Relatively new company Bright Automotive has signed an agreement with General Motors whereby GM’s new venture arm has provided funding to the Indiana automaker. This is the first funding action by General Motors Ventures, and will help accelerate Bright’s production of the IDEA, a “revolutionary” plug-in hybrid commercial vehicle.
Ford releases a “Harley Davidson” edition of their F-150 pickup truck almost every year, and this year is no different. The latest 2011 F-150 Harley-Davidson Edition will get the new 6.2-litre V8 powerplant that first debuted in the 2nd-generation F-150 Raptor.
The 2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe and CTS-V Coupe are now available to pre-order at Cadillac showrooms across the Middle East, and will start arriving in the GCC this September.
After a little more than a month, the 2010 Chevrolet Malibu long-termer finally left our fleet last week. We would’ve liked to keep it longer as we still had a lot to cover about it, but General Motors Middle East wanted to put the car back in use as a press test-drive vehicle. But before we gave it back, we just did a quick run to see what the engine is capable of in terms of fuel economy.
General Motors has announced that selected Chevrolet dealers in the United States have begun taking customer orders for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the first mass-production electric vehicle with extended-range capability. Following the U.S. introduction, the Volt will go on sale in global markets starting with Europe and China in 2011. A few will also be sent to the GCC for hot-weather testing to see if they are viable for sale in the UAE.
We honestly don’t have much of an interest in racing. Race cars rarely look like the cars we drive on the street. However, touring cars are always interesting, but usually consist of common European brands, so even that gets boring. However, the Italian Superstars series seems rather interesting, considering radical entrants such as the Chrysler 300C, the Maserati Quattroporte, the Cadillac CTS-V and the Chevrolet CSV CR8 do battle against the usual BMW M3, Audi RS4 and even BMW M5 teams.
Toyota has announced a voluntary safety recall involving approximately 373,000 2000-2004 Toyota Avalon sedans sold in the United States to address the possibility that the vehicle’s steering lock bar could break under certain conditions.
After bothering people via a dedicated Facebook group for months, Ford has finally unveiled the all-new 2011 Explorer. As known earlier, the new Ford Explorer is based on the same platform that underpins the Taurus and the Flex, which unfortunately means the demise of the outgoing body-on-frame Explorer platform and its inherent off-road capabilities. Rather, Ford claims to “reinvents the Explorer SUV with best-in-class fuel economy, improved driving dynamics and terrain management system, all wrapped in a modern, weight-saving design.”
Dubai’s Al Yousuf business group, which among its assets can count the Daihatsu dealer franchise in the UAE, has apparently bought out the US-based Phoenix Motorcars firm, in which it was a silent shareholder previously. Phoenix is a builder of niche electric vehicles and went bankrupt recently. Al Yousuf says this could mark the entry of electric vehicles in the UAE and GCC region.
We still hold fast to our belief that Twitter is the biggest waste of time since the advent of the internet, but occasionally, about 1% of the time, it can be a source of fresh news. The awful Dodge Durango, still in showrooms as a “new” car in the U.S. and the U.A.E. after it went out of production in 2008, is going to be replaced by a new version based on the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee. And some media hack leaked a photo of one on Twitter.