As gas prices hit an all time high with oil now hitting $126 a barrel, automakers are having a hard time moving cars out of the showrooms. With sales down 2.5% last year to 16.1 million cars sold, automakers are now offering incentives that have never been seen before by the industry.

Chrysler recently announced that it will offer buyers of new Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge customers a gas card to immediately lower their gas price to $2.99 a gallon.

To keep from sales to go down further and to save new vehicles from premature death, automakers are offering incentives on cars considered by auto experts as reliable and of good quality.

So if you’re one of the few in the market for a new car, be sure to check out Forbes list of Top 11 America’s Best New Car Incentives.

Click through for the list.

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GM-Volt.com, a site not owned by GM, is running a virtual waiting list showing the interest that people have in purchasing GM’s upcoming electric car.

As of May 5th, 20,000 people have signed up saying that they would purchase the Volt when it arrives in 2010.

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The cost of owning a vehicle goes beyond the purchase price. Expenses like insurance and maintenance can add up.

But most of all, it must start life with a sticker price well below even the most affordable luxury cars. A low purchase price holds down insurance premiums, taxes and fees, financing costs, and, especially, depreciation.

That’s why the priciest car on our list of the Top 10 Least Expensive Cars to Own is the tenth ranked Honda Civic DX, which starts at just $15,010.

Click through for the list of Top Least Expensive Cars to Own.

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At a recent press event, GM showed off its hydrogen powered Chevrolet Equinox SUV. For the next two months 100 individuals will test fuel-cell versions of its Equinox SUV in California, New York and Washington, D.C.

The SUV uses no petroleum and releases zero greenhouse gases. So with gas reaching $4 a gallon why isn’t this hydrogen Equinox going into mass production. Well, mainly because it wouldn’t be commercially viable for the General. Each unit costs GM more than $250,000 to build. However, with customer feedback, innovation and if the government provides incentives to consumers to make it more affordable, the fuel-cell powered SUV could reach commercialization in the near future.

The SUV has the ability to travel 200 miles on a tank at 50mpg. 

Click through for the video.

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GM has told dealers to stop taking orders for some of its 2008 full-sized trucks and SUVs due to the strike of the American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings strike. Among the vehicles are the GMC Yukon, Denali, Sierra and the Chevrolet Tahoe.

“Essentially, we’re not accepting any more orders,” Randy Fox, GMC spokesman, told Automotive News.

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While Corvette ZR1’s chief engineer didn’t have any official fuel-economy numbers, speaking at a live chat at GMNext.com, Tadge Juechter said that “the ZR1 will be the most fuel-efficient 600-hp car you can buy in the world.” He said that the the fuel economy of the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 ”will be somewhat less than a Z06, and we expect a small gas-guzzler tax.”

Chevrolet has yet to run official fuel-economy testing on the Corvette ZR1, but if Juechter is to be believed the fuel-economy for the ZR1 will somewhere in the ballpark of 15/24mpg (city/highway), which is what the Z06 returns according to the EPA.

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There’s a lot you can do with $500,000 to turn heads in your society. You can go out and buy a Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Ferrari or Bentley. But nothing will turn heads like a Batmobile.

One of the 5 1980 Batmobiles have popped up on the auction block on eBay Motors and if you have $500,000 to throw around *(are willing to go through the process of signing a contract with Warner Bros.), you can take on Gotham city in your own style.

The chassis and V8 engine come from a Chevrolet 350.  Of course we doubt you can fit this in your garage so get a head start on the Batcave.

Click through for more images.

1980 Batmobile for sale on eBay:

   

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The UAW went on strike this morning at GM’s Fairfax assmebly plant which employs around 2,600 workers and produces GM’s best-selling Chevrolet Malibu sedan. According to a secretary at UAW Local 31, the strike came after GM failed to reach a local operating contract with the union.

The strike will hurt the supply of Malibu sedan which, at the end of April, had just a 36-day supply nationally. The Fairfax plant produces about 574 Malibu sedans a day along with the Saturn Aura sedan.

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While Nissan is out flaunting its new 7:29 run at the Nurburgring Nordschleife with the GT-R, Chevrolet is working hard to beat that time. Last week GM announced the official specs on the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 with 638-hp and 604 lb-ft of torque. It later released a video of the car hitting a top speed of 205-mph.

According to InsideLine, GT-R’s happy moment will pretty short lived. In an interview with Corvette’s Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter, the man behind the ZR1 stated that the full production model will be capable of lapping the Nurburgring in “Seven minutes, twenty-something seconds.”

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It may sound stupid to you if we call any full-size SUV fuel-efficient but the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid and the 2008 Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI are the two most fuel-efficient full-size SUVs currently on the road. And if you’re in the market for a gas-guzzling giant beast (and of course if you have the money to spend) we recommend these two.

The 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid gets an EPA rating of 20/20mpg (city/highway) while the 2008 Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI comes in at 18/24mpg.

Power for the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid comes from a 6.0L V8 engine producing 332-hp and 367 lb-ft of torque. The Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI runs on a 3.0L turbocharged V6 producing 215-hp and 398 lb-ft of torque.

Pricing wise the Tahoe Hybrid starts at $53,295 while the GL320 CDI goes for $54,225.

Click through for a video of Edmunds comparison of the two.

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Going through our RSS reader we hardly find the GMNext Blog updating anything. Today however they’ve probably made up for all that. Just earlier this morning we brought you the official power rating details on the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (638-hp and 604 lb-ft). However, there were no official 0-60 or top speed numbers given in the press release.

Thank to GMNext we now have a video of the Corvette ZR1 hitting a top speed of 205mph (330km/h) as Corvette Development Engineering team take it out for a spin on the test track in Papenburg, Germany.

Click through for the video.

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When the much anticipated Corvette ZR1 made its debut at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show in January, we were told that engineers are still messing around with the LS9 supercharged 6.2L V8 engine to hit a target of 620-hp and approximately 595 lb-ft. of torque.

The GM engineers are finally done messing around and the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 will officially produce 638-hp (an increase of 18 over the original target) and 604 lb-ft of torque (an increase of 9 over the original). That means the LS9 puts out nearly 103 horses per liter. We still don’t have any official 0-60 figures however top speed will be just over 200mph.

The 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 will hit markets this summer with the MSRP to be right under $100,000.

Click through for more images and the press release.

2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1:

   

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In the beginning of April we showed you a couple of spy shots of the upcoming 2010 Chevrolet Camaro hitting up the Nurburgring for some high-speed testing. Now InsideLine has posted a video of the Camaro taking rounds at the much respected German circuit.

Rolling up to the Nurburgring in Brembo brakes and aggressive wheels you may think this is the Camaro SS. However InsideLine says that this is prototype is most likely a detuned LS3 V8 producing somewhere close to 400-hp. The Chevrolet Camaro SS will have a supercharged unit producing somewhere close to 525-hp leaving the Dodge Challenger SRT8 and the Ford Shelby GT500 in the dust.

Click through for the video.

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