Chevrolet

Chevrolet has announced that the all-electric Silverado will boast a much-higher maximum range than anyone had anticipated. Rory Harvey, General Motors' incoming president for North America, has stated that the Silverado EV Work Truck (WT) will have an EPA-estimated 450 miles of range 450 miles on a full charge. That’s far better than what its rivals are currently offering and exceeds earlier assumptions made by those watching the industry.

Today's Chevrolet Bolt news means that while the number of EVs on the market is growing overall, there aren't many EVs out there, at present, that would be considered "affordable."

The Chevrolet Bolt has been an important player in GM’s move to electrify itself, but as one of the automaker’s early EVs, its time has almost run its course. The affordable car is going away at the end of the year to make way for the production of GM’s new electric trucks, including the Chevy Silverado EV and the GMC Sierra EV. 

As is the wont of most brands, Chevrolet has decided to wring every single ounce of goodwill from a popular trim. Having first shown up on the midsize Colorado about five years ago, the ZR2 name quickly migrated to the Silverado half-ton and is now being applied to the mighty Silverado HD.

And it’s heavy. Real heavy.

We've featured a few classic Ford Galaxies in this space recently, and today it's Chevrolet's turn for a classic. A 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu SS Convertible gets the spotlight.

General Motors has confirmed that the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 will be receiving a number of updates, with the most interesting being the addition of an optional 3.0-liter Duramax turbo-diesel for the ZR2. The base-level 2.7-liter turbocharged inline-four has also been given a new name – TurboMax.

Today's UCOTD is an interesting EV. It's a 2019 Chevrolet Bolt Premier that comes with lane-keep assist, forward-collision alert, digital rearview mirror, heated steering wheel, heated front and rear seats, and Bose audio.

It's also been converted to an Opel Ampera-e.

Basically, it's a Bolt that has Ampera badging and the Ampera grille.

We've known for a while that the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro is on the way to the great junkyard in the sky. Now Chevy has officially announced the send-off.

Today's used car is a wagon with fins. This 1957 Chevrolet is based in Vermont and will run you 35 grand.

Good evening. TTAC rewind is a bit late today due to your humble author being on the road again.

Anyway, I was talking to a few other journalists this week about the Chevrolet Volt and my contention that while it had its faults -- a bit overpriced, the lack of a middle seat in the rear -- the car was generally pretty good, and its extended-range electric powertrain setup could've been revolutionary for electrification, but GM simply didn't market it strongly enough.

I'll admit it -- the one chance I got to drive a Chevrolet SS, I was a bit disappointed, mostly because the manual transmission felt a bit too rubbery for me. That said, I still love the idea of this car -- a full-size performance sedan with a manual transmission and a big honkin' V8.

Maybe I should drive on over to Michigan and give this 2017 Chevrolet SS a shot. Maybe the car is better than I remember.

The eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette remains hard to get almost three years after its introduction, and it appears hopeful buyers may have a little longer to wait for their new sports car. Automotive News reported that General Motors is pausing production at the Bowling Green, Kentucky facility that builds the Corvette due to a temporary parts shortage.

In front of this weekend’s Daytona 24 Hours, Chevy took the time to haul the covers off its newest mid-engined monster meant for customer racing – though you’ll have to wait until next year to see it on the track.

Small Japanese pickups became increasingly popular in North America as the 1970s went on, with plenty of Hiluxes and 520s/ 620s rolling out of Toyota and Datsun showrooms. Detroit wanted some of that minitruck money, and so each of the Big Three turned to a Japanese partner to make it happen. Today's Junkyard Find is the GM player in that game, found in a self-service boneyard near Reno, Nevada.

The Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray was introduced yesterday. Now that we know that it's combining a gas engine and an electric motor, I'm wondering -- what's next for the venerable 'Vette?

This will be a good day for spotting outraged boomers on Facebook. Chevy has just hauled the wraps off its newest addition to the Corvette line – an electrified model packing all-wheel drive and a 1.9 kWh battery pack between the seats.

