2015 Ford Mustang dealer order guide surfaces

Details about the all-new, 2015 Ford Mustang continue to leak out. In fact, at this point, it's more of a stream than a drip. Its option prices are already available, and now the full ordering guide is on the web for all of the trims thanks to the Mustang 6G forum. Ford is rapidly running out of secrets to keep about its new sports coupe.

The 21-page guide can be perused in the gallery below and contains all of the standard features, colors, options codes, descriptions. Generally everything you might want to know about the 'Stang is there, other than its price or power. It even shows off the available wheel designs.

The guide finally gives away the contents of the Performance Package for the EcoBoost and GT trims. TheEcoBoost's package includes: A larger rear sway bar, new chassis tuning, larger brake rotors, 19-inch black wheels, retuned driver assistance systems, an aluminum dash panel, added gauge pack, 3.55 limited slip rear differential, larger radiator, heavy-duty front springs and spoiler delete. When the options pricing leaked, it indicated the package would cost $1,995. If that is the case, it seems like quite a deal.

For the GT trim, the performance package includes most of the same upgrades from the EcoBoost plus a strut tower brace, K Brace, a 3.73 Torsen limited-slip rear differential and – only for cars with a manual gearbox – Brembo six-piston front brakes. The leaked options pricing indicated that package would sell for $2,495.

If you are in the market for the 2015 Mustang, this ordering guide is a must-read. Happy planning.

Source: autoblog.com

GM updating fullsize pickups for 2015

As Ford prepares to hit the market with its x-factor, aluminum-intensive F-150 and Ram sales stand tall enough to meet General Motors truck sales eye-to-eye, GM is putting the word out that it's going to add more features to its trucks and do so more regularly. An executive engineer for pickups told reporters that "a whole array" of changes are on the way as soon as the 2015 model year and then would likely come "the year after that, the year after that, the year after that."

Only GM knows the way it plans to go with its fullsize trucks, with almost everyone else – including its dealers – griping about market share at the same time as they applaud profits and hope for clarity and growth. GM raised prices on the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra not long after launch even as it was losing market share and getting called "the least successful large pickup launch over the last 15 years," further upsetting dealers, then Ram outsold the Silverado in March of this year and led GM to increase incentives. But transaction prices rose with the premium; in the first quarter of this year more than 37 percent of the trucks costing more than $40,000 were the Silverado and Sierra, leading one dealer to say of the Sierra, "You can't sell a cheap one," and the analyst who made that "least successful launch" comment to opine, "GM may have made the right call to go for price over share."

We won't know for a few months what any of these updates will be, but the rumored changes for the Silverado and Sierra appear to cover all the bases, including appearance, capability and fuel economy. Rumors run to higher gear counts, stop-start technology and diesel engines before brand-new pickups come for the 2019 model year, those next-generation models supposedly to be engineered with a lot more aluminum.

Source: autoblog.com

2015 Chevy Corvette Z06 Convertible is a topless temptress

With summer right around the corner, and the Great Winter of Doom now at our backs (just), we're thinking warm thoughts here in the Snowbelt. Just in time for the season, Chevy is dropping the top on its newCorvette Z06 Convertible, debuting here at the New York Auto Show.

Everything we love about the Z06 Coupe ("The Big Nasty," as GM's North American boss, Mark Reuss, calls it) remains intact here with the droptop. Under the hood is the same 625-horsepower, supercharged 6.2-liter V8, the same seven-speed manual transmission, and most importantly, the same curb weight. That's hugely important, as most convertibles with their complex folding roof mechanisms and body-strengthening materials tend to be slightly heftier than their fixed-top counterparts. Good work, Chevy.

In person, the Z06 Convertible looks just as mean and track-attack purposeful as the coupe. And considering you can still get the same suspension, brakes, wheels and tires as the hardtop, we're thinking it'll be just as rad to drive once the Z06 goes on sale later this year.

Source: autoblog.com

Chevy Camaro is a good sport, wishes Ford Mustang Happy 50th

It was 1966 when Chevrolet launched its challenger to the wildly successful Ford Mustang, the Camaro. While the competition between the two brands was already healthy, the arrival of the Camaro set off one of the most intense, model-to-model rivalries in the industry.

That competitive spirit hasn't stopped Chevy and the Camaro from wishing Ford's iconic muscle car a Happy 50th Birthday as the Ford's April 17 anniversary rolls around. These two cars have been linked over the years, and while the rivalry took a break for a few years in the 2000s, today's competition between the Camaro and Mustang is as fierce as it's ever been.

You might recall that this friendliness when it comes to major milestones isn't too rare. Ford put on quite a display for General Motors' hundredth anniversary back in 2008. As the Camaro's fiftieth birthday approaches in 2016, we wouldn't be surprised to see the Mustang sending its best wishes to its Bowtie rival.

Source: autoblog.com

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

1 in 5 motorists name their car, do you?

 

We all know someone who's named their car. And chances are – let's face it – that person is probably a girl. We're not being sexist here: we're just looking at the numbers presented by a new study from DMEautomotive.

The industry research group conducted a study that indicates that one in five American car owners have named their vehicles. But that one in five is likely to be female and between the ages of 18 and 24. The study upsets certain notions of men being more attached to their cars than women, and millennials not caring about cars: at 23 percent, women proved more likely to personify their vehicle than men (at 18 percent), and car owners in their late teens or early twenties are the four times more likely to name their cars than someone over 55.

Because most women (by far) view their car as female and men are pretty evenly split, there's about twice as many "female" cars on the road as "male" ones (those identities having been ascribed by the vehicles' owners). But this part had us scratching our heads the most: apparently one in four cars that have names, have names that begin with the letter B: as the tidy infographic above shows, Baby, Betsy, Bessie and Betty (along with Black Beauty) rank among the most popular names for cars in America.

Of course some cars may be more susceptible to being named than others, though the study (whose findings you can read below) doesn't get into that. As our friends at Road & Track discovered, Mini dealers have devised a simple way of figuring out whether an owner may be interested in trading in: if they've named their Mini, chances are slim that they'll be willing to part with it.

By Noah Joseph
Courtesy of  http://www.autoblog.com/2014/01/15/car-name-study-poll/