Unfortunately, "Chrysler New Yorker" only exists on four-track cassette tape, and my ol' Tascam Porta 01 died years ago. That means you don't get to hear that fine song, which thrilled dozens of Japanese college radio fans during the late 1980s. What you do get is the "music video" for the Murilee Arraiac song "Hajoi Hotai," which features the circa-1990 replacement of a 2-speed Powerglide with a junkyard Turbo Hydramatic 350 3-speed in a 1965 Impala. That's me with the Plumber Butt on the right left, and my friend ChunkyDeath on the right. Note ChunkyDeath's innovative "floor jack leg pump" maneuver.

Seriously though...anyone have a better shot of the ol' Gary Cowger 29% market share pins? Or better yet, anyone have one for us to give away to a lucky reader here on the site? E-mail me. [Fastlane]

Photo Credit: Getty Images News

This engine was born as the W Series in 1958, with 348 cubes of displacement, a weird combustion-chamber-in-cylinder design, over 650 pounds of mass, and one of the best names ever applied to an engine: Turbo-Thrust! By 1961, the General bored and stroked the W out to 409 cubic inches, dropped it in Bel Airs, Biscaynes, and Impalas, and achieved immortality with the song that might just be the Most Overplayed Car Show Song In All Of Human History:

By 1963, GM had installed some more traditional wedge heads on the W, resulting in the "Mystery Motor" seen with Smokey in the photo above. The 396-cubic-inch street version of the Generation 2 big-block debuted in 1965, a year in which purchasers of full-sized Chevrolets could choose between the 409 and the 396. From that point on, 396s, 427s, and 454s were getting dropped into every tire-charring hoonmobile under the sun, a process that continues today. The 1970 LS6 was rated at 450 horsepower, but that number was just a ruse to fool the insurance companies. The last GM car to get a big-block Chevy from the factory was the 1976 Impala/Caprice with the 454 option; big-block-powered trucks continued to roll off the assembly line until 1995. Nowadays, you can march right into your friendly GM dealership and leave with a 572-cubic-inch monster that makes 520 620 horses on pump gas. It's big, it's heavy, and it's crude, but it gets the job done and keeps going forever.

[Wikipedia. Image source: Hot Rod]

Known variously as the Iron Duke, Pontiac 2.5, and Tech IV, this pushrod four was an available powerplant in just about every car and small truck built by Pontiac, Chevrolet, Buick, and Oldsmobile during the Late Malaise Era and beyond. From the Camaro to the Fiero, S-10 to Skyhawk; even some late AMCs got Iron Duke power. The Duke tended to be on the noisy side and was often derided for its behind-the-times cast-iron construction and pushrod valvetrain, but it was compact and reliable- in many cases, the most reliable component in the car- and got the job done.
[Wikipedia]

We're told Harris will be replaced by Chris Preuss, currently in charge of GM Europe communications. We've had a very positive working relationship with Preuss, so we here at Jalopnik are happy to see this change. I mean, it's not like we were real positive about Harris' recent PR decisions.

Burns will be replaced by Alan Taub, currently executive director of R&D. [Automotive News]

Say what you will about Detroit's primitive suspensions and iffy build quality during the postwar period, but there's no denying that The General cranked out inexpensive, reliable, and powerful pushrod V8s by the tens of millions. We've honored the Buick 215 aka Rover V8, the Buick Nailhead, the Cadillac OHV, the Pontiac V8, and the Small-Block Chevrolet so far in this series, and today it's the turn of the Olds V8s built during the 1964-1990 period (yes, we'll eventually get to the big-block Chevy and the others, so be patient). Starting with the 330-cubic-inch Jetfire Rocket, this engine family (technically split into "small-block" and "big-block" categories based on deck height, but otherwise the same) included the axle-snapping 455 that powered the '70 442, countless 350s and 400s that were stuffed inside Cutlasses, and the 403, which was stuffed into just about every GM vehicle that would hold still on the assembly line. The "6.6 Litre" engines in the Malaise Trans Ams were Olds 403s… and we'd say that perhaps that engine is best forgotten, but we're saving that distinction for the ill-fated diesel version of the 350. I had a purple '69 Cutlass with the (gas) 350 for a regrettably brief, donuts-on-your-lawn period in my teens, and I think I turned more cheap tires into black marks on the pavement with this engine than with any other. Hooray for torque!

