
As reported yesterday, General Motors has gone on and officially announced the addition of a third shift to the Flint, MI assembly plant, adding 750 jobs — up from 650 that was originally expected. The addition of the third shift is due to the increased demand of The General’s HD pickup trucks, which recently won Motor Trend’s 2011 North American Truck of the Year. The new workers are mostly made up of currently laid off workers and will start the second quarter of this year. Continue for the presser.

In the upcoming Super Bowl pitting the fabled teams representing Cheese and Steel, up to nine different brands are expected to relieve you from the action with high-budget commercials, with General Motors throwing in the most money among them. Continue reading.

General Motors at the Barrett-Jackson auction always seems to bring something tantalizing for the buyers and this year brought out a one-off Corvette Le Mans 50th Anniversary Z06 and a 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible Indy 500 Pace Car that were auctioned off for a combined $435,000. But that’s not all The General brought up to the block. Continue selling.
8,389,769: that’s the amount of vehicles General Motors delivered globally in calendar year 2010. The number represents a significant 12.2 percent increase from 2009 levels of 7,477,178 units but leaves GM as the number-two automaker worldwide, with Toyota taking the crown after registering 8.42 million deliveries in 2010.
The General also achieved double-digit gains in five of its top 10 markets, with a 28.8 percent increase in China — GM’s latest market by volume — and a whopping 43 percent gain in Uzbekistan, which became GM’s tenth-largest market by volume. In the U.S. — GM’s second-largest market — the automaker saw vehicle deliveries rise by 6.3 percent in the face of the phase-out of four brands. The General’s third-largest market — Brazil — saw deliveries rise by 10.4 percent. Continue for detailed tables of GM’s top markets and brands.

File this one under the “bold-ass-statement” category, as General Motors CEO Dan Akerson has recently blurted out that his company would like to increase production of the Chevrolet Volt to 120,000 vehicles for the 2012 calender year, way, way up from the 10,000 General Motors plans on manufacturing this year. Continue hyping.

Even though gas prices are predicted to be on the rise, General Motors will be adding a third shift and 650 jobs at the Flint, MI assembly plant to boost the production of its full-sized trucks. The official announcement will happen at 10:30AM on Monday, Jan. 24th. Those in attendance will include GM North America President Mark Reuss and Michigan governor Rick Snyder. Continue for the presser.

As per the one-off Corvette Le Mans 50th Anniversary Z06, GM also had another piece of motorsports memorabilia on the Barrett-Jackson auction block with the 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible Indy 500 Pace Car that was unveiled at the auction earlier this week. This particular Camaro is the first model of fifty sure-to-be collector’s items, with the gavel finally slamming at $225,000. Proceeds will go to the David Foster Foundation, which supports families with children in need of live-saving organ transplants.

According to our sources, The General is currently hard at work on an all-new medium duty truck line that will emerge roughly two to four years from now. Continue reading.

You could be wondering to yourself how I — a guy that has an everyday midsized sedan as a daily driver — went the entire time driving a massive GMC 3500 Heavy Duty without accidentally running over a Smart ForTwo that could have been hiding in my blind spot as I merged into a lane, or how I managed to maneuver it up a narrow spiral parking garage ramp in downtown Detroit without suffering a single scratch. Well, it just so happens that I grew up around these full-sized monsters, so driving this 3.2 ton, $52,464 piece of equipment was a lot less intimidating for me than it could have been for many others. And the ladies love it… at least in my neck of the Michigan woods (especially this one blonde girl that goes to Michigan State, but that’s a story for another time). Continue for the full review of the GMC Sierra 3500HD.
General Motors has pulled its advertising from MTV show Skins. The third generation of the episodic series, which sometimes portrays teens in a racy, flirty, and sensual party environment, has lost other major sponsors besides The General, including Taco Bell, Wrigley, and H&R Block since its launch.
Evidently, Skins is proving overly provocative, if not completely sexually explicit, for companies aiming to stick to a PG rating and not wanting to be associated with a series centered around teens engaging in drugs, sex, alcohol, and other items of taboo nature. You don’t say! Continue canceling.
