Until now, General Motors hasn’t exactly taken the small-car market seriously. While Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia have built their empires on the hoods of pint-sized, fuel-efficient transportation, history has shown the captains of Detroit tend to offer up parts-bin afterthoughts. Cars like the Chevrolet Cavalier and Cobalt have left a sour taste in the mouths of buyers thanks to noisy and de-contented cabins, rough engines and build quality that would make a Yugo blush. As a result, Americans have developed a sort of Pavolovian retch when we hear the term “compact car.”

But a new dawn may be approaching – one heralded by a rash of new straw-weight fighters that aim to bring a global small car philosophy to the U.S. GM intends to be part of that party with the introduction of the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, a sedan that, for all intents and purposes, is more of a landmark model for the company than the endlessly-hyped Chevrolet Volt. To get our meaning, you’ll need to throw all of your heinous memories about American-built small cars out the window beginning… now.

Photos by Zach Bowman / Copyright (C)2010 AOL

Continue reading First Drive: 2011 Chevrolet Cruze sails into new era of small cardom

First Drive: 2011 Chevrolet Cruze sails into new era of small cardom originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During his stop today at the General Motors’ Detroit-Hamtramck facility where the production Chevrolet Volts will soon roll off the line, President Obama did something unusual for a president: he got behind the wheel of a car and went for a drive. It was a short one – just ten feet – but that’s what happens when you need not only GM’s permission but also the Secret Service’s to drive a not-yet-in-production, new-technology Chevy Volt in black. We won’t be geting a full-length review from the President, but he did give his initial impression after stepping out: “I’m telling you guys, pretty smooth.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said after the event that Obama has driven at a Secret Service training facility this past April and also piloted a Dodge Charger at a closed-press event. Other than these two times, Obama hasn’t driven since getting Secret Service protection in early 2007.

[Source: ABC | Images: AFP/Getty Images, Jim Watson and AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]

Obama drives the Volt… all of 10 feet originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a live web chat aired on GM’s official blog, Buick Product Marketing Director, Roger McCormack answered questions from the general public. He said that Buick is looking into increase the brand’s line-up in the U.S with new models.

Apart from a small crossover that has been confirmed, McCormack said Buick is considering numerous alternatives including a coupe, convertible with either a soft-top or a hard-top and a station wagon.

One question asked was whether or not Buick is considering a coupe model, in which McCormack answered: “Yes, it’s under very strong consideration”.

Another question was about a convertible. He answered; “We are always looking for ways to excite our customers…I think a convertible would do just that. Nothing to announce today but know we will look hard at a convertible option”.

All in all, McCormack said: “As we mentioned, we are looking at all options…a coupe, convertible, a wagon, a retractable hardtop and more…we don’t know right now which direction we’ll go. We think the Buick brand can stretch in a lot of directions.”

Unsurprisingly, McCormack didn’t reveal many details about the potential models. However, we imagine that the coupe, station wagon and convertible models would underpin either the Regal (Vauxhall/Opel Insignia) or the Vauxhall/Opel Astra. A sedan variant – badged as Buick Excelle GT in China – is expected to be launched in the U.S next year.

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Can manufacturing save us? When President Obama bailed out Chrysler and General Motors, sending them to bankruptcy court last year, the nascent administration touted the Detroit Three as the last bastion of big-time manufacturing in the United States, a necessary part of our economy. Now that the economic recovery is stalling, GM, Ford and Chrysler are still growing. All three are profitable for the first time since 2004, Obama told a crowd of cheering United Auto Workers Friday. The bailouts saved about 1 million jobs, and the auto industry has added 55,000 more in the last year, he said.

This was a midterm election campaign rally, held at Chrysler’s Jeep Grand Cherokee assembly plant on Detroit’s Conner Avenue. This is what presidents of either party do as the midterms approach.

“We were in the midst, when I took office, of a deep and painful recession, that cost our economy about 8 million jobs. And took a terrible toll on communities like this. Our economy was shrinking about 6 percent per quarter. Now, this morning, we learned our economy grew by about 2.4 percent for the second quarter of the year. So that means it has been growing for one full year.”

The growth is slowing. That 2.4-percent growth in the second quarter is about one point below economists’ projections, and down from 3.7 percent in the first quarter and 5 percent in the last quarter of ’09. It’s up from 0 percent in 2008. Overall, according to Commerce department figures, the economy shrank about 2.6 percent in 2009, mostly in the first half of the year.

But Obama reiterated the three options his administration had in dealing with the failing American auto industry. Three options that the Treasury department’s manufacturing chief, Ron Bloom, outlined for me in an interview earlier this year. The new administration rejected one, the unmitigated federal bailouts; two, letting GM and Chrysler fail; for three, the bailouts as we know them today. The bankruptcies left many investors and creditors with nothing, UAW workers with a two-tier wage formula and union-owned retiree benefits and many fewer jobs, and thousands of dealerships without franchises. GM’s bankruptcy cut itself nearly in half, and I’m still amazed how quickly and effortlessly the General went from eight to four brands in North America.

Here’s part of the campaign pitch: “our strategy was to get this company and this industry back on its feet … take a hands-off approach, saying ‘you guys know the business, we don’t. We’re going to give you a chance, but we know you’ve got a chance.”

