1 Financial (Cost, profit margins, market size and marketability)
2 Safety (Liability)
3 Customer service (Reputation)
4 Short term and long term reliability (Dependable)

They tend to stay away from the following::
1 If you build it they will come
2 Release now manage risk later
3 High cost with low profit margins

Or we could use duct tape, a la NASCAR. If the temp gage starts to go up, make a pit stop and peel of a piece of tape.

I bet they didn’t need to take much off at Martinsville yesteday, 40 degrees at the start. Of course downforce (lack of lift?) probably isn’t much of an issue at Martinsville.

I have some pictures of a 55 Corvette like ours running on the beach at Daytona in the old days. Zora had the whole grille taped up except for one little opening about 3″x4″ in the middle. Nothing new under the sun.

I had even converted most of my American muscle car buddies over to thinking about buying a Volt, because of it’s great looks. Now we’ve lost them……..

“Who killed the electric car…….” sadly enough it was it’s own looks…..

1. Why did Lutz give a more in dept interview to an AUSTRALIAN publication rather than the Volt Nation? That seems pretty sorry to me.

2. If the aerodynamics of the concept were horrible and they knew it, why did they even introduce it? Sounds like you need to hire new designers.

3. I have a feeling it is going to look just like a Dodge Caliber which if I wanted that I’d just go buy one from Dodge. GM could have saved alot of money and just gone to Dodge and used their parts. Which could have lowered the price of the vehicle.

4. I drive a diesel Jetta and get great gas mileage…..pretty much the top in any range plus I use biodiesel. Lutz needs to get off that “I don’t believe there is any future in small diesels” he stated awhile back. Ask Volkswagen if you can buy some of their small diesels and put them in GM vehicles.

5. With the looks sounding more and more like they will take the Volt into the ugly and “God I would never be caught dead in that dorky thing”, say goodbye to alot of buyers.

You have got to appeal to a different crowd to bring in new buyers and convert other traditional gas guzzling purists over to a better option. I love AMERICAN mussel cars just as much as the next true American. I had even converted most of my American muscle car buddies over to thinking about buying a Volt,

GM has said on various occasions (most recently in describing the Caddy Provoq concept) that they’ve developed actuator-operated louvers (or slats) that can be used to close grill openings at road speeds to improve Cd. 

The picture at the top of this thread seems to show closures behind the grill —so I believe there’s a good chance they’ll use this means of improving Cd, which Bob Lutz said, following the Volt’s wind tunnel testing & aero improvements, is "in the mid 2’s" —i.e., ~0.25, which is extremely good.   

Didn’t I read here at some point that there were going to be automatic grill slats which stayed closed to clean up the aero until some more air flow was needed for cooling loads?  Sounded pretty elegant to me.

I’m really not too worried about what it looks like.  Yesterday somebody said "form follows function"  Amen.  The other day somebody asked "What is the Cd of the revised body?"  Good question.  I’d be really interested to know too.

Don’t worry for a second about trivia such as double posts.  I’m the self-acknowledged king of the typos, but I can live with it.  It’s blogging, man, it’s part of the fun.  Actually this blog is outstanding as to spelling and typos.  Maybe you guys are more "mature" than the general run of bloggers!

Unfortunately it’s beginning to look like the actual Volt will prove them right and me wrong.  I suppose there are a few people who will buy a slow and unattractive but still expensive car from feelings of guilt about using gas, such as some moonbeams in California (smile), but I don’t think there are very many.

Oh well, maybe Mitsubishi will sell their car in NC, so at least we will have something slightly interesting to look at (smile again).