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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.

The USPS needs 180,000 new delivery vehicles, automakers gearing up to bid

Winning the New York City Taxi of Tomorrow tender was a huge prize for Nissan, even though the company is still working through the process of claiming its prize. The United States Postal Service has begun the process to take bids for a new delivery vehicle to replace the all-too-familiar Grumman Long Life Vehicle, and that will be a much larger plum for the automaker who wins it, perhaps worth more than six billion dollars. The Grumman LLV is an aluminum body covering a Chevrolet S-10 pickup chassis and General Motors' Iron Duke four-cylinder engine. The USPS bought them from 1987 to 1994, and the 163,000 of them still in service are a monumental drain on postal resources: they get roughly ten miles to the gallon instead of the quoted 16 mpg, drink up more than $530 million in fuel each year, and their constant repair needs like the balky sliding door and leaky windshields have led the service to increase the annual maintenance budget from $100 million to $500 million. A seat belt is about as modern as it gets for safety technology, and the USPS says that assuming things stay the same, it can't afford to run them beyond 2017. Last year it put out two triage requests for proposals seeking 10,000 new chassis and drivetrains for the Grumman and 10,000 new vehicles. The LLV is also too small for the modern mail system in which package delivery is growing and letter delivery is declining. The service says it doesn't have a fixed idea of the ideal "next-generation delivery vehicles," but it listed a number of requirements in its initial request and is open to any proposal. Carriers have some suggestions, though, saying they want better cupholders, sun visors that they can stuff letters behind, a driver's compartment free of slits that can swallow mail, and a backup camera. The request for information sent to automakers pegs the tender at 180,000 vehicles that would cost between $25,000 and $35,000 apiece, and it will hold a conference on February 18 to answer questions about the contract. GM is the only domestic maker to avow an interest, while Ford and Fiat-Chrysler have remained cagey. Yet with a possible $6.3 billion up for grabs and some new vans for sale that would be advertised on every block in the country, we have a feeling everyone will be listening closely come February 18. We also have a feeling the LeMons series is going to be flooded with Grummans come 2017. News Source: Wall Street Journal, Automotive News - sub.

Junkyard Gem: 1986 Chevrolet Sprint Plus

General Motors sold second- and third-generation Suzuki Cultuses with Geo or Chevrolet Metro badging in the United States from 1989 through 2001 model years, and we've all seen plenty of those cars on the street over the years. The first-generation Cultus was sold here as well, with Chevrolet Sprint badges, and I've found a rare example of the Sprint five-door hatchback in a Northern California car graveyard. The Chevy Sprint first appeared on the West Coast as a 1985 model, then became available everywhere in the United States for the 1986 through 1988 model years (in Canada, it was sold as the Pontiac Firefly). It was available here as a hatchback with three or five doors; for 1986 only, the five-door was badged as the Sprint Plus. Soon enough, The General would be selling many more Asian-built cars with Detroit badges here. Isuzu I-Marks were sold as Chevrolet/Geo Spectrums starting in the 1986 model year, while Daewoo provided the Pontiac LeMans two years later. Under the hood, a 1.0-liter three-cylinder rated at 48 horsepower. The five-door Sprint cost $5,580 in 1986, which was $200 more than the three-door (those prices would be $15,445 and $14,891 in 2023 dollars). I've documented seven discarded Sprints prior to this one (including an extremely rare Turbo Sprint), and all of them were three-doors; we can assume that price was the most important factor for Sprint buyers. Gasoline prices were crashing hard during the middle 1980s, but memories of gas lines and odd-even-day fuel rationing from 1979 remained strong. What cars competed with the '86 Sprint on sticker price? Well, there was no way to undercut the hilariously affordable (and terrible) Yugo GV, which cost $3,990. The much bigger (but still pretty bad) Hyundai Excel listed at $4,995, while Toyota would sell you a sturdy (but zero-fun) Tercel starting at $5,448. Even the wretched Chevy Chevette — yes, it was still available in 1986 — cost $5,645. The original buyer of this car was willing to shell out an extra $395 to get an automatic instead of the base five-speed manual. That's about $1,093 in today's money. This car must have been slow. By the end, the doors were held shut with duct tape, but it still stayed alive until age 37. 53 miles per gallon on the highway! It does everything. The camels of the highway.