GM Recalls 6,800 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon Pickups

General Motors has issued a recall for some of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks due to a fault in the transmission shift lever. Around 6800 vehicles of the 2011 model year of these two models are covered under this recall.
The transmission shift lever was not properly finished in the models under consideration, which leads to incorrect display of gear in the PRNDL bar. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), these models do not comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 114, “Theft Protection”, and hence, the recall.
The automatic adjustment chip is out of alignment in the models under question, which may lead to some severe consequences. Due to the faulty adjustment, the driver could shift the transmission to ‘park’ and remove the ignition key while the transmission gear may not be in ‘park’ mode actually. Thus, the driver will be unable to restart the vehicle or the vehicle may roll away, injuring someone.
GM has not received any official complaint from any owner of these models or has not received any report of a crash due to this problem. This problem was first identified in a GM assembly plant and therefore, the automaker is taking immediate action to avoid any mishaps. The faulty chip will be replaced by a new automatic transmission adjustment chip. The recall begins in mid-July and owners can contact Chevrolet at 1-800-630-2438 or GMC at 1-866-996-9463 for further queries.

Edo Competition dresses up BMW M5 Touring and calls it Dark Edition

German tuning house Edo Competition, widely known for its exotic car transformations, has laid its hands on one of the most practical high-performance vehicles available, the BMW M5 Touring. The new modified BMW sports wagon is called the M5 Dark Edition.
Under the hood, the M5 Dark Edition houses a tuned version of the 5.0-liter V10 accompanied by upgrades including a recaliberated ECU, high-flow air filters, catalytic converters and a newly developed performance exhaust system. In the process, the output has been improved from 500 horsepower and 521 Nm (384 lb-ft) to 555 horsepower and 560 Nm (413 lb-ft). Sans the electronic speed limiter, the M5 Touring can hit a top speed of 305 kmph (190 mph), needing just 4.2 seconds to accelerate from 1-100kmph, and under 10 seconds to accelerate from 100kmph to 200 kmph.
Other tweaks include a new aero kit comprising of a front apron with additional lights, a rear apron that allows the fitting of bespoke exhaust tips and a roof wing. Four new 20-inch alloy wheels painted in black with a silver rim and shod in Dunlop tires size 255/35 R20 at the front and 285/30 R20 at the rear complete the set of modifications done by Edo Competition to the car’s exterior. In the inside, the company has on offer a wide range of leather upholsteries and carbon trim parts, to a new speedometer with white dials and a backlit logo.

Volvo Reveals Details Of High Performance C30 PCP

Volvo is reportedly planning to launch a performance division for their cars. Similar to the AMG from Mercedes-Benz, Volvo is planning on strengthening its ties with Polestar and making the racing outfit its full-fledged performance sub-division. And the first car that we will see from Volvo’s performance sub-division will be a hot C30 Polestar Performance Concept Prototype (PCP), based on the all-wheel drive C30 hatchback we were introduced to last year.
Polestar is responsible for Volvo’s racing cars in Scandinavian and World Touring Car Championships. It has also developed a performance version of the S60 road car. Thus, Polestar seemed to be the ideal one to fit into Volvo’s plans.
The production version of the C30 concept is expected to feature a twin turbo five cylinder engine under the hood, producing 400 hp. This will accelerate the car from 0 to 100 km/hr in less than five seconds. We can also expect to see this car in an all-wheel drive platform. The price of the car is currently projected at around £50,000 and at this steep rate, we can surely expect to see several high-tech and advanced features, focused on improving performance of this car. If approved, 500 units of this model will be produced by the automaker.
The production car will carry the Performance Concept Prototype (PCP) badge. Volvo also plans to extend its performance car range with its new performance sub-division and all future cars from the performance sub-division will carry the PCP badge.

For Jaguar Drivers, a Letter Brings Its Privileges

When I think back to driving school, I cannot stave off the memory of fighting sleep at a cramped desk while being lectured about illegal U-turns and the perils of driving at speed. But at the Jaguar R Performance Academy, which I attended late last month at Monticello Motor Club northwest of New York City, I was wide awake to the instructors’ message about respecting speed as well as, more thrillingly, how to handle it.
Jaguar started offering a complimentary day of on-track driving instruction in 2009 as a perk for buyers of its R-badged high-performance cars. The initiative followed the lead of similar programs by Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Purchasers of AMG-branded Mercedes vehicles receive a day of free track instruction, while BMW limits its complimentary M School one-day enrollment for recent purchasers of the M5 and M6, which are now on a production hiatus. (Owners of other M vehicles must pay for the course, which costs $1,295.) I was invited to experience the R academy, but only from the front passenger seat.
Over the course of a week, about 70 Jaguar owners from as far away as Illinois came to explore the limits of their cars. When I attended, 11 owners were present, including Peter Kotun, an XKR owner from Delaware.
“I want a better understanding of the ins and outs of the car,” he said.

