#GM

We don’t know what sort of person will purchase the GMC Hummer EV; presumably, the sort of person that’s also salivating over Tesla’s Cybertruck. Rugged electrics are a novel segment and we’re not sure what its demographic looks like.

Will it be technophiles hoping to secure their masculinity, or hard-living folks who’ve finally find a battery-driven vehicle that speaks to them? More importantly, how will these electric monsters stack up against established bruisers carrying tried-and-true internal combustion engines?

We haven’t the foggiest, and it looks like we’ll be waiting longer than planned to get some answers. General Motors announced it’s delaying the reveal of the new-and-improved Hummer on Wednesday. While no official reason was given, it’s almost certainly the result of lockdown measures relating to the coronavirus.

Unlike their foreign rivals, Ford, General Motors, and, belatedly, Fiat Chrysler held off on nailing down a specific date for a production restart. The latter company was expected to begin ramping up production starting May 4th, but last week’s announcement by UAW President Rory Gamble made it the odd man out. The plan’s now off the table.

According to one report, the three automakers will present a united front, with each operation coming back online on the same day.

Burning through piles of cash as plants sit idle, sales plummet, and the bulk of its vast workforce still demands payment during the virus-borne production shutdown, General Motors is taking new measures to protect its finances.

On Monday, the automaker announced a number of steps designed to anger shareholders in the short term, but a production restart date remains as elusive as before.

It was a sad day when General Motors all but mothballed its Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant — a manufacturing site that had cranked out cars since 1907 — but new production will soon be underway.

Not of sedans or pickups, the latter of which happened to be the plant’s last vehicular products when it ceased assembly in 2019, but masks. A lot of masks.

After spending years in development and even longer in the imaginations of Corvette enthusiasts who longed for something a little wilder, a little more European, the mid-engined C8 Corvette drove straight into a series of roadblocks.

The first was a six-week strike by unionized General Motors workers that pushed C8 production into a new calendar year. Just when it seemed the coast was clear, along came a virus that sent those workers home for an altogether different reason. As such, the C8 is having difficulty leaving the gate. Those looking for al fresco motoring are so far out of luck.

The great General Motors ride-sharing experiment is over. At least for now. Maven, which hit parking lots in 2016 and eventually expanded into the nation’s driveways, was GM’s attempt to put its vehicles to work, rather than sell them to retail or fleet customers like some kind of dinosaur.

For a fee, users could access the GM-owned fleet of Maven products to perform random driving tasks. Short trips, mainly, in the absence of an Uber or Lyft ride or participation in a more formal car-sharing agreement. Tap that app, find the car, unlock it, and drive off. Abandon somewhere after you’re done.

Well, that’s what GM just did with Maven.

While it remains to be seen whether the revamped 2021 Cadillac Escalade enters production on schedule this summer, other details about General Motors’s loftiest SUV have begun leaking out.

One item concerns the vehicle’s price, while the other tidbit might interest those who have a difficult time separating their eco-consciousness from their economic reality.

It’s big and it sells very well, but the upcoming Chevrolet Traverse is having something of an identity issue. Unveiled in top-trim form last month, the refreshed version of the second-generation Traverse was expected to go on sale late this year as a 2021 model.

Fast-forward a few weeks and that plan’s off the table.

This series featured a Callaway creation once before — the incredible and Teal Time upholstered Speedster from 1991. While the Speedster showed what Callaway could do with a Nineties Corvette, the company dabbled in similar era Camaros as well.

Let’s see what they created.

Rare Rides reviews another Pontiac today. And much like the recently featured Bonneville, it’s large and in charge, from the Seventies, and has two doors. Let’s see how much horsepower the 1977 Can Am gained through stickers and spoilers.

To its credit, General Motors was already preparing a foray into ventilator production when President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, locking the automaker into a pact to build truckloads of the life-saving equipment.

On Thursday, details of the no-profit deal became clear.

With some analysts now estimating the coronavirus outbreak’s cost to the automotive industry at as much as $100 billion, there’s not much reason to hope for any vehicle segment to trend in any direction but downward. However, domestic pickup sales have surprised us.

Despite the industry taking it on the chin overall, domestic truck sales are actually improving in the United States — at least by the measure with which we gauge domestic sales performance. Seeing the writing on the wall last month, domestic nameplates began incentivizing product like wild. Apparently, bargains ride two-up with the lead horseman of Pestilence. That, in combination with southern states being slower to enact social distancing measures, helped prop up truck sales. While that may result in the region having a longer recovery, it seems to have padded the market’s fall ever so slightly.

Have you ever wished for a very luxurious coupe for grand touring purposes — one with an unconventional engine placement and the underpinnings of an economy car?

Well, we’ve got a car for you: the 1988 Zimmer Quicksilver.

Mirroring its southern neighbor, Canadian auto sales took a dive last month as measures designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 went into effect across the country. First-quarter volume, as a result, fell roughly 20 percent across the industry, with March’s decline pegged at 48 percent by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants (via Bloomberg).

Still, amid all the gloom were statistical bright spots.

Sometimes, if you find yourself lagging behind the pack and eagerly wish for a quick way to catapult yourself ahead, it makes sense to piggyback on someone else’s work. And in the realm of electric vehicles — brow-furrowingly pricey and time-consuming to develop as they are — automakers are coming to the conclusion that perhaps someone else should do the heavy lifting.

Subaru has Toyota, Ford has Rivian (and Volkswagen), and Honda now has General Motors.