1957 Chevy 2 Door Hardtop Belair on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Subprime financing on the rise in new car sales, leasing too

We all remember the financial crisis that began several years back. At its core was a splurge of subprime lending for housing loans. The housing bubble burst, triggering a collapse of the mortgage-backed securities market. Apparently, those types of loans still exist in the automotive industry, and the market share for these types of "nonprime, subprime, and deep subprime," loans has grown 13.6 percent compared to the third quarter a year ago.
According to an Automotive News report, high-risk lending expanded to 24.8 percent of total loans in Q3, up from 21.9 percent for this time last year. As this level increased, average credit scores of borrowers dropped to 755, down from 763 a year ago. In that time, the average financing amount increased $90 per vehicle, to $25,963.
At 818, Volvo maintains the highest per-owner credit score, while Mitsubishi has the lowest, at 694. The highest rate of borrowers was at Toyota, with 14 percent of the market, followed by Ford with 13.1 percent and Chevrolet at 11.1.

Are you the 2014 Corvette Grand Sport?

When are stripes more than just stripes? Follow up question: Is the product development team at Chevrolet really cocky enough to hide the next C7 Corvette variant in plain sight? This very recently spotted, and ostensibly obscured C7 asks a lot more questions than it answers, but there's at least some evidence to support that it might be the next Corvette Grand Sport.
The first and most obvious tip-off that something is up with this 'Vette revolves around those silver stripes. Obviously the stripes themselves don't necessarily denote a new model. However, when Chevy recently launched its "colorizer" website for the Stingray, there was no provision made for racing stripes - solid colors only.
Grand Sport exhibit number two is actually an incriminating lack of badges. The production Corvettes we've seen to date have all carried Stingray badges on their fenders, just behind the vent. The car seen in these images has no such badges, which is an intriguing omission on an car that looks like a production-spec vehicle otherwise.

GM investing $167m in Spring Hill for new midsize vehicles

General Motors has announced a large investment in its Spring Hill, Tennessee facility. The former home of Saturn production will be getting a $167 million addition to a previously announced $183 million, to cover a pair of new midsize vehicles. The investment is expected to create 1,800 jobs at the factory.
That $350 million is being divvied up for a pair of programs at Spring Hill. The first will take the bulk of the money ($223 million) and create 1,000 of the 1,800 jobs, while the other will take the remaining $127 million and generate the leftover 800 positions. But GM says the investment will cover "midsize vehicle programs." So what could they be?
The leading candidate in our minds is a new crossover for Buick, called the Anthem, that will slot between the Encore and Enclave, but will be slightly smaller than the Equinox and Terrain. As we've explained, the new model will likely be the first product to sport GM's new D2UX platform, which will eventually replace both the Delta and Theta platforms. Spring Hill is already building the Equinox, so there could be some credence to this theory.