2003 Chevrolet Avalanche 1500 Base Crew Cab Pickup 4-door 5.3l on 2040-cars

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Opel CEO talks new EV, will likely be fresh face for Chevy, too

The rumored demise of the Opel Ampera has been confirmed, but there's good news, too. Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann has been busy Tweeting information about the brand's next plug-in vehicle, admitting that the Ampera is on the way out but that plug-in vehicles are here to stay. His Tweets, in full, read: After the eventual run-out of the current generation Ampera, we'll introduce a successor product in the electric vehicle segment. Our next electric vehicle will be part of our massive product offensive – with 27 new vehicles in the 2014-2018 time frame. We see eMobility as important part of the mobility of tomorrow and we will continue to drive down costs & deliver affordability. As we learned earlier this week, the Ampera will not be refreshed when the current Chevy Volt is updated, most likely because of slow sales. Opel sold just 332 Amperas in the first five months of 2014. For now, General Motors is still building Amperas in Michigan for export to Europe. So, what might this new EV mean for the General Motors plug-in fleet? Official spokespeople are being quiet, but we think it's safe to say the new EV Neumann is talking about is not simply a rebadged Chevy Spark EV. This is the first official word about an entirely new EV, and we expect it will come to both the Chevrolet and Opel brands.

GM already raising prices on 2014 Silverado and Sierra pickups

General Motors must be pretty pleased with sales of its two newest pickups, the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado, as it's announced price hikes for both models, as part of a planned price tweak.
Prices will be bumped by as much as $1,500, although weirdly, they'll be offset by as much as $1,500 in cash-back offers through the end of October. Fox Business reports that GM spokesman Jim Cain said of the price hike, "With the sell down of the '13 models nearly complete, this price adjustment was planned and is a normal part of business."
The move, as Fox is quick to point out, is an interesting one, as sales of the twin pickups struggled last month relative to the Ford F-Series, while both of GM's crosstown competitors have been aggressively undercutting Silverado and Sierra prices. The F-150 starts at $24,070 and the Ram 1500 comes in at $23,600, not counting any cash on the hood. A base Silverado, meanwhile, retails at $25,575.

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.