4r70w 4r75w Ford Neutral / Range Switch # F7lp, Kwik Ship on 2040-parts.com

Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Volvo S60 R-Design & V60 R-Design launched

Volvo S60 R-Design Both the Volvo S60 and the Volvo V60 are new in 2010, and both illustrate that Volvos are no longer just safe, boring boxes. They’re actually quite stylish in a grown-up, subtle kind of way. But Volvo thinks there’s a market for their ’60s’ with bolt on go-faster bits, so we’re treated to the Volvo S60 R-Design and the V60 R-Design.

The case of the disappearing Lambos

Now this should have rung an alarm bell or two at the time, but it seems it didn’t. Back in November the world’s largest Lamborghini dealership – Lamborghini Orange County – turned up its toes and closed the doors, apparently a victim of the downturn in car sales. Not the oddest story in these times admittedly, but a bit odd when you consider that Lamborghini OC was reckoned to be responsible for 10% of Lamborghini’s sales worldwide, shifting around 240 cars a year.