He shot back at opponents of the GM and Chrysler bailouts, which at the time, and probably to this day, seems to include anyone outside Michigan and a few struggling cities elsewhere in the Midwest.

“The fact that we’re standing in this magnificent factory today is a testament to the decisions we made and the sacrifices you, and countless stakeholders across this industry and this country were willing to make. So today, this industry is growing strong. It’s creating new jobs. It’s manufacturing the fuel efficient new cars and trucks that will carry us toward an energy-independent future.”

There’s the nod to factory workers and environmentalists who helped Obama win the presidency in 2008. If a good number of them, more than the number who usually come out for mid-terms, vote in November, Democrats may stem the expected shift to Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

Obama announced Friday that Chrysler will keep open past 2012 its Sterling Heights, Michigan, assembly plant, where it builds the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger. Chrysler/Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne told reporters after Obama’s speech that the factory, which Chrysler was planning to shut down in the first quarter of next year, will build the facelifted midsize sedans, and then the full redesign scheduled for the 2014 model year.

After the Jeep plant, Obama appeared at the Chevrolet Volt assembly plant in nearby Hamtramck, where GM announced it would boost Volt production by 50 percent in its second full year, 2013. That’s from 30,000 units in calendar ’12 to 45,000 in ’13, pretty good numbers for a car on which GM will lose money because of the cost of the high technology. This stuff doesn’t come cheap.

Obama even took what GM describes as an “impromptu” 40-foot drive in a production Volt at the Hamtramck plant. GM’s event seems a subtle jab at Rush Limbaugh’s confused attack on extended-range hybrid. (At one point, he told his radio audience, according to reports, that the Volt goes just 40 miles before running down its electrical charge.) Limbaugh said that the Obama administration had to offer a ,500 tax credit in order to get anyone to buy the Volt.

The 0-,500 tax credit was renewed in Obama’s 2009 economic recovery act, but that was after the Bush administration renewed the tax credit in 2008, from its own Energy Policy Act of 2005. Don’t tell me Limbaugh’s against renewing a Bush-era tax break?

The Volt is getting it from both sides. Days before Limbaugh’s uninformed rant, the self-important Hybrid Owners of America put out an email comparing the Chevy Volt with the Nissan Leaf. “How can you have a ‘battle of the electric cars’ when there’s only one electric car in the match?” it asks, while going on to point out that the Volt will require “pricey premium unleaded” for its gas-powered generator.

Ah, well. No matter what GM, Chrysler, and even Ford build in the next several years, it’s going to take some time before the U.S. auto industry gets the kind of respect Asian and European brands have enjoyed, including from the automotive and non-automotive press.

The president may have been campaigning Friday, but he had good reason to crow about the auto industry. It’s smaller and healthier today, able to make a profit at lower volumes, which are volumes that indicate how weak the economy remains. I don’t know whether a majority of Americans today would say they’re better off today than they were a year ago. I can tell you that one factory-full of Chrysler workers would say “yes,” and those still working at GM and Ford, and a good number of those of us who live in and near Detroit would agree.

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So, the Chevy Volt will require premium gasoline, but don’t worry, premium gasoline makes the Volt 5 percent more fuel efficient when in range extended mode. Unfortunately, however, premium gasoline costs about 10 percent more.

Then again, if you can afford a Chevy Volt, do you care about the cost of premium gas? Of course, if you can afford a Volt, do you need a 00 tax credit?

“The Volt is a game-changing product,” says an Obama vehicles executive. The iPhone was a game-changing product, and it didn’t take a tax credit. And they sold over 90 million of the things. A game-changing product does not need a tax credit. They’re mutually exclusive.”

Rush Limbaugh made that point, recently, according to Straightline, which then used Limbaugh’s rant to ask whether vehicles like the Volt are deserving of tax credits.

I say yes, but not in the way the plug-in tax code is currently written. Like the Volt, the current plug-in tax credit doesn’t make cost-effective sense. Too much focus is on battery size rather than the potential of real world change. Unfortunately, if a plug-in is going to achieve success, it’s probably going to have to be a small battery plug-in hybrid according to the experts, and even then success will be difficult.

Consequently, while I’m not a big Limbaugh fan or hater (to be honest I’ve never listened to a show), he makes a valid point. Ultimately, competition and free markets are not purely evil tools of the devil’s capitalism, and when tax credits are focused on political favoritism rather than real world realities, inefficiency is inevitable.

Today, automakers have many tools to increase automotive efficiency, they just don’t have any incentive. Consumers don’t care that much, unless gas prices are sustainably significantly higher, and regulations don’t demand pushing the limits of efficiency. Thus,  if tax credits are the best solution, then they must inspire cost-effective, efficient competition. Otherwise, it’s all just tax-funded greenwashing and a prayer for a miracle.

On the other hand, to be sure, America can expect Japan, Korea and China, for instance, to compete against our products, and in the end it will all boil down to one thing: the most bang for the buck.

For now plug-in tax credits have little to do with the most bang for the buck or real competition, and that might be OK, at the R&D level. The possibility of speeding up a battery breakthrough is a worthwhile endeavor, but it can’t be the primary goal, especially when the science isn’t very supportive. Furthermore, the move to battery-powered vehicles is ultimately about efficiency, and we should be striving towards that efficiency as efficiently as possible if we want the most bang for our tax-funded policies.

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