Some were longtime Jaguar owners, like Jim Van Ommeren from Allentown, Pa., who as a boy dreamed about owning an E-Type. Though he has yet to acquire one, he has managed an XJR, an XF Supercharged and lastly, an XFR, which he drove to the track. For John Cleere of Waterloo, N.Y., his XKR was his first Jaguar after owning several Corvettes.
The academy was taught by professional racecar drivers, including Chris Munro, the chief instructor, and Roberto Guerrero, who previously held the lap record at Monticello until Davy Jones, a fellow instructor, broke it. Other instructors at the academy were Adam Andretti, a member of the Andretti racing family; Morgan Kavanaugh, a former motorcycle racer; and Mike Finch.
At the beginning of the day, owners attended a classroom session where Mr. Munro discussed the performance limits of the cars as well as general tips for spirited driving, including the 9 o’clock 3 o’clock steering-wheel grip and proper body position behind the wheel. (Fun fact: the right leg should be bent, and not fully extended, when braking to provide maximum leverage on the pedal.)
“It’s not about comfort when you’re behind the wheel of a car, it’s about control,” Mr. Munro said.
Before being turned loose on Monticello’s 4.1-mile track, students were tutored on a figure-8 cone configuration. The owners started slowly, but with more confidence gradually built speed until they were getting sideways coming out of the turns.
Then, on a an oval portion of the main track, an instructor riding shotgun taught the optimal way to enter and exit corners. Owners were told to start on the outside, cut in and end up back on the outside. Munro called this, simply enough, outside-inside-outside.
It was then time to bring these cornering skills to bear on the main track, with helmets on. After instructors led them around the south end of the course on a familiarization run, students were allowed to break away behind the pace car. Because the south end lacks a long straight, speeds were limited to about 100 m.p.h.
Mr. Van Ommeren said later that the course and his instructors taught him many intangibles, but in a telephone interview, he noted that when he returned home, he could not summon properly descriptive words for his family. “Unless they were there, they can’t understand,” he said.

Suzuki’s Kei Cars, Running Mild in New Jersey

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — I don’t know if it’s possible for a Honda Element to mate with a toaster, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say that it can. The resulting offspring may have been on display at the Meadowlands here over the weekend.
For drivers who preregistered online, Suzuki was offering the chance to drive its Kizashi sedan through an obstacle course intended to showcase the car’s all-wheel-drive capabilities. But I was chiefly interested in the company’s “kei” class of cars, microcars that are not sold in the United States but are fixtures of city streets in Japan. Two examples — boxy little right-hand drivers riding on tires so small that the word “Yokohama” was lucky to fit on them — were available for testing.
The Wagon R Stingray, the larger one at 1,760 pounds, is about half the weight of an Element. At 133.7 inches it’s also 36 inches shorter, and at 58.1 inches wide, 13 inches narrower. The other, a Lapin, is even tinier. It’s not quite five feet tall, and even at a mere 5-foot-6, I felt like a Meadowlandian Gulliver standing beside it. I’ve never seen the top of my minivan, but I could reach over and pat the Lapin on the head as one would a dog.

Steve Younan, the American Suzuki director of product planning, marketing and sales training, told me that the company had the kei cars on display at this touring exhibition in part to gauge public reaction to them and determine whether it would be worth trying to introduce them in the United States. (The cars, he noted, did not meet American safety standards and would require beefier bumpers and other modifications.)
Here’s this American’s opinion: driving one of these cars would never make you feel like king of the road, but it would certainly make you feel like king of two other places, the gas station and the parking lot.
According to their window stickers, the 54-horsepower Stingray returns 51 m.p.g. and the Lapin 59 m.p.g. That’s with a standard, nonhybrid gasoline engine. It may be frightening to imagine being in a Lapin on the turnpike next to an overloaded 18-wheeler with a sleep-deprived driver, but it’s downright pleasant to imagine being in one in, say, the parking lot of the train station I use to get to work, Princeton Junction, one of the most crowded in New Jersey.
Finding a parking space there is like prospecting for gold, especially since sloppily parked mastodons often occupy just enough of an adjacent space to render it useless. That is, useless to a normal car, but not one measuring less than five feet wide. These little Suzukis, in short, would be the perfect train station car for commuters.
But could an average-size person stand to ride in one for anything longer than a drive to catch the 8:23? That’s where the surprise came. When I sat in the Stingray, I didn’t feel like a sardine, even in the back seat, which was pushed so far back that I could actually stretch my legs straight. Meanwhile, the front passenger seat reclines nearly 180 degrees, so a passenger could sleep through any harrowing lane swaps with the tractor-trailers.
I felt eerily comfortable in the Stingray, which imparted a vague sensation of déjà vu. Were its snug quarters bringing on a flashback to the womb?
No, not the womb, but to the Geo Metro I owned about 20 years ago.
I had a first-generation Geo, the square, boxy ones, not the slightly more stylish Storm coupe that came later. It returned northward of 40 m.p.g., and it rode more or less like the Stingray: a little bumpy, but peppy enough and easy to handle.
“This thing reminds me of my old Geo Metro,” I told Mr. Younan, who rode beside me.
“Well, the Geo Metro was a modified Suzuki design,” he told me. And indeed it was, I learned later with some Internet sleuthing.
At that point, my trip to the Meadowlands assumed the quality of completing a personal circle. The young, Metro-owning man with the world ahead of him had become the less-young suburban commuter whose main goal in life was to find a parking space at the train station. Maybe a Suzuki microcar one day will make that goal easier to accomplish. Maybe a Suzuki microcar and I are destined for each other.
All of this was a lot to contemplate. Fortunately, there was a couch nearby where I could sit and reflect. It was the same motorized couch used in a tongue-in-cheek Suzuki commercial in which the couch, piloted by its creator, races against a Kizashi and an Audi A4. A trained couch driver took me for a ride around the Meadowlands parking lot. “She rides like a couch,” he said. And she did.