[Wikipedia, 442.com; Image source: Fotki]

Hey, GM, would you mind meeting us over at camera three for a minute?

OK, GM, seriously, between us, you've got to stop this whole half-assed PR thing. It's no longer about doing things to make you look good, or looking for ways to make people think you're looking good, it's about actually doing good. So if you've got the idea to work on a deal with EBay, work on a deal with EBay, finish it and then announce it. Don't announce that you're thinking of possibly engaging in talks on a deal to try stuff out with EBay and then have EBay turn around and call you out for not actually doing anything.

In most cases it's ridiculous to use Apple in comparison with GM because, well, they're two completely different types of companies, but one way it works is PR. When Steve Jobs announces a new product, he's got it ready to hit stores and it's going on sale that day. Not three months from now. Not six months from now. Of course, autos are a different deal. I know it takes five years to bring a new car to market. But we're not talking about cars — we're talking about PR. Or what you should be calling PR instead of the shit you've pulled recently like the "deal" with Segway for the PUMA or now this "deal" with EBay. Quit coming to the public with half a thing and come to the public when you've got the whole thing.

I don't know if this constantly half-baked idea problem is an issue with Steve Harris's PR team or if it's an issue with the entire C-suite, but fercrissakes, quit doing what looks like the equivalent of walking out of a bathroom with your zipper down and the back of your shirt tucked into your underwear. Frankly, you look like the jackass old guy in the office who still talks about the good ol' days when he could play grab-ass with the secretarial pool. No offense, Bob.

The point is, if you want to be considered a world-class automaker with world-class, innovative ideas, you've got to actually have some world-class, innovative ideas — which it sounds like you do — but then you have to deliver on them. But if you keep coming up with great ideas and then fall down on the implementation and marketing of them, you're never going to figure out you've got your shirt tucked into your ass crack.

/Rant

[via NYT]

The New York Times Magazine has put together a lengthy analysis of the effects of the Carpocalypse's effects on the current generation of African-American autoworkers, focusing on Pontiac Assembly Center worker Marvin Powell, a 13-year veteran of the Silverado/Sierra assembly line. Definitely worth reading, but only if you can deal with yet another painful Death Of The American Dream story.
[New York Times Magazine]

The Chevy Cruze-based development mules will slowly be replaced by these close-to-production Volt bodied prototypes, marking a huge leap forward in the step to electrified propulsion. GM's says that it will build up to 80 Volt prototypes for testing out on public road over by October which will help engineers sort out all the little issues with the vehicle before it goes on sale to the public.

Andrew Farah, GM's Chevy Volt Vehicle Chief Engineer wrote in a Volt blog post;

We're producing a few Volts per week now, but we'll quickly ramp up to 10 per week and will have approximately 80 pre-production vehicles built by October. By exceeding our own pre-production deadlines it allows us additional time to refine the vehicle. We've already discovered a few small tweaks we need to make, but nothing out of the ordinary for this stage of development.

With pre-production Volts now running around Metro Detroit, who's up for a game of Volt-spotting?

The New York Times piece also lists the nation of origin for each vehicle's engine and transmission, and the overall effect is to provide tirade ammunition for both ends of the political spectrum. For example, if you know that unions (and the hand-wringin', gun-confiscatin', Kyoto-treaty-signin' parlor-pink liberals who enable them) have systematically destroyed everything that was once good and true about this country, you'll be able to point to the proof, right there for all to see! Likewise, if you have no doubt that the same oligarchs who rammed Taft-Hartley down our throats are out to crush the last vestiges of American labor dignity (their hands still red with the blood of Sacco and Vanzetti!), you'll see the truth on this map!