Relax, hoss. It still deploys a 6.2L V8 engine and, according to Chevrolet, is the quickest production Corvette in history.

Chevrolet will unveil the hybrid, all-wheel drive Corvette E-Ray next week.

As goes General Motors, so goes the nation. Apocryphal or not, the above statement dates to the Eisenhower era when The General was indeed one of the largest influences on American lives. From Dinah Shore to the shores of wherever a GM-built military vehicle might be carrying a GI, Chevrolet and the other divisions once played an outsized part in our world. 

Even in the Nineties as the corporation rebounded from its malaise-era nadir, GM took chances and pushed boundaries. The EV1 drew attention as the first legitimate mass-produced electric vehicle. But the EV spotlight - and Wall Street glory - has been seized by a demagogue and a merry band of followers, making a funky-looking EV genuinely mainstream.

The Bowtie isn’t taking this lying down, but the approach is somewhat novel. Rather than targeting big money from luxury sedans and the like, the volume sales EVs from GM are the pair of Bolts, including this 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV. Deliberately aping the ever-popular crossover market, the Bolt EUV brings something unusual to the EV space - a total lack of weirdness.

If you're looking for a new-ish EV, this forum user has a 2020 Chevrolet Bolt for sale.

When was the last time you heard about the Chevy Malibu? It’s easy to forget that the car still exists, but it does, and there’s an interesting new recall for the 2022 and 2023 models.

The Corvette Z06 is often hailed as “America’s supercar” or the “supercar killer,” and much of the praise comes as a result of its relatively decent starting price. The 2023 Z06 has a starting MSRP of just $105,300, less than half the price of the cheapest Ferrari. With options and upgrades, it’s possible to push the price of a Z06 convertible past $160,000, but that’s only a fraction of one Illinois dealer’s asking price. Volo Auto Sales has a 2023 Corvette Z06 3LZ on sale for $375,000, more than 2.5 times the car’s $148,495 sticker price.

The Chevrolet Bolt is under recall for another defect that reportedly poses a fire risk. However, it’s got nothing to do with the battery this time around. Instead, the automaker has all-new concerns about seat belt pretensioners venting hot exhaust gasses that could ignite interior carpet. In response, General Motors will be recalling 140,000 examples of the Bolt produced for the North American market.

This afternoon's TTAC Rewind is meta, in a sense. Author Jack Baruth notes that TTAC traffic numbers sometimes show that years-old reviews are doing well -- because people are searching for a particular model as a used car.

Despite what brands like Toyota or Honda would have you believe, there is a legitimate distinction between electrified vehicles that run on gasoline and fully electric vehicles. That said, it’s a distinction that’s tough to explain to the sort of normies who think of Priuses (Prii?) as “electric” cars – and, since the normies out-number the car enthusiasts by a wide margin, the biggest news of the week has to be the leaking of Chevy’s first ever “electric” Corvette.

Chevy is selling all the Corvette and Corvette Z06 models it can build, driving wait times for some models into the years-long timeframe. That gives buyers a lot of time to think while they wait for their new mid-engine sports car to show up. Bummer, yes, but never underestimate the magic a bored, obsessed enthusiast can make with a little extra time on their hands. One of them just dug up a hidden configurator for the upcoming electric Corvette, dubbed the ERay. It’s important to note that we’re likely looking at a hybrid here, not a Corvette EV or PHEV.

It appears that Chevrolet will officially be building two new vehicles under a sub-brand. They'll use the C8 platform but not the Corvette name, and one will be a crossover and the other a four-door coupe.

The question is, will this work for Chevy?

Just the other day, we reported on Mark Reuss's comments suggesting that a new car or crossover was coming and it would be based on the Chevrolet Corvette C8 platform but it wouldn't use the Corvette name.

Now, a new report suggests it's official.

