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These are the five most ridiculous attacks on the Chevy Volt [w/videos]

It's been a long, strange trip for the Chevy Volt from the time when the now-odd-looking concept version (above) was introduced at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show to today. And now, General Motors announced that the second-generation Chevy Volt will make an appearance at the 2015 Detroit show in January. This debut represents a victory for GM with what has easily become the most politicized car of the 21st Century. There are plenty of reasons for someone to criticize the Volt, but what's amazing is just how much anti-Volt energy has been spent not on things like the styling or how the EREV setup is not as efficient as a pure-EV powertrain. As we wait for more official information on the new Volt, we thought it would be fun to go back and look at some of the most wildly incorrect reporting and strangest attacks on the Volt from the archives. There is so much good stuff out there, it was hard to pare the list down, but these are our five favorites. Amazingly, they're not all clips from Fox News. Check 'em out below. 5. GM Is Going To Stop Making The Chevy Volt In The US Do you remember when GM was about to move Volt production to China? Well, yeah, this was reported back in early 2012 when a GM executive mentioned that the automaker would get benefits of building the Volt in the places where it sells them. This was spun into a story of GM taking Obama bailout money and then running to China. The Blaze was not happy: "Given the fact that Federal government helped itself to millions and millions of taxpayer dollars under the pretense that it was going to combat high unemployment by creating 'green jobs,' it would seem that moving research and development (and possibly manufacturing) overseas is slightly, well, counterproductive." Well, of course, that never happened. There's no way to say that GM will never build a version of the Volt in China, but the news we hear rumors of these days is that GM is going to move production of more Volt parts (specifically, the motors) to Michigan from overseas. 4. The Chevy Volt Is A Fire Trap There has never been a Volt that just spontaneously lit up while driving down the road. Yes, there were Volts that caught on fire. Yes, that's a scary thing. But there has never been a Volt that just spontaneously lit up while driving down the road. These were crashed test vehicles with destroyed batteries and plugged-in vehicles that were not the cause.

Even if GM does close all 5 of those plants, it'll still have too many

DETROIT — General Motors' monumental announcement on Monday that it will close three car assembly plants and two powertrain plants in North America and slash its workforce will only partially close the gap between capacity and demand for the automaker's sedans, according to a Reuters analysis of industry production and capacity data. Sales of traditional passenger cars in North America have been declining for the past six years and are still withering. After GM ends production next year at factories in Michigan, Ohio and Ontario, it will still have four U.S. passenger-car plants — all operating at less than 50 percent of rated capacity, according to figures supplied by LMC Automotive. In comparison, Detroit-based rivals Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will have one car plant each in North America after 2019. The Detroit Three are facing rapidly dwindling demand for traditional passenger cars from U.S. consumers, many of whom have shifted to crossovers and trucks. Passenger cars accounted for 48 percent of retail light-vehicle sales in the United States in 2014, according to market researchers at J.D. Power and Associates. This year, sedans will account for less than a third of light vehicle sales. That shift in turn has left most North American car plants operating far below their rated capacities, while many SUV and truck plants are running on overtime. The collapse in passenger-car demand is a challenge for nearly all automakers in the United States, including Japan's Toyota and Honda, which have the top-selling models in the compact and midsize car segments. Toyota executives said last month they are evaluating the company's U.S. model lineup. But Toyota also plans to build compact Corolla sedans at a new $1.6 billion factory it is building in Alabama with partner Mazda. The obstacles facing GM in its plans to close more auto factories became apparent on Tuesday as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to block payment of government electric vehicle subsidies to GM. While it is not certain that Trump unilaterally has the power to do that, he made it clear he intends to use his office to pressure the company to keep open a small car plant in Ohio that GM says will stop building vehicles in March.

GM applies for LT5, LTX trademarks... are new small block variants coming?

Recently discovered General Motors trademark applications for LT4, LT5, LT88 and LTX have observers wondering what kind of high-performance offerings could be on their way. A new LT4 would mark a return of the engine designation first used on the Corvette Grand Sport, SLP Pontiac Firehawk and SLP Chevrolet Camaro SS from 1996 and 1997. Supposition at Corvette Forum - which provided advance intel on the C7 like these leaked images - believes a new LT4 could go into the high-performance trim of the next-gen, 2015 Camaro that would be more powerful than the 580-horsepower Camaro ZL1.
Seeing an LT5 again would also be déjà vu - in its former life it was a 5.7-liter V8 for the C4 Corvette ZR-1 from 1990-1994 designed by Lotus, producing from 370 hp to 405 hp. A mix of rumor and hope is that the new LT5 will be a supercharged evolution of the 6.2-liter LT1 (pictured) placed in the new C7 Corvette, and that it will go into the C7 version of the ZR1 pumping out something like 700 hp.
The LTX trademark is, as with that last letter, a complete mystery. If the "X" isn't a generic way to denote the whole LT family, it's wondered if it LTX could refer to a crate motor offering like the LSX.