Lifted! Chevy 2500hd! Diesel! Toyo M/t! Navigation! 4x4! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Chevrolet planning low-cost Corvette under Stingray?

If you're burnt out on musings about the Chevrolet Corvette, you'll want to go ahead and skip this post. Motor Trend reports General Motors is hard at work on a low-cost version of the seventh-generation sports car for 2015. Rumored to be called the Corvette Coupe, the car will forgo the Stingray and skip the 450-horsepower 6.2-liter V8 engine in favor of a 5.3-liter V8 with under 400 ponies. If you're keeping track, that's a shade of the same engine found behind the headlights of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra.
The report also suggests the Coupe will receive a number of aesthetic tweaks to separate it from the Stingray, including different front and rear fascias as well as new front fenders and a rear diffuser. Motor Trend says the point of all this is to cut the car's price tag, which means we may see a Corvette on showroom floors for less than $50,000 if this car comes to fruition.

Consumer Reports criticizes small turbo engines for misleading performance, fuel economy claims [w/video]

Consumer Reports has taken aim at at small-displacement, forced-induction engines, saying the powerplants don't manage to deliver on automaker fuel economy claims. Manufacturers have long held that smaller, turbocharged engines pack all power of their larger displacement cousins with significantly better fuel economy, but the research organization says that despite scoring high EPA economy numbers, the engines are no better than conventional drivetrains in both categories. Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing for Consumer Reports, says the forced induction options "are often slower and less fuel efficient than larger four and six-cylinder engines."
Specifically, CR calls out the new Ford Fusion equipped with the automaker's Ecoboost 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. The institute's researchers found the engine, which is a $795 option over the base 2.5-liter four-cylinder, fails to match competitors in acceleration and served up 25 miles per gallon in testing, putting the sedan dead last among other midsize options.
The Chevrolet Cruze, Hyundai Sonata Turbo and Ford Escape 2.0T all got dinged for the same troubles, though Consumer Reports has found the turbo 2.0-liter four-cylinder in the BMW 328i does deliver on its promises. You can check out the full press release below. You can also read the full study on the Consumer Reports site, or scroll down for a short video recap.

2015 Chevrolet Cruze spied on its home turf

The next Chevrolet Cruze isn't set to go into production for about another year, and we're just now seeing prototypes of the new compact running around here in the States. Not much more has been revealed since we saw the car blasting through the snow in Europe, but we can still clearly see new design elements like the larger grille, slimmer headlamps and redesigned taillamps.
Our spy photographers worked up a composite image of this Cruze prototype alongside the current model, and here, we can clearly see some big visual changes are in store for the new model. The 2015 Cruze's hood slopes downward more dramatically, the windshield is more heavily raked, and the roofline looks more fluid overall. The next-generation Cruze will ride on the new global Delta platform that will also underpin other General Motors vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt and Equinox.
As for what's under the hood, we expect the normal range of gasoline four-cylinder engines (both naturally aspirated and turbocharged), and the compact's new turbodiesel four should carry over, as well. Have a look at the full brace of spy photos in the gallery above.