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Corvette ZR1 price bombshell

By Greg Fountain Motor Industry 25 September 2008 14:37 General Motors has pitched the Corvette into the price stratosphere by announcing that the 206mph ZR1 will retail at an eye-watering £109,000 in the UK. It may be the fastest car ever built by GM, but the new 'Vette now enters big-time supercar territory, where it will need to have the quality to match its ballistic performance. The outrageous price tag is the biggest shock since we found out how genuinely brilliant the ZR1 is to drive.

CES: It's a digital experience

The night before the Consumer Electronics Show opens its portals to the world’s technogeeks, there is a sort of preshow called the Digital Experience! (They added that exclamation mark to the name, not us.) Still, the relatively small, ancillary consumer-technology show does set the stage for the massive CES juggernaut the next day. This year, as always, we wandered the aisles of Digital Experience looking for car-related tech.

GM bets on new four-cylinder family in Europe; U.S. plans unclear

General Motors' European subsidiary, Opel, has revealed a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder direct-injection gasoline engine that will be offered from early 2013 across its lineup, starting with the soon-to-be-revealed Astra-based Cascada convertible. The aluminum block unit, the first in a new range of so-called SIDI (spark ignition direct injection) ECOTEC engines, forms the centerpiece of the company's downsizing strategy for displacement. The engine is claimed to have improved torque characteristics and a significant reduction in consumption compared with its predecessor.