[New York Times, thanks to Franzouse for the tip]

Some snide Detroit-bashers claim that beads of petroleum byproducts sweat from the plastic of The General's more economical interior components, and then there's all that pesky financial mismanagement and bureaucratic inertia to get 'em hooting and pointing fingers in derision… but nobody laughs at, say, the 638-horsepower LS9, a staggeringly powerful yet compact engine that fits handily inside cramped engine compartments. The aluminum-block, six-bolt-main LS has been around since 1997 and has been factory-installed in everything from the Cadillac CTS-V to the Saab 9-7X. Displacement of the LS series ranges from 5.3 to 7.0 liters (and bigger, if you want to get a race-only factory crate motor), and about the only bad thing we can say about it is that GM couldn't think up a new designation for the engine, recycling the names of totally unrelated early-70s engines such as the LS4 and LS6; come on, letters and numbers are free! And hey, you can even drop one into a Miata!
[Wikipedia] Photo source: Zorly.com

The 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and now this: a Bedford ice cream van. All vehicles which have sprung forth from the garnantuan corpus of General Motors over the decades. They all are awesome. The Caddy and the Vette by default—the Bedford by the copious application of vehicular art.

Bedford Vehicles used to make trucks as the commercial subsidiary of Vauxhall, GM’s British offshoot, before dying a slow, ugly death. Scratch that: it’s lorries, not trucks. Military lorries, ambulances, mobile cinema lorries and the ice cream vans which still dot the British landscape.

Except they generally don’t look like this one, bagged on Prince of Wales Road in Camden Town, around the edges of a council estate (that’s British for project housing). Bedford vans don’t usually come in rich slatherings of bianco fuji paint with a hint of pistachio. Nor did the British commercial vehicle industry ever harbor an especially wholesome relationship with huge-ass chrome dubs. Or screw-on dual exhaust tips.

This lovely van was parked behind thick metal bars, so unfortunately, this is as close as I could get. And no, I had nothing to do with that discarded cone of ice cream. Sometimes, circumstances simply conspire to create car art. I’m sorry, scratch that: it’s lorry art.

In January of 1981, my parents packed up their possessions—which included a 5-month-old kid yet to become a car boy—and set out west from the Hungarian city of Szeged to fly all the way to Washington, D.C. We were people from the satellite of an evil empire yet welcomed kindly, in spite of the total sum of 25 American dollars burning a hole in my parents’ pockets, the maximum amount allowed for export by the Communist state when you left the country.

I have no memories. We settled in the Maryland suburb of Rockville, I was sent to a municipal pool to float with American neonates and my dad went to work at the National Cancer Institute to probe the secret life of bacteria.

Then we got a car.

It was a first generation Oldsmobile Omega, as identified by Murilee over iChat, a compact car which has transformed into a proper land yacht in the recollection of my parents. I have no memories of the car. It was a sickly shade of yellow and judging by the only photographic evidence which remains, I rather liked it. So did my dad, who hates cars with a vengeance.

The leviathan Oldsmobile took us scrappy Hungarians all the way up and down the East Coast, it took us to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina where I saw the ocean for the first time in my life. I have no memories of this event, only my mom’s story—usually told with a grin—that the muscular Atlantic waves knocked my dad clear off his knees with me sitting on his neck, sending us both into the surf. We survived.

There are no Oldsmobiles in Hungary, save for a few derelict 88’s slowly melting into the tarmac. In fact, most people with no knowledge of American cars tend to think that oldsmobile is simply an English term for a veteran automobile. I know it’s not.

We came back to Hungary in the summer of ‘82, the Oldsmobile was sold off to a friend, and my first memories would not stick for another year: a single image, lying delirious from a stomach bug in a tent by a swollen, raging river. I have no idea what my furiously developing toddler brain made of the Omega. I don’t even know if it had a V8. Although I guess it did. What else would explain the love affair with the lazy rumble of crossplane V8’s, alien to the European continent.

My family would acquire other Oldsmobiles on later stays in the US. My dad still has an Oldsmobile badge on his keyfob. I recall Oldsmobile’s death from a few years back. And now General Motors has gone bankrupt.

You all have clear memories of American cars. I do not. I can only point your way to P. J. O’Rourke’s elegy in the Wall Street Journal:

In 1970 a Pontiac GTO (may the brand name rest in peace) had horsepower to the number of 370. In the time of one minute, for the space of one foot, it could move 12,210,000 pounds. And it could move those pounds down every foot of every mile of all the roads to the ends of the earth for every minute of every hour until the driver nodded off at the wheel. Forty years ago the pimply kid down the block, using $3,500 in saved-up soda-jerking money, procured might and main beyond the wildest dreams of Genghis Khan, whose hordes went forth to pillage mounted upon less oomph than is in a modern leaf blower.

