Z-06

Just to give a heads up - we do not need any racing experience, nor we need any NASCAR-esque license. If the car is seized, we may end up paying about $1,000 at the most per person. We are looking for 5-6 members. The most important criteria is one can drive and sustain the heat of racing. On an average, it is an endurance race so going at max capacity is advantageous but not always beneficial. The driver will not drive more than 3 hours due to fatigue and possibly because of fueling. Usually a 3 hour jaunt twice by each driver for 4 drivers is an ideal way to race a 24 hours endurance. But given our lack of experience, time on the wheel will be less than that. Other than that at least we can get together and have a blast. May be get to do some time drills before we actually take part in the competition. Let us discuss this in details and see if we can get for some third party sponsors for this event.

Buick Grand National driven by a Gorgeous Woman.

Would make a great Super/T/GNX.

If people do not remember - GM reduced the price of C6 by about $2,000 over the last MY C5.

Yes, the car is about 500 lbs lighter than the Lacrosse. It weighs like 3,517 lbs according to Chinese specs.

+2. I know landfills are just real estate being wasted. I recycle as much as I can. I was surprised to see almost 80% of our daily stuff can actually be recycled. I wash those empty cans, bowls, of food and put them in recycle bins, rather than having them "dirty" and throwing into trash.

I think we do not have solid information one way or the other for the entire history of earth climate's data since last Ice age to really determine the trend of where the climate is going. You cannot really predict trend based on 1% (100 years compared to 10,000 years) of the data to really understand what is going on. Statistics is not accurate mathematics, it is mathematics which changes with perceptions.

My guess is that we will see the 2.4DI with 190hp and 2.0LDI-Turbo or 3.0DI cranking close to 260 HP.

It all went downhill since then.

Someone had to do it.

What irks me is that this guy DOES NOT care about Corvette's racing pedigree. Are you serious? How can you have handling, performance and cornering without knowledge of how a car behaves on a racetrack? BMW and Nissan (the ones he is quoting) boast that their cars are born from racing. Apparently this notion also slipped from the douche. Corvette has been a class of its own and it should be. There is no need to follow big dollar cars in terms of "showiness" and certainly no need to follow cheap $$$ Japanese eunuch machines. If it is unattainable to him and his fan boys then let it be that way, I am glad I will not be rolling in a company of douches when I pull my Z-06 for a club gathering.

What a way to compare a Corvette to a car which has an engine that sounds like a howling eunuch and a car that does not exist anymore. How tactfully or untactfully he kept away the current generation M3 as it starts at a price way above a Corvette and ends at a price way above the Corvette. Corvette needs one thing - a better appointed interior. That is it. Look at the number of Asians and European grad school students that drool over a Corvette when parked in a parking lot and then you will realize the car's presence Mr. Mentalic. I wish I have time to pick each of his sentence as FOG does. Is it worth it? Probably not, because he is probably a kindergarten student holding a plastic wrench, working on his Tonka truck and calling himself a mechanic. As for his math, Corvette started at just under $43,000 when it was introduced in 2004 as a 2005 now it starts just under $49,000. Infiniti G35 started just under $30,000 in 2004 now it is $35,900. So actually Infiniti is charging more for the inflation world went through over the 5 years.

