Maybe this story can be attributed to President Bush signing into law last week new fuel economy standards that call for a 40 percent fuel economy improvement by 2020. Or maybe you could speculate that Cadillac feels that their current V-6 became the engine of choice on the 2008 STS because it’s so close in power to the V-8.

Either way you look at it GM has canceled plans to build a new advanced double overhead-cam V-8 for its luxury cars. The move means the future for Cadillac’s V-8 car engines is unclear.
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When the clock hit the stroke of midnight, the golden anniversary of the Chevy Impala officially began. This was my father’s car of choice throughout my youth, he was a diehard, and his prior car of choice was the Bel Air so the event rings with extra nostalgia for me.

Except for a few years of retirement, the Impala has been in continuous production for 50 years. Over those years the car became the premium package for the beloved Bel Air, developed that distinct six tail lamp rear styling, went muscle in 61 with the Impala SS, went off steroids for awhile, became the Caprice, bulked up again in 94 with the SS badge, took a three years hiatus and then returned to the scene in 2000.
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Lose a billion or so, garner a Motor Trend Car of the Year award. It’s been that kind of an upside down year for the General. But 2008 might get off to a positive bang with odds in the favor of GM to win the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year awards.

In what is shaping up as a really strong ‘08 model year for GM, the automaker has already won several significant awards for the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac CTS.
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Here in The Garage, we are taking a couple of weeks vacation. But this isn’t your regular vacation, as we are really doing next to nothing for a change. We have been hanging around the house, saw a movie and are doing the usual holiday season stuff. Beyond that, we are taking the odd day trip here and there. Today we visited Toronto’s Black Creek Pioneer Village, which has been preserving heritage buildings and lifestyle since the middle of the last century. The village is similar in concept if not scale to the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village neat Detroit except that the setting is in the mid 1800’s, well before the automobile took over from the horseless carriage.

So why do readers of The Garage care? Well, it is a pretty cool place to take the kids, but garage like activities played a bit part of life in those early days of Canadian life. You might even see some clues of what was to come. The Dominion Carriage Works that you see above may have indeed played a part in the early days of General Motors. It seems that W.C. Durant may have owned shares in DCW at some point. This carriage works stayed in operation until 1972 on a limited basis and was moved to Black Creek in 1973 along with all the tools and original carriage patterns.
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Toyota says it is ready to beat the tar out of GM for world dominance, but the Detroit automakers looks like it is winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese.

General Motors said it has become the first overseas car maker to sell one million units on the Chinese mainland this year.

Cadillac SLS China

GM didn’t give specific sales figure for the whole year. Last year, it sold 876,747 units on the mainland, a jump of 32 percent from 2005 and outpaced the growth of the entire auto industry of 25 percent.
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Start licking your chops and get ready to come in for the kill if you have been in the market recently for a full size pick-up. It appears that the Chevy Silverado is the injured prey waiting to be consumed.

I don’t get it. If you are just a casual viewer of current events, you saw the imminent collapse of the housing industry in America starting to unfold months and months ago. This means bad news for trucks used to make the construction industry move. It appears the Armani clad economists working for GM somehow missed the story.
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With Hummer sales plunging into the abyss, showing a 22 percent decline this year, I guess GM figures that the only way to proceed is to downsize.
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We become slightly oblivious when car makers announce billion dollar losses. It seems almost the norm.

But GM’s announcement of a close to $39 billion loss sent shockwaves throughout the industry.
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General Motors might be entering the financial abyss after showing a 38+ billion dollar setback a few days ago, but that is not stopping the company from offering a new round of Canadian incentives.

General Motors of Canada earlier today announced that, building on strong October sales growth and its” hot new vehicle lineup”, (straight out of their press release. My opinion is a little more staid) the company is introducing a series of new price incentives to augment its already highly competitive lease and finance rates. Effective today, GM Canada will:

- Cover a 1% GST reduction for all of our cash and finance customers until the new GST rate takes effect on January 1, 2008. - Offer new cash incentives ranging from $1,500 up to $10,000 on select models, including the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Corvette, GMC Yukon and all of our 2008 Saab models.
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Those wacky guys over at The Truth About Cars have been having some fun lately picking out the top ten worst cars sold in 2007. They put the word out to their readers who then began submitting the nastiest of rides. Once a great big list was compiled, they narrowed it down to 20 and then readers voted for the bottom top 10.

The Top Ten Worst Cars of 2007, as chosen by TTAC’s readers are:
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