By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Not sure if you'd be able to fit a sheet of plywood in the back, but this '84 Vette with '91 rear and a functional tailgate is still pretty hilarious. $115k invested, first $35k takes it. More pics after the jump. ClassyAuto via Jalopnik.

By John Coyle

Editor

It's Monday, but that's ok. I know, from experience, that I'm lucky to have a job I enjoy. Anyway, here's the news:

• The General has seemed to weather the American Axle strike pretty well, but now the UAW has called a strike at a Kansas plant which makes the Malibu. It's unclear if the motivation for the strike is based on actual grievances or just being used to make the GM help solve the AA fiasco. Automotive News
• Pininfarina has announced that it will dedicate one of its factories to electric car production. The car  hasn't debuted yet, but the Italian coach builder has said that it will be available in the United States in 2010, and will have 155 miles range. Sounds cool, but I'll believe it when I see it. AutoWeek
• Most of the time, when you hear a Lada mentioned, it's as a punchline, or it's being somehow compromised in a photo lifted from English Russia. But this one is designed to campaign in the WTCC series. Who knew? Jalopnik
• Looks like the shot of the M1 Prototype which was making the rounds on the internet is just a PhotoChop. Kind of a shame, as it's a really sexy looking car. Hopefully BMW is taking notes. CarScoop

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

As you may have noticed by now, we like El Caminos. Neil bought this straight, rust free V6 car on eBay in January of 2007 and immediately ripped it apart. On July 4 it went out on its maiden voyage with a stout Buick 455, Tremec 5 speed, new paint and interior (Acura CL bucket seats and Dakota Digital instrumentation). Pretty damn sweet. Be sure to check out Neil's ride page for plenty of nice shots of the restification.

By Dan Strohl

Hemmings Motor News

Last year, both Jen and I wrote about artist Jonathan Schipper, a self-proclaimed artist who baffled us by one of his creations, a gear-driven machine that slowly pushed two 1/18th-scale muscle cars together in a twisted slow-motion Ballardian statement of some sort. I earned a degree from college in something I can actually make money at, not in art, so I guess I don’t have the capability or pretentiousness to understand that statement.

What really made me cringe last year was the vague threat that Schipper promised to recreate the creation on a full-size scale with two actual muscle cars. And it appears he did just that recently in Belgium, though he used two cars that fall outside the bounds of the traditional definition of muscle: a 1988 Monte Carlo and a 1992 Camaro RS. Not to say that I don’t appreciate late rear-wheel-drive Montes or third-gen Camaros, but at least he didn’t use a second-gen Trans Am and a Hemi Charger, as he did in his first piece.

Still, I don’t get it. He did all of this so he could take an elaborate time-lapse video and speed it up? And if he’s going to make a statement such as he did in the title of the piece, then he should back it up with, ohidunno, an actual argument. Maybe this is actually some sort of stunt in which he shows how easy it is to get gallery space and, possibly, public art funding.

By David

aka Highspeedhijinks

GM has just done the final shakedown on the new 2009 Corvette ZR1—and the numbers are insane. Let's start with the dyno: the new LS9 is a 6.2 litre supercharged V8 that's pushing out 638 hp. Do the math—that's roughly 103hp per litre. "So what?" you say. "How fast can it go?" you ask. GM's Corvette engineering team took the new ZR1 all the way Papenburg, Germany to find out. There they clocked a top speed of 205mph. That's right, there's now a bone-stock Chevrolet that can do over 200mph. I hardly believe it myself, but GM decided to have an in-car camera do the smack talking for them. Check out the video and see for yourselves what 205mph really looks like—"blurry" is the best description I can come up with!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here's what you get when you take a Chevy Blazer, chop it, stretch it three inches by bolting double steel plates to the frame, and then drop an El Camino body on top. Pretty cool. Check out Brandon's El Camino ride page for more pics.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Check out one of CarDomain's newest ride pages, a mildly-donked 2005 Chevy Impala. Of course, it'd be even cooler if those 24's were solid brown... with creamy peanut butter centers. Mmmmm, Reese's.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

I've never heard of them and can't find anything about them, but they look pretty wicked on Chris's 2005 Vette, which is currently a top ride on CarDomain. What do you think? Appropriate for a Corvette?

Update: ok, thanks to Eric we now know these are Giovanna Dalars. 

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

This '77 El Camino ride page just went up, so I can't tell you much about it, except that it was created by Pinz Art Studio of Saitama City, Japan. But it's not every day you see an El Camino parked in front of a Shoji screen.

