By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Check out this awesome SEMA-bound Camaro from aLL STaR Performance. Gene has been documenting the build on CarDomain, so be sure to check out his ride page.

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

Plenty of automakers have had a hand in manufacturing non-car-related products, but I had no idea that back in the day General Motors made residential furnaces. This beastly 1954 GM Delco-Heat converted oil furnace came out of a buddy of mine’s house this weekend. Weird!

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

Chevrolet announced yesterday that the Volt will come standard with an 8 year/100,000 mile battery warranty, giving it the longest battery warranty of any electric vehicle. The Volt’s battery cells, modules and packs have endured more than one million miles and four million hours of testing since 2007 and now GM engineers are willing to stand behind their product with confidence. Read more at chevroletvoltage.com, via Chevrolet Volt’s facebook page.

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

Every Corvette ZO6 LS7 and ZR1 LS9 engine is hand built by skilled tradesmen at the GM Powertrain facility in Wixom, Michigan. GM is now offering ZR1 and ZO6 customers the option of actually building their new high performance engine themselves before it’s installed in their very own new Corvette. Watch below as a 638 horsepower 6.2L super-charged LS9 Corvette ZR1 engine is assembled. I’d love to have an opportunity like this someday. How cool it would be to build your own badass LS motor in the Wixom plant and then later watch it get installed into your new Corvette on the assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky?

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

General Motors announced yesterday that they have fully repaid their government loan, plus interest, five years ahead of schedule. Although GM has has a lot of work ahead to get back on track, it seems like they are making steps in the right direction. I guess time will tell just how much they’ve learned from their past mistakes. Watch below as Chairman and CEO of General Motors Ed Whitacre talks about the repayment and touches on the future of GM and read more at gm.com.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

General Motors has dropped to number 15 on the Fortune 500 list, out of the top ten for the first time in 101 years. Ford dropped one spot, from number seven to number eight. Weirdly, without a massive bailout from the US Government, GM wouldn’t even exist. This is the first time in the history of the company that they haven’t been in the top 10.

2009 was an unmitigated disaster, not only for GM for for the entire auto industry. The General definitely took the worst of it though. It was a year spent paring down brands, closing dealers, laying off employees, and chewing through three different CEOs.

While Ford’s year was no banner-maker, that company has introduced a product line up that seems to be doing a better job than any other domestic manufacturer at dragging stalwart import buyers back to an American brand. Please don’t take that as a compliment, as we aren’t sure we’d be “proud” of luring import buyers to American cars that look and feel like imports, but at least they are paying the bills. Ford dropped a spot, but are in a position they’ve never been in before with regard to the 500 list. They’re ahead of GM.

Chrysler? That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Source — MLive.com – General Motors falls out of top ten of Fortune 500 list for the first time in 101 years

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

If you read the major car publications it’s easy to get the feeling that all automotive journalists agree on everything. When journalists sing universal praise, throw jeers or are notoriously silent, it’s hard for readers to disregard.

There are plenty of conspiracy theories that blame editors beholden to advertisers scaring writers into not even trying to say something good about one car or bad about another. Personally, I buy more into the explanation of groupthink, as it’s easy to be confident in your opinion when others have come to the same conclusion time and time again.

I, however, being totally independent (not to mention subtle-as-a-chainsaw) have no problem saying where I differ from the rest. So here is my list of Top Ten Automotive Things About Which I Disagree With My Colleagues.

10) Chrysler 300C: I’ve owned plenty of Chryslers in my time, so maybe this is why I approached the 300C with a more critical eye. Consequently, I never liked the 300C (and its lesser variations) as much as the rest of the automotive journalists.

Everyone else saw a good-looking car with ample power from the “Hemi V8″. I saw past the nice styling and focused on a huge car with sub-Honda Accord-sized leg and knee room (courtesy of typically ultra-thick, but not very comfortable front seats). As nice as the Hemi (sans hemispherical combustion chambers) was, it couldn’t overcome the totally numb steering and spongy braking that made the car feel cumbersome. Plus, as someone who lived through Chrysler ownership, there was always the certainty that the 300C would be just like Chrysler’s other vehicles — engineered at low cost to ensure high failures, which would only be made worse by one of the most poorly trained dealer service networks in America.

Continue reading after the jump!

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By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

GM’s Hummer division, slated to be sold off to Chinese manufacturer Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, will instead be discontinued as communist red tape prevented the sale from being completed within the required timeline. Hummer thus becomes the latest casualty of GM’s restructuring effort, after Pontiac and Saturn officially bit the dust late last year. So does this mean the Third World won’t get to enjoy a glitchy, combustion-prone, lead-painted, crash-test-failing, safety-delete version of GM’s obsolete behemoth? The closest they’ll still be able to get is the Chinese knockoff Dongfeng EQ2050 Warrior. More details here.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Anything Toyota can do, GM can do better, right? Well, maybe if you’re talking about NASCAR. But The General’s voluntary recall, announced last night, of 1.3 million 2005-2010 Cobalts and G5s over power steering issues seems like positively small potatoes compared to the trainwreck that is the Toyota fiasco. The defect is in the electronic power steering assist motor, whose failure has been linked to 14 wrecks and one injury. Apparently, nothing dramatic happens when the electronic assist fails–the steering just becomes a lot harder at low speeds, similar to losing a belt on a traditional power-steering pump. But seeing as no one remembers how to drive with manual steering anymore, it makes sense that the sudden absence of electronic intervention would cause some drivers to lose it. More at Automotive News.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Yesterday GM reached an agreement to sell Saab to Spyker. I’m cautiously optimistic, but somehow I don’t think the troubled brand is out of the woods yet… Via Autoblog