Goodbye then, Oldsmobile Omega, goodbye.

Photo Credit: László Orosz

Chevrolet SSR
The Chevrolet SSR was meant to capture the imagination of buyers. Unfortunately, few buyers were imagining an expensive, gas-guzzling convertible truck that, due to the size of the hardtop convertible, was basically unusable as a truck.

Saturn L-Series
The original S-series Saturn cars were meant to compete with foreign small car makers by offering unique, reliable small cars. The success of this move can be debated, but they'd at least built a following. By 2000, they'd given up on the original mission of Saturn and tried to pass off an old Opel platform as the new Saturn. It was a failure, much like the Saturn brand itself. At best, Saturn did succeed in crushing its domestic small car competitor Geo... another company owned by GM.

Hummer H2
The popularity of military Humvee conversions convinced AM General to make a civilian version called the Hummer. Low gas prices and a strong economy convinced GM to buy the rights to build Hummers and create a more civilized version based on an existing GM platform. Dealerships were opened and, initially, sales were good. But when gas prices started to rise the idea of spending $65,000 for a truck that gets 10 MPG seemed ridiculous and the Hummer brand came to represent everything wrong with U.S. automakers.

Subaru 9-2x "Saabaru"
GM thought it would be a great idea to join Ford in buying another European automaker. Just as Volvo hasn't particularly worked out for Ford, Saab transformed from quirky to boring quickly. Needing a sporty model, they combined the Subaru WRX (GM owned about 20% shares of Subaru) with a Saab badge and the "Saabaru" was born. Like the WRX, it was a great performance deal and fun car. But it was the representation of a company with an unclear mission.

GMC Envoy XUV
GM spent millions developing a "midgate" system for their Envoy SUV, which would allow the vehicle to be transformed from an awkward truck to an awkward SUV using an expensive and complex retractable rear roof. GM expected approximately 30,000 people would need an SUV to double as antique furniture transport. They were off my almost as much as a third and it was discontinued after two years. This is what they did instead of building a small car.

GM B-Body
The problem with badge-engineering is sometimes it works. The 90s-era GM B-Body vehicles were successful and people ended up buying the Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, Buick Roadmaster, Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, Chevy Caprice and Chevy Impala SS. Unfortunately, it was a dilution of brand missions and only perpetuated the company's problems rather than solve them.

Cadillac Escalade EXT
The Cadillac Escalade gained popularity and notoriety among celebs, at least until the Prius became cool. As popular as the Escalade was, the company decided to make a truck version. This was the truck version of an SUV based on a truck platform for luxury buyers, who never wanted or needed a truck in the first place. It's yet another example of GM building more trucks at the expense of passenger vehicles.

GM EV-1
When the California Air Resourced Board required automakers to sell 2% of cars as Zero Emissions Vehicles most responded with electric versions of cars they already built. GM built the purpose-built EV1. It was popular despite the limited range but it cost the company more to make than they were getting in leases. After the rule was waived GM recalled the leases and canceled the program. This caused environmentalists to go nuts and blame GM for killing the electric car. It was an image disaster.

Pontiac Aztec
The Pontiac Aztec was one of the first major crossover vehicles brought to market in the U.S. It's combination of car-like handling and fuel economy with SUV-like space and aggressive appearance. The concept was a hit and now most automakers are shifting towards crossover. The Aztec was a massive failure. It was an attractive idea in an amazingly unattractive shell. It failed almost entirely based upon its appearance.

Chevrolet Pontiac Aveo G3 Wave This is your subcompact offering? Really? American car companies have had little success with building small cars, but the Korean-designed Chevy Aveo is among the worst. It's too small. It's ugly. It's not comfortable. It's not well-designed. It's not overwhelmingly fuel efficient for its size. It's so bad, the only thing a struggling GM could do with it was try and make a version for Pontiac called the G3 Wave so Pontiac dealers would have a small car. When you've got a bad hand, you don't double down.