eaten or stabbed before cranking out offspring that would further the human race. One misstep to the left could have been all it took to eradicate entire lines of Homo sapiens progress.
Those same laws of luck and fortune dictate which automotive traits will survive into the future and which will be left to be bookmarks of curiosity in the mechanical fossil record. General Motors knows this all too well. The company infamously birthed the EV1 in the mid-'90s only to find that its high costs of development meant the short-range electric couldn't keep its head above water in a sea of relatively cheap fuel prices. At the time, there just wasn't any land in sight for the electric movement.
Exterior
The exterior design of the Chevrolet Orlando MPV isn’t the most sophisticated sculpture you’ll see on the road but it is distinctive and immediately recognisable. The chief visual identifier is the enormous Chevrolet bow-tie badge that helps dissect the radiator grille into two sections. There’s also a deep front splitter that houses the fog lights and adds to the car’s overall rectangularity. Combined with bulbous wheel arches and the overall effect is a chunky, robust look reminiscent of the van-like proportions of the original Chrysler Grand Voyager, albeit without the clever sliding door.
RACING PEDIGREE
Please don’t mistake me for one of those P-car loving Corvette haters. I may have just described one of the fastest and most powerful Corvettes ever built as a blunt force instrument featuring antiquated technologies like pushrods and transverse leaf springs, but sometimes a good old-fashion sledgehammer really is the right tool for the job. Corvette Racing has certainly hammered the competition over the last decade, winning their class six out of the last ten times at the 24 Hours of Le Mans to go along with eight straight GT1 ALMS championships from 2001 to 2008. I’m sure a lot of us assumed Corvette Racing would lose some of its magic with the new GT2 car and the economic crisis facing GM, but the new C6.R didn’t miss a beat in 2009, posting five podium finishes and notching its first GT2 win at Mosport International Raceway on August 30th.
he latest Corvette C6 is raucous, rapid and relatively cheap to buy. It's still flawed, but its powertrain is much improved making it more exhilarating to drive. You'd have to really want one to forgive the sky-high running costs, but the noise from that V8 alone is almost worth it.
This is the sixth generation of the Chevrolet Corvette, America's long-standing sports car icon, now revised for 2008 with a host of new technical enhancements. It's the Yank's equivalent of the Porsche 911, a high-performance legend that's stuck to the same basic rubber burning, V8-power, rear-drive recipe since 1953.
But, The Times They Are A Changin', as Bob Dylan once sang, so now the GM small block V8 that's at the heart of the modern Corvette has been upgraded to offer better fuel economy, cleaner exhaust emissions... oh, and bucket load more power.
Introduction
The Chevrolet Impala is a big family sedan close in size to the Toyota Avalon. The Impala is a comfortable and convenient car, practical and enjoyable to drive, with decent performance and fuel economy and competitive pricing.
The Impala competes with full-size cars, such as the Ford Taurus, Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger, and mid-size cars, such as the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima.
Impala carries over to 2011 largely unchanged, though there are some minor packaging changes. 2011 Chevrolet Impala models are available with Bluetooth and the latest version of OnStar Gen 9.0. All 2011 Impalas come with body-color body side moldings.
The Chevrolet Impala is front-wheel drive with a choice of two V6 engines. The 3.5-liter V6 that comes standard on the Impala LT and LS models generates 211 horsepower and 216 pound-feet of torque and gets an EPA-estimated 18/29 miles per gallon City/Highway. The Impala LTZ comes with a larger 3.9-liter V6 rated at 230 hp and 235 lb-ft of torque and 17/27 mpg.
Directly after the launch of the extremely awesome Chevrolet Camaro Convertible, Chevolet has introduced the release of the new trim level for that muscle car showing up sometime in 2012. Therefore, in addition to the LC, 1LT, 2LT, 1SS, and 2SS, customers may also be in a position to choose the 2012 Chevrolet Camaro LFX V6 driven by a 3.6 liter V6 engine with E85 capability.
This new trim level for the Chevrolet Camaro is provided with an up-to-date edition of the engine utilized in versions like the Cadillac CTS, SRX, and Chevy Equinox. The actual engine includes an amalgamated intake manifold, incorporated exhaust manifolds, and optimized NVH/airflow treatments which produced the 270hp usually delivered by the engine to improve to between 325-330hp.
The winds of change are upon us. In the case of General Motors, and more specifically with core brand Chevrolet’s latest small car efforts, it might even be more accurate to say that gale-force winds of change are upon us.
Here’s why: Chevrolet’s all-new Cruze has taken the U.S. market by storm, selling more than 20,000 units in some months and handily taking the title for the best-selling compact car on the market.
So what do you get when you take the exact same powertrains pushing the Cruze in record numbers and drop them into a smaller, more “fun” package? The 2012 Chevy Aveo Sonic.
The latest small car from Chevy is now known as the Sonic (at least here in the U.S., but it retains the Aveo name in other markets), and it was designed from the ground up by a crack team of artists and engineers out of GM’s successful Korean design studio.