General Motors president (and, IIRC, former TTAC commenter) Mark Reuss had quite the Investor Day reveal -- Chevrolet has a C8-based performance car in the works. And it won't share the iconic Corvette nomenclature.

Chevrolet has been using a "metered" approach for ordering the high-zoot Z06 trim of the 2023 Corvette.

Meaning the order banks were opened and then temporarily closed. Now they're open again. Oh, and deliveries have begun.

Now that the Spark hatchback has shuffled off this mortal coil, the Trax serves as Chevy’s lowest-priced vehicle. For 2024, the bowtie brand is giving it an overhaul by binning its awkward appearance and overhauling the drivetrain. Will better looks and lower price but less power and half the driven wheels prove a winning formula?

Just a year after a massive recall that impacted tens of thousands of Chevrolet Bolt EVs, General Motors is expanding production of the electric hatchback and other models. The Bolt and Bolt EUV saw record-high sales through the third quarter, but the rising tide of GM’s production boost will lift several other models, too.

The motoring world has known about the Equinox EV for some time, ever since the company spilled some electric beans at CES in Vegas earlier this year. Now, the folks at Chevy are ready to talk specifics – including trim levels and estimated driving range.

A couple’s recent experience in Florida highlighted an issue that’s bound to become more prevalent as the motoring world leans into its EV future. After experiencing some issues they took their Chevrolet Volt to a dealer in Cape Coral, Florida. It turned out the Volt had a battery issue, and it could be fixed for $29,842. Welcome to the future.

General Motors has no shortage of off-road trims in its truck lineup, ranging from Z71 to ZR2 on the Chevy side and all the way up to AT4X over at GMC. Now, the bowtie brigade is borrowing the Bison suffix from its Colorado midsizer and applying it to big-bro Silverado.

Oh – and this tidbit before the jump: Its silky inline-six diesel is set to make more power in 2023.

With the Chevrolet Colorado being revealed a couple of weeks ago, you knew it wouldn’t be long before the crew at GMC rolled out their variation on a similar theme. Re-upping for 2023 in the once-again competitive midsize truck segment, the Canyon will apparently be focusing on its high-level (and high profit) trims.

Last week, we told you about a Corvette test mule that burned.

Well now you can see it happen.

With the Chevrolet Bolt gradually losing its competitive edge as more all-electric vehicles take the field, and the car on the hook for a high-profile recall relating to battery fires, General Motors opted to reduce its price by six grand this year in a bid to make the 2023 model year more appetizing to consumers. Prior to the Biden administration pushing to renew EV tax credits as part of the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" (basically a tweaked version of Build Back Better), GM had little hope of its vehicles benefiting from continued government incentives that it had already exceeded its sales quota for and needed a remedy. However the sudden price cut didn't sit well with customers who had just purchased a Bolt EV (or EUV) at the earlier price point, so the automaker attempted to cut them a semi-Faustian bargain.

A prototype electrified Chevrolet Corvette has burned during testing.

Over my years in the auto industry, one thing has been made abundantly clear: Truck buyers are loyal. Sure, the occasional fluctuation will occur, but for the most part, Ford buyers will buy another Ford when the time comes, and the same with Chevy, GMC, Ram, and Toyota.

Why, then, do the truck makers keep redesigning? Beyond incorporating new technologies for improved performance, safety, and efficiency, there’s always a risk of alienating their base customers when reaching for conquest sales. Chevrolet did that a few years ago with the Silverado, revealing a truck with an interior that was not nearly as nice as the rest of the industry. The good ship Bowtie has been righted with the 2022 Chevrolet Silverado, thankfully, as even on this LT trim the passenger accommodations have been vastly improved.

Detroit’s truck makers love beating each other over the head. Witness the power wars happening at one end of the table, endless innovations in the cargo box at the other, plus the current obsession with off-road one-upmanship. And that’s even before all hands start cranking out electric trucks packing a bazillion horsepower.

