Next Chevy Volt will be 2016 model and ride on new chassis

What do we know about the 2016 Chevy Volt? Well, for now, all we can do is try to put the puzzle together without the box. Thankfully, a new batch of pieces has arrived from a new report in Edmunds, which says that the 2016 model year will introduce the second generation of a car that hasn't been dramatically updated since it went on sale in 2010. The new Volt is getting an "evolutionary styling change" and will ride on a new front-drive platform that has been developed by General Motors. GM's Kevin Kelly told AutoblogGreen that he has "no comment on future products," but he did acknowledge that Chevrolet is working on a second-generation Volt, "but I can't say anything about timing."

Everybody already knew that a next-gen Volt is coming, so that's not a surprise. What we don't know is any real concrete information on the car itself. The few tidbits of information we do have help define the outlines of the next version of Chevy's halo car, but they're not confirmed yet. For the record, they range from the eye-raising (a $10,000 price drop) to the logical (20 percent more electric range). We can't see the whole picture yet, but the pieces do point to the 2016 Volt, which would be released next year sometime, being a much bigger deal than the last update, when the Volt's range was increased by three electric miles thanks to a battery capacity increase of 16 kWh to 16.5.

Source: autoblog.com

Next Camaro to look similar despite new platform underneath

Chevrolet made a splash with its retro design for the reborn, fifth-generation of its Camaro way back when the first concept car debuted at the 2006 Detroit Auto Show. Since then, we've watched the production car age rather gracefully while remaining a strong competitor to the Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger. Still, the current model is getting a bit long in the tooth, meaning we can start speculating about what the sixth-generation model will look like.

According to Edmunds, the next Camaro will be much more Charles Darwin than Simon Bolivar. In other words, expect an evolution of the current car's design, rather than a clean-sheet restart. That's actually pretty surprising considering GM is preparing to shift the Camaro to the rear-drive architecture that underpins both the Cadillac ATS and CTS. Generally, maintaining styling when a car switches platforms presents some challenges, but we're quite happy to see the Camaro will retain the same general look. Muscle cars and retro styling work quite nicely together.

"The difference between the existing and redesigned [Camaro] is not drastically different," an inside source told Edmunds. "It looks like a worked-over current-model Camaro. It is on a different platform, so that is a significant difference, but when they modified it to be on a different platform, the styling did not change that much."

Edmunds also reports that the sixth-gen Camaro should debut in just under a year, at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show as a 2016 model.

Source: autoblog.com