Finally something to wipe the smug off you hybrid owners, you high-mileage acolytes, you global-cooling zealots who wash your Priuses (Prii?) with graywater while wearing reclaimed plastic fleece and hemp undies.

Don’t choke on your organic soy-double-decaf-fair-trade-carbon-neutral macchiato, but how does 376.59 miles per gallon sound? Makes your Honda Civic hybrid look Hummeresque, doesn’t it?

That number doesn’t come from some manta ray-shaped, wind tunnel-vetted carbon fiber space car. No, it’s from a chop-top, steel-frame 1959 Opel T-1 (think melting jelly bean, but uglier). And the record was set in 1973 in a contest sponsored by Shell Oil Co. Read more »

General Motors’ European arm has decided that it won’t jump feet-first into the micro-car segment with Smart, and more recently Toyota and Volkswagen. Speaking with Automotive News Europe, GM’s Euro-veep Carl-Peter Forster said that, “These specialized urban vehicles have a limited market.”

True enough, but it’s a market that stands to go through a growth spurt in the coming years, and GM’s decision to opt out of providing a competitive product might be a shortsighted move. Read more »

The Lamborghini Reventón has been named L’Automobile più Bella del Mondo. Translation: The World’s Most Beautiful Automobile.

It earned this honor in the Special Models category of this annual automotive fashion show, recently held for the fifteenth time at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, Italy.

There are eleven categories in all, though the Special Models category is generally considered to be the big winner. Other cats include your various sizes of sedans, coupes, convertibles, station wagons, crossovers, sports cars and concept cars. Read more »

So far, General Motors has been taking a measured approach with crossover vehicles. The General has recently rolled out the seven-to-eight-seat Lambda-based Saturn Outlook, GMC Acadia and Buick Enclave to join its smaller Chevy Equinox, Pontiac Torrent and Saturn VUE. Now we’re hearing from the folks over at Motor Authority that an even smaller CUV based off of the Opel Corsa could soon be sold at your local Chevy dealer.European Opels are currently being brought into the US as re-badged and good-looking Saturns, but Chevy’s status as the General’s volume brand may garner it some of the styling and handling benefits of GM’s Euro marque.

GM already unveiled the T2X concept in Korea, showing that it has the design resources to make good-looking small CUVs, and some of those styling cues are destined to be used on an Opel Corsa-based CUV, reports Motor Authority. The cute ‘ute is rumored to hit our shores as a 2010 model wearing a Bow Tie badge instead of the Saturn stamp. The Chevy version of this small crossover will undoubtedly receive different powertrains than what’s offered overseas, and we’d imagine that a mild hybrid mated to a fuel-efficient four-cylinder would result in above average gas mileage.

[Source: Motor Authority]