The midsize segment is not immune. Chevrolet has introduced the ’23 Colorado, a truck with upgrades suitable for keeping up with (and passing) the Joneses. Oh – and they also pulled a trick taken from the Book of Detroit: Take the engine from a larger machine and stuff it up the nose of a smaller one.

General Motors is looking into using artificial intelligence — AI — as part of its vehicle-inspection process.

GM has made an investment in Israeli startup UVeye, a company that makes vehicle diagnostic systems.

Ah, the Chevrolet Corvair. Easily the most controversial American car ever made, nearly two million examples were sold during the 1960 through 1969 model years. It remains one of the most common 1960s Detroit cars in Ewe Pullet-style car graveyards to this day. I found this sporty 1962 Monza Club Coupe in a Denver-area yard last month.

Gearheads with a thirst for the off-road are spoilt for choice – and there’s more on the way. Chevrolet has announced a truck at which they were strongly hinting earlier this year: The Silverado ZR2 Bison.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has listed its’ automotive recalls for June 2 through 9 and the list includes Audi, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, and Honda vehicles for various types of recalls.

We return to the Turbo-Hydramatic once more today, and our third installment sees us at a critical point in the timeline of the automatic transmission. Fuel economy pressure from the government and performance demands of the consumer increased considerably in the intervening years since the THM’s debut in 1964. That meant the creation of lighter, more compact, and cheaper versions of the Turbo-Hydramatic compared to its flagship shifter, the THM400. GM branched out into the likes of the THM350, THM250, and the very problematic THM200.

In 1987, GM stepped away from the traditional THM naming scheme and switched to a new combination of letters and numbers. Number of gears, layout, and strength combined to turn the THM400 into the 3L80. But the hefty gearbox was already limited by then to heavier truck applications; passenger cars moved on to four forward gears after the dawn of the Eighties.

Our Abandoned History coverage of the Turbo-Hydramatic transmission series continues today. The THM was a singular solution to two different automatic transmissions in use by Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Buick in 1963. Turbo-Hydramatic arrived at a time of modernization for the automatic, which prior to the mid-Sixties was regarded as inefficient and less than smooth.

The THM400 was the 1964 replacement for the Hydra-Matic and Buick’s Dynaflow and established itself as a smooth and reliable gearbox. It proved useful in a variety of luxury and heavy-duty applications and shrugged off weight and torque easily. In short order, it took off as the transmission of choice for various small manufacturers outside of GM. However, no matter how excellent the THM400 was, it found itself squeezed by a drive toward greater fuel efficiency. It was also a bit hefty to be of broad use in smaller or lighter passenger cars. GM needed more Turbo-Hydramatics!

A few weeks ago, we concluded Abandoned History’s two-part coverage of the Chrysler UltraDrive transmission. Within the comments was a request for more transmission coverage of an equally abandoned nature. Let it be so! Come along as we discuss the vast automatically shifted expanse that was the Turbo-Hydramatic transmission family, by General Motors.

On Monday, General Motors’ added a second shift for Heavy Duty variants of the Chevrolet Silverado at Oshawa Assembly to ensure the automaker can meet demand. There are also plans to launch a third shift to spur production of light-duty pickups after GM spent the last two years struggling to deliver vehicles in a timely manner.

GM Canada recently representatives from the Canadian federal government, eager to show that its $2 billion investment into Ontario manufacturing (specifically at Oshawa and CAMI Assembly) had already borne fruit. While this is said to eventually include the production of BrightDrop’s all-electric and perpetually connected Zevo vans, GM is presently focused on swelling production on some of its most valuable products.

Ford Motor Co and General Motors will be individually suspending production in Michigan next week due to supply chain constraints. However, it’s difficult not to notice that the chosen facilities are responsible for lower-volume models they could probably afford to idle.

