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With the recent success of Chevy's Corvette Racing series and the new "America Still Builds Rockets" Corvette commercial, the marketing folks at GM are going full swing to promote the 'Vette.
The latest effort is equally awesome, with GM inviting F1-turned NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya out to the company's Milford Proving Grounds to test out the new Chevy Cruze, the Camaro and, of course, the Corvette ZR1.
Montoya certainly seems to enjoy himself (and who wouldn't behind the wheel of a ZR1).
But enough chit chat. Check out the tire-shredding, sideways sliding video at the link below.
General Motors has just announced the filing of papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that will see the company handed back over to investors and removed from government control.
Including in the filing are plans for preferred stock that carries with it both debt and equity and also has priority in a bankruptcy situation.
According to a Bloomberg report, GM hopes to generate $16 billion by the IPO, selling off roughly a fifth of the stock currently owned by the U.S. Treasury. This would then make the government a minority shareholder in General Motors and is likely to be followed by continued sell-offs until GM is entirely out of government hands. Currently the U.S. government owns a 61 percent stake in GM.
GM has already paid back the $6.7 billion in loans it received from the U.S. and Canadian governments, however, that amount is only a small portion of the almost $50 billion bailout GM received.
It appears as though rumors that the Corvette will go mid-engined may in fact be true. In a recent interview with a trade magazine one of Saab's top engineers broke the news, revealing that his team had developed a dual-clutch transmission for a "mid-engined version of the Corvette."
There's no word on how many gears the dual-clutch system has, but the engineer in question did comment that it was designed to hold up to 590 ft-lbs of torque – which may suggest a possible turbocharged or supercharged engine.
Rumors that Chevy would move the Corvette to more a mid-engine setup have been around for decades, but have heated up recently as it seems GM wants to take the car up-market to compete with European rivals. It is believed a mid-engine model was on the drawing board for the next C7 generation but was scrapped due to GM's recent financial woes. More recently we're heard reports that the C7 will instead by a stop-gap model with a short production schedule as GM prepares for a revolutionary C8 model.
When the ultra high-performance Corvette ZR1 first debuted dealers hiked up the price as enthusiasts clamored to get their hands on what is easily the greatest value for a performance vehicle in the world. Over a year later and the price gouging has disappeared. So much so, in fact, that GM is now faced with the opposite problem: too much supply and not enough demand.
In order to move inventory, Chevy has announced that current Corvette rebates previously not offered on the ZR1 will be extended across the entire Corvette range. What this means is that for a limited time you'll be able to knock $3,000 off the price of a shiny new American supercar. Better still, there's a $5,000 discount to be had on 2009 models. (Although we should point out that the '09s don't come with Chevy's more sophisticated traction control system, or launch control).
Currently, Chevy lists the 638-hp Corvette ZR1 at $106,880.
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