By Katherine Helmetag

AKA atomicalex

A few months ago when everyone was worried about the future of the Volt, we here on the CarDomain Blog leaked our info from GM - there were Volt mules running around Texas in Malibu bodies. Now one has been spotted up here in Michigan and a photo showed up over on AutoblogGreen. While there are plenty of things running around in the Malibu chassis up here, this one is distinguished by its bulging hood, required to house the stacked drivetrain components of the plug-in system. No one said this system was going to be easy to package, and it appears those European pedestrian safety standards won't be difficult to meet. GM is only confirming a NiMH battery pack, but we hear the southern versions are already running with small stacks of Li-ion units. Makes sense to me as heat is going to be the enemy. The weather up here hasn't provided the opportunity to do the warm weather testing needed for the hot battery packs.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Sure, everyone is excited about the latest pony car wars, but the biggest battle is yet to come. It's gonna be Toyota vs. GM, the Prius vs. the Volt. The Truth About Cars has a nice little article on the match up. They've done some calculations and made a few predictions. And all does not look rosy for the Volt. You can read the full editorial, but if you don't feel like here are the Cliff notes: The third generation Prius will arrive in January 2009 for approximately $22k and should get a real world 50mpg. It will be followed shortly by a li-ion version which will probably bring the mpg rating up to 55mpg or so. A plug in version of the Prius will most likely be available by 2011 for roughly $30k. The plug in Volt should arrive in 2010 for approximately $44k, with limited availability the first year. Then the article goes into a lot of math stuff based on various scenarios, predicted gas prices and electric rates. Their conclusion? "Unless GM is willing to heavily subsidize the Volt for many years, no matter how good it is, the Prius will kick its ass."

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Here's a very quick video of the car that belongs to those tube-steel speaker covers that you guys were digging on Sunday. It's an air-bagged '54 Chevy running a 350 small-block with a tri-power intake. For the color on the roof, the owner took the stock, almost navy blue that you can see on the dash, then layered metal flake and translucent candy over it to get the irridescent blue you see in the video. More pics after the jump.

By the way, some of you were wondering if those speaker covers were hand-fabbed or catalog-bought—well, I spotted identical ones on this gorgeous Cadillac by Lonely Knights Kustoms in Colorado Springs. So unless these two owners had them made by the same fabricator, you can probably score a pair of your own somewhere.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

It's the tri-five Chevies (1955-1957) that always get all the attention, but I have to admit I love the massive look of the '58. This nice example belongs to Mark Kindig, who's updated it with disc brakes and drop spindles. It's got a 283 with the tri-power setup: three 2-barrel Rochesters. Mark hopes someday to swap in a 348, Chevy's first production big-block, which made its debut the same year this car rolled off the line. But it's going to have to be "run what you brung" until he can locate an affordable candidate. What he brung ain't bad—see close-ups after the jump!

By Rich Truesdell

Automotive Traveler

The Malibu is one of the most storied names in Chevrolet's inventory. Starting in 1964, it was attached to some of the most memorable mid-sized cars in the Bowtie's long and storied history. But for most of the last four years, it's been synonymous with "rental car," as a very high proportion of production has gone directly to Avis. For 2008 the Malibu is all-new and Chevy has a lot riding on its success; it is the frontal attack on the class leaders, the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, as it hopes to re-establish Chevrolet as not only a player in this category, but to be the benchmark. Have they succeeded? More...

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

When Edmunds isn't busy converting cool old rides into office furniture, they engage in silly mental exercises. The latest is their Camaro vs. Challenger match-up. That's right, neither car is out yet, and the Camaro isn't even due til 2009, yet Edmunds felt they could declare the Camaro "the winner" based on the fact that the Pontiac G8 GT outperformed the Dodge Charger SRT8 in one of their tests a short while back. Honestly, this is one of the silliest pieces of "automotive journalism" I've read in a while. Now, let's say Chevy actually puts out a Camaro with the 505 hp LS7 from the Corvette Z06 or the 620 hp supercharged LS9 from the Corvette ZR1. Well, maybe Ma Mopar will introduce a Challenger with a Viper V10. Who knows? It's all speculation.

I say we wait til both cars are available before anyone declares one car a winner. And please, be sure to compare two versions that are priced about the same (Chevy hasn't announced any pricing on the Camaro, remember?). And finally, if/when some journalist does declare one of these cars a winner, no one is gonna care. Why? Cause at the end of the day, Mopar guys buy Mopars. Chevy guys buy Chevies. And Ford guys buy Fords. If a Chevy guy tells a Mopar guy that some dude at Edmunds declared their car "a winner," the Mopar guy is just gonna laugh and tell his Chevy buddy to meet him out at the track (of course, that won't settle it, either).