GM is stalling Lansing Grand River Assembly and Stamping, citing a parts shortage it said had nothing to do with the ongoing deficit of semiconductor chips. The company later stated that the Russo-Ukrainian war had not played a factor, abandoning the two most popular excuses for why something isn’t being done in 2022. Meanwhile, Ford has said the chip shortage has everything to do with its temporary closure of Flat Rock Assembly.

We return to the saga of GM’s High Technology engine today, after taking a diesel detour in our last entry. Concurrent in the High Technology engine’s timeline, the Oldsmobile diesel’s failure was quick, but certainly not painless. It put the majority of American consumers off the idea of a passenger car equipped with a diesel engine. And by the time GM pulled the diesel from its various brand lineups, there was a strategy change over in HT4100 land: Not calling the engine HT anymore.

In today’s edition of Abandoned History, we return once more to the late Seventies engines of General Motors. After the disaster which was the V8-6-4 and the subsequent release of the quite flawed HT4100 V8, we take a sidestep today into diesel. Time for a turn with the cost-cut cast iron Oldsmobile oil burner that accompanied the troubled gasoline engines at GM dealerships across the country.

I took a few days off in December for a vacation, flying out to New Mexico just in the nick of time to avoid the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID. I’d need a rental car to get from the airport in El Paso, Texas, to Las Cruces – and to tool around town a bit, maybe.

Being on an automotive journalist’s salary and knowing I’d likely never have more than one passenger at a time, I decided to go the least-expensive route and get a compact – “compact” by the rental-car company’s definition, but subcompact per the EPA.

“Nissan Versa” or similar, the Web site said. Not great, but something I could live with for a few days. I didn’t need a lot of space or comfort.

Chevrolet built Cavaliers for close to a quarter-century, selling something like five million units. If you count the all the other J-body siblings sold around the world (including some really weird stuff), the extended Cavalier family is one of the largest in automotive history. Somehow, though, the once-ubiquitous 1982-1987 first-generation Cavaliers have all but disappeared from North American car graveyards; I’ve documented plenty of later Cavaliers during my junkyard travels, sure, but the early ones seem to have been crushed decades ago. Finally, here’s a reasonably straight ’85 wagon in a northeastern Colorado yard.

Today’s Rare Ride will upset some of you. It’s one of those cars that was very common in its day, entirely disposable, and a prime example of the characterless econobox. Yet because it was such a throwaway, nobody ever saved one – except this one.

Visiting us from 21 years ago, it’s a Chevy Metro with 400 miles.

The 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is here.

And on paper, it appears to be bad-ass in ways worthy of the Z06 designation.

The Rare Rides series is a friend to the General Motors J-body. In 2018 we featured a 2000 Sunbird from ’83, in 2020 there was the ’84 Oldsmobile Firenza Cruiser, and earlier this year a ’91 Cavalier wagon.

But we’ve never featured the OG J-body main event, a first-gen Cavalier. Let’s go.

All-electric pickup trucks are easily one of the strangest new vehicle segments of the day. Designed to appeal to a demographic of American motorists that normally wouldn’t give EVs a second glance, they’ve probably managed to get more tech nerds interested in pickups than anything else. Leathery dudes who have labored outdoors their entire lives remain dubious that fuel-deprived products will make ideal working vehicles. But there are outliers and their younger (or wealthier) counterparts seem much more willing to entertain the marketing push behind the sudden onslaught of bedded electrics. And one wonders where these trucks are supposed to belong.

On Thursday, General Motors announced that the Chevrolet Silverado EV will be making its official debut at CES 2022 — a venue that has become synonymous with highfalutin electrics both real and imagined. With traditional automotive trade shows being canceled left-and-right over pandemic fears, the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show may have been Chevy’s best option. But it also opens up questions about what kind of customer is being targeted by the manufacturer.

Today’s Rare Ride coverage was prompted when your author saw an unusual pickup truck on the roads of Cincinnati. The truck in question was a black Sierra Denali from the early 2000s, with a telltale feature on its rear fenders: little lights on either side. Let’s talk Quadrasteer.