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Gimp Pimp and Aqua Volvo at 24 Hours of LeMons | Car Club USA

Car Club USA heads to Sonoma, CA where the Gimp Pimp Cadillac and Aqua Volvo will take on all the crazy, sub-$500 competition at the 24 Hours of LeMons endurance race. "Over the last 30 years, car racing has gotten extremely serious and extremely expensive and it just seemed like there was a real need to make it accessible again," said LeMons founder Jay Lamm. The result is a series of endurance races across the US and Australia where all you need to join the fun is a junky car and some basic safety equipment. "It's just fun, compared to pro racing," said Wendy Epstein, driver of a 1979 Volvo 242 in bright "Aqua Volvo" livery. "24 Hours of LeMons is a form of racing that is designed to be cheap and easy, and anybody can do it," said Bill Manfroy, driver of the Gimp Pimp, a 1996 Cadillac SLS with some important modifications. "Part of what makes the Gimp Pimp Cadillac so special is that it does have hand controls, so it gives access to people like me that ordinarily get to race." "Which makes it perfect for LeMons." Each Car Club USA episode features a different car club or event from across the US, where passionate owner communities gather to share automotive experiences and embark on incredible adventures. From Main Street cruises to off-road trails, catch all the latest car club activity on Autoblog. Motorsports Weird Car News Cadillac Volvo Driving Racing Vehicles Car Club USA Videos Original Video viral video

Cadillac dealers get $5,000 incentive for ELR test drives

The 530 Cadillac dealers - out of 940 total dealers - that signed on to sell the brand's ELR for $75,000 or lease it for $699 per month have managed to move 247 of them in the last five months. That's a little less than two cars for each dealer more than two dealers for each car if you need help with the math. With inventories of the luxury plug-in hybrid building up - Automotive News reports a 725-day supply - General Motors has created the Demonstrator Allowance Program to billow the sails on that slow moving ship, giving dealers $5,000 to promote ELR test drives.
A dealer with one ELR in its test fleet that racks up 750 test driven miles between May 1 and June 2 earns the fifty Benjamins, a dealer with two ELRs in the test fleet will get one hundred Benjamins. That will be added to summer incentives for dealers that pay $2,000 for units sold in July and $1,000 for units sold in August, while on the customer side, Cadillac has put "customer discount certificates" worth $3,000 on the hood for buyers and lessees.
Cadillac suggests this is about raising awareness of the ELR, but the question is how much dealers will be able to do for a car that observers - and buyers, apparently - still consider highly overpriced.

GM admits Cadillac ELR no real competition for Tesla Model S

Last year, then-CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, made it clear that the company lookouts at the Ren Cen had California automaker Tesla in their sights. "If you want to compete head-to-head with Tesla, and we ultimately will, you want to do it with a Cadillac," he said. So, given the fact that the Cadillac ELR has a plug and sells for roughly the same price at the Tesla Model S ($75,000 vs $69,900, before incentives) and that Cadillac doesn't have any other electric vehicle on the horizon, you'd be forgiven if you thought that the way that Akerson wanted to challenge Tesla's EV success was with the ELR. Well, you'd apparently be wrong. "The ELR is a different car, it's a different price point. It's way-different technology." - GM's Mark Reuss Speaking yesterday in Detroit, GM's head of global product development, Mark Reuss, admitted that the ELR is not the Tesla competitor that Akerson promised. "People like to say the ELR is [competition for the Model S], but it's really not. It's a different car, it's a different price point. It's way-different technology." So, if we follow that logic to conclusion with Akerson's quote from last year, then the only way that Cadillac can eventually compete with Tesla is with a pure electric car, and that seems an outside chance, at best, for the foreseeable future. Through the end of July, Cadillac has sold 578 ELRs since it went on sale earlier this year. Tesla doesn't break out monthly US sales, but has sold 15,114 Model S EVs around the world in the first six months of 2014. For his part, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has already said that GM is headed down the wrong path with plug-in hybrids like the ELR or the Chevy Volt. Speaking about the Volt last year, Musk said, Chevy "sort of created something that's a bit of amphibian," which resulted in a car that's, "Okay but not great."