Chevrolet Trucks Blog

The Chevrolet Camaro has always been an iconic car ever sinceits first introduction, Ironically, Sangyup Lee, the designer of the Camaro Concept Coupe and the Camaro Convertible Concept had no idea that the said car was so iconic. Lee said, “I was kind of glad I didn’t know how strong of an icon the Camaro was when I was first working on the project.” According to him, it was the pressure that pushed him to do the amazing design concepts that everyone is talking about nowadays. Among the designs that were lifted from the original Camaro is the gill in front of the rear wheel while the YF-22 fighter jet inspired the creation of the radical angles of the car.

The Chevrolet Camaro Concept was first introduced at the 2006 Detroit Auto Show. It was mainly built using the modified Cadillac STS platform and other details form General Motors rear-wheel-drive vehicles.

The Camaro was equipped with the 400-horsepower LS-2 6.0-liter which provided maximum power. Other features also included 14-inch front rotors and 21- and 22-inch wheels.

In August 2006, General Motors officially announced the start of production for the Camaro. GM Chairman Rick Wagoner said that the 2010 Chevy Camaro will be “virtually identical” to Lee’s concept.

The Chevrolet Camaro, which will still be released in 2010 but as early as now, consumers have already seen the car versions like the coupe, convertible and the one that was featured in the movie Transormers.

The production model will be built off a derivative of GM’s new Zeta platform, developed Holden, which is GM’s Australian wing and will be shared with that company’s new Commodore.

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General Motors India has registered total sales of 60, 032 units in the calendar year 2007 compared to the 35, 823 in 2006. This brought the company an increase of 68 per cent in sales. According to experts, this rise in sales may be attributed to the outstanding sales of the Chevrolet Spark and other new models in 2007.

GM India, in December 2007, posted a record of 144 per cent in sales in comparison to the same period in the year 2006. In fact, it actually sold 6, 309 units in December 2007 alone while in December 2006, it was only able to sell about 2, 583 units. The total sales comprise of 2, 179 units of the Chevrolet Tavera, 1, 800 units of the Chevrolet Aveo, 1, 508 units of the Chevrolet Spark and 822 units of the Chevrolet Optra.

GM India will start the new year’s sales with a bang at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi in January with the Hummer H3 and Cadillac CTS production cars as also the Chevrolet WTCC Ultra, T2X and Sequel concepts as the main displays.

With regard to GM India’s performance in 2007, P Balendran, Vice President, GM India said, “GM India is also working on several programs that will enable us to launch more new models and exciting marketing initiatives.”

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Preparations have been done and all is set for the launch of the Chevrolet Captiva in India come January next year. The Captiva is one of the premium sports utility vehicles of Chevrolet. It can accommodate as much as seven people with its seven-seat layout option. Completely built using the GM Daewoo Automotive Technology in Korea, one can expect that the Captiva will feature the latest technology GM has to offer. As a vehicle, the Captiva is expected to compete with the Honda CR-V, Hyundai Santa Fe as well as other similar vehicles.

When asked on about the Captiva’s launch in India, Karl Slym, the President and Managing Director of GM India, spoke of the abovementioned preparedness of the company. In his words, “The homologation requirements for the Captiva have been completed, but we are yet to finalize the price.”

One can say that the Captiva is like a modern crossover or compact SUV. It has a two-liter turbocharged diesel engine. It features common-rail injection technology and its engine is said to have the capacity to generate as much as 150 bhp. Aside from this, one can say that the Captiva is environment-friendly for it can meet the norms set by the Euro IV when it comes to exhaust emissions.

The Captiva will be launched together with the Cadillac CTS at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. Come January, India, as well as other countries will hopefully be captivated with this latest Chevy creation.

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In the latest news, The National Highway Traffic Administration ordered General Motors Corp. to recall 11,974 of its Sierra and pickup trucks. This is due to the faulty crankshaft positioning sensor. The National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTA) believes that the crankshaft positioning sensor in Chevy pickup trucks can and are likely to fail. It may operate and function well from time to time but it is eventually bound to fail. Failure and even intermittent operations can lead to a poor and rough run of the Chevy truck. It may even cause the engine to stall and no one wants that to happen.

In case the sensors fail entirely, the one using the Chevy pickup truck will not be able to restart it. In the words of the NHTA, “these failures can increase the risk of a crash.” To ensure the safety of Chevy pickup truck users, Chevrolet, with the aid of its dealers will replace the faulty crankshaft positioning sensor free of charge. This will take place after the recall begins next month.

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A decade ago, the automotive industry does not have hybrid on their vocabulary yet. This changed with Toyota’s introduction of the Prius. The main problem then, was that the Prius can’t take on too much load. In fact, one can barely see more than two people ride the Prius. Also, its towing capability is nowhere near those of Sport Utility Vehicles. Unfortunately, SUVs consume so much fuel. With the constant increase of fuel in the world market, auto manufacturers such as the Chevrolet have decided to come up with SUV hybrids as well. This is a concrete answer to the environmentalists who condemn SUVs for their apparent thirst for fuel. For this year, General Motors brings to us the two-mode hybrid system of the full-size Chevrolet Tahoe. With this introduction, GM has a good shot at taking the hybrid crown from Toyota.

The system was first utilized in huge diesel/electric buses, which were produced in cooperation with BMW as well as DaimlerChrysler. This hybrid version of the Tahoe is said to have improve fuel economy by 40 percent when driving in the city. According to the Mary Sipes, the vehicle line director for Full-size Truck Group, “This is a strategy we’ve had in place for quite some time. We’ve always had the means to make a one-off specialty vehicle, but we wanted a bigger footprint, something that could make a huge impact. That’s why we started with the GMT900 platform—we wanted to get big numbers on a big-volume product.”

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