[source: Inside Line] Please GM, Fix the Corvette By The Mechanic | October 12, 2009 This semi-regular column is written (in his own blood) by an automotive sage and noted malcontent, known as The Mechanic. Mercilessly beaten as a child with rolled-up back issues of old car magazines, our free-spoken hero developed a unique "for your own good" take on cars and the auto industry, along with an unfortunate habit of setting himself ablaze. Later, after a distinguished career as an automotive journalist and magazine editor, he cast off the reins of his musty oppressors, carved out his superego with a plastic spork and became The Mechanic. Before I begin, let me say that the following is not an attack on the people who buy Corvettes. They are good, clean, patriotic car lovers, and I think they should all be applauded for buying American. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Every barrel-chested baldy (sorry, retirees) and stripper (sorry, Bambi) who bought a Corvette recently deserves our respect and admiration for spending their hard-earned cash on America's sports car. God bless them all. I hope they enjoy their cars. This column is not about them. It's about the Corvette itself, which sucks. Truth is, I'm not really sure when it began to suck. I must have been watching my new Girls Gone Wild DVD and missed it, but it does suck and I think we should all be mortified by its suckiness. Sure it performs incredibly well, but the Corvette as a relevant performance car has lost its way. Instead of being the everyman, all-American supercar it once was, the Vette has become too expensive, too extreme and too cheesy. Chevy has blown it by allowing the Corvette's price and performance to get out of hand. And it continues to wrap the Vette in a dated package that is driving America's young car enthusiasts elsewhere. Do you realize that the base price of a new 2010 Corvette is $48,940? That's 50 grand for the cheapest Vette Chevy will sell you. The days of a kid graduating from college, getting a good job, saving up and buying a new Vette are long gone. This is a problem. But price is only part of the Corvette's demise. The sports car's image is another issue. Maybe it was all those butt-ugly Indy pace car editions over the years, or maybe it's the chrome wheels on the ZR1, but the Corvette's image is now more hillbilly than Beverly Hills, more Vegas than Victory Lane. And it might be too late to save it. From where I sit, the Corvette has already been displaced as the attainable dream car for America's youth: displaced by the Infiniti G35 Coupe and the BMW M3 (E46). These two cars (and now their succeeding models, the G37 Coupe and the BMW M3 (E92)) are what the kids desire and aspire to. They've become "the Corvette" for the next generation of enthusiasts that have not yet hit the big four-o. Sure they're slower than a C6, but they represent a far more modern and upscale interpretation of the everyday performance car. They represent what today's car lover wants: speed, style, quality and a nameplate that says he's successful and he knows what's cool. The Corvette just goes fast. But these days everything goes fast. Guys realize they don't really need a car any faster than an E46 M3, which runs low 13s in the quarter-mile. Sure the C6 runs 12s but nobody really cares. These days, guys want a more balanced package. And so the Corvette is being squeezed from the bottom by cars like the Infiniti, and it can't really compete with the upscale stuff (Porsche 911) because of its shoddy interior, questionable fit and finish and 1985 profile. Unfortunate. The Corvette is one fine driving machine. Especially in Z06 and ZR1 trim. But I wouldn't buy one. Not unless I was the richest guy in Bowling Green. Or I owned a few Chevy dealerships. Or I was a stripper in Bowling Green and my sugar daddy owned a few Chevy dealerships. Otherwise I would ward off the Corvette like a sober night of karaoke, and I would do what every other well-educated cultured gentleman with taste and money does. I'd buy myself a Porsche 911. Make it a GT3. And now to make matters worse, there's the Corvette Grand Sport, a new model recently reviewed by the great Dan Pund on this very Web site. It's basically a standard Vette that looks like a Z06. Market research must have showed GM's product planners that there's an untapped poser market. A big block of gold chainers clamoring for a slower, cheaper, inauthentic version of the Z06. Come on, Chevy. Stop going in the wrong direction. Nobody ever asked you to make the Corvette the fastest car you could buy or the fastest car for the money. Nobody needs the Corvette to win Le Mans or pack 600-plus horsepower and cost over $100,000. Of course we want it to perform well, but we also need it to be affordable, insurable and durable. And we want it to be cool. And today the C6 Corvette just isn't cool. Come on GM, give us a Corvette we the people want today, not the Corvette you thought we wanted in 1989. -- The Mechanic, Inside Line Contributor E-mail me at [email protected].

Motherload of priceless pictures - even my T1 line went on snooze mode while downloading.

Crutchfield has some great selections. That is where I do most of the car audio shopping.

Welcome to 2008 They introduced the concept a while back, I think somewhere around NAIAS 2008 auto show. Nevertheless it is a good concept, let us see how the implementation goes.

I think the PA for China is built in Australia and shipped in CKD kits and assembled at the Shanghai assembly plant. So technically PA does consume some of the Aussie plant volume.

What's the holdup on Holden's front?

There is nothing not to be loved about this car when it comes to looks, presence and aura department. CC - push your mom to get one.

My left arm and my face sustained 3rd degree burns from the airbags when my company's Ford Pickup went rolling. Those things are dangerous. As for the intermittent release of the airbags, usually the front ones are activated by presence of a motion sensors just beneath the front bumper. So if in a side crash, if the sensor does not trigger the airbag will not activate. That is why sometimes during a rearended collision, the front airbags do not activate.

Wasn't that supposed to have happened in early 2008, till the economy went in the toilet? I remember reading the leaked document after the 2007 labor contract that "Modernization" of Oshawa was on the to do list.

Now I wish there are a couple of smaller siblings to them - one in the Cruze SS mode and one in the Kappa/Alpha two seater mode - and Chevy lineup will be formidable. Did you test drive any cars?

I prefer honey.