1972 Chevrolet Blazer Base Sport Utility 2-door 5.7l on 2040-cars

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Star Wars Car Drives To The Dark Side Of Comic Con

When it comes to designing coveted collectible toys for sale at Comic-Con, the annual celebration of pop culture lifting off Thursday in San Diego, the sky's the limit for the designers at Mattel. Fittingly, the building where Mattel's dreamers conceive of their limited-edition playthings is just down the street from the Los Angeles International Airport. Inside the colorful design center - a Hot Wheels-themed shuttle bus transports employees from Mattel's parking garage - the designers have spent the past year working on 10 toys created especially for the Comic-Con crowd, including a replica of the Batmobile from the upcoming game "Batman: Arkham Knight" and a 9-inch-tall action figure of Superman killer Doomsday. "We don't have to worry about retail. We don't have to worry about margins," said Doug Wadleigh, Mattel's senior vice president of global brand marketing for boys and entertainment. "We don't have to worry about operational efficiencies. We only have to worry about creating the coolest toys for our fans. Period." It also offers some escape from Mattel's reality these days. Like other toy makers struggling in this digital, video-centric age, the company is trying to remain relevant in the retail world. Core brands like Barbie have seen less of a demand, with a 14 percent drop in sales in the first quarter of this year. Mattel had a net loss for the first three months ending March 31 that totaled $11.2 million. But things will at least seem rosier at Comic-Con, where eager buyers for the toys await (the only other place they will be sold is on the Mattel collector's site). Mattel's exclusives this year run between $20 and $85, but elite toys can fetch much more when they're put up for auction. The crown jewel for Wadleigh and his team this year is a Darth Vader die-cast car, the first official collaboration from Hot Wheels and the "Star Wars" franchise. The car - imagine if a Chevrolet Corvette C5 and the villainous Sith lord's helmet had a baby - comes in a sleek black box and encased in a replica of Vader's lightsaber, complete with a swooshing sound effect. "We've been trying to partner with Lucasfilm and Disney on this property for a long time," said Wadleigh. A full-size working replica of the Vadermobile will be on display at Mattel's booth at the massive San Diego Convention Center.

2015 Chevy Impala Bi-fuel burns CNG, starts at $37,385*

Currently, the only natural-gas-powered passenger car offered for sale by an OEM in the US is the Honda Civic Natural Gas. Starting this fall, that long-running CNG car will be joined by a CNG-burning 2015 Chevy Impala for both fleet and retail customers. General Motors announced today that the car will start at $37,385, plus an $825 destination charge. That comes to $38,210 before taxes and options. Those options include two trim lines, the base LS and the upper-level LT. Chevy doesn't break out the details in the press release announcing the price, but you can see the trim details for the standard gas-powered 2014 Impala here. Exact information on the 2015 models is not available just yet, but GM spokesman Chad Lyons told AutoblogGreen that the equipment that you see listed on the site for 2014 is "almost exactly the same" as what will be available for 2015. The 2015 Impala gets around 19 city mpg on CNG, but official EPA numbers are not yet available. That means the LS will come with 18-inch aluminum wheels, electric variable-assist power steering, projector-beam headlamps, and 10 air bags. The LT adds an eight-inch touch screen with MyLink, premium Cloth interior and dual-zone automatic climate controls. The cost for this upgrade is unspecified. For CNG purposes, we can ignore the numerical prefix used for the gas-powered LT trims, since that denominates the engine type, and all the CNG models use a 3.6-liter engine with hardened valves and valve seats that can better handle natural gas. The trunk capacity also drops from 18.8 cubic feet to 10 cu .ft. in order to fit in the CNG tank that holds the equivalent of 7.8 gallons of gas. That amount of CNG should move you 150 city miles, which is around 19 mpg, but official EPA numbers are not yet available. With the addition of the gasoline on board, the overall range is 500 city miles. The car burns CNG when available and switches to gas with "no interruption" either when the tank is empty or when the driver selects the gas tank. Find more details in the press release below. GM says the CNG Impala will will be available nationwide this fall. CNG is a growing fuel in the US, thanks in part to fracking. The Civic Natural Gas, which starts at $26,640, is growing towards a nationwide availability. Next year, for example, the Shell Eco-marathon Americas in Detroit will allow CNG for the first time. Chevrolet Announces Pricing of CNG-Capable 2015 Impala 2014-05-06 LONG BEACH, Calif.

Joe Flacco wins C7 Corvette along with MVP honors

As part of a longstanding tradition, the MVP of Super Bowl XLVII, Joe Flacco, quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, was given a new car directly after the game and trophy celebrations. For 2013, that car is a 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, and it was presented to Flacco by Rick Flick of Banner Chevrolet, a dealership in New Orleans that was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 before returning to prominence as the only Chevy dealer in Orleans Parish.
Last year, Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning took home a 2012 Corvette GS Centennial Edition. Manning also won in 2008, when he selected a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid as his reward. In 2011, quarterback Aaron Rodgers accepted the keys to a Camaro convertible.
Though we're most definitely an auto-obsessed group, we did watch the Big Game along with nearly everyone else in America. And we've gotta say, as if winning the Super Bowl and receiving the Tiffany-designed Pete Rozelle Trophy wasn't enough for the multi-millionaire MVP athletes, a brand-new C7 seems like an awfully generous prize. Scroll down below for an official announcement from General Motors.