Straightline

Hopes for the Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle got a charge this week when the 10,000th person signed up on the non-GM "waiting list" of buyers on a blog maintained by Dr. Lyle Dennis.

Dennis, who is a physician with some engineering background, is not a GM employee or compensated by Chevy for his efforts. His blog is GM-VOLT: Chevy Volt Concept Site. "Waiting List" is a bit of a misnomer because no money is required to get on it and Chevrolet is under no obligation to the people who put their names on it.

More good news came this week for advocates of non-petroleum or alternative energy source vehicles when it was confirmed that Wal-Mart executives are thinking about selling hybrids. Motor Authority reports that the monster retail chain's CEO, H. Lee Scott, is a devout greenie and wants to help automakers get more clean vehicles to the market.

Looks like Mercedes is about to debut a hybrid, too, according to Left Lane News.

Paul Tan says Ford Malaysia will use the London Auto Show to take the wraps off a 280 horsepower Ford Focus RS, with a turbo five-cylinder under the hood and driving the front wheels only. Could this herald something about where the Volvo C30 is headed?

Here's the death knell for the Champ Car Series - Autosport.com quotes Carl Haas saying Newman-Haas-Lanigan is headed for the IRL by the 2009 season. Same piece quotes car owner Jimmy Vasser saying it's time for Champ Car to make a deal with IRL's Tony George. A dozen years after splitting open-wheel racing and handing pre-iminence to Bill France and NASCAR, it looks like Tony has finally "won."

The Driving Woman's Tamara Warren says she wants to be a cowgirl, thanks to the new Dodge Journey and the sight of those 100 bovines Dodge drove down the streets of Detroit for the auto show. I don't know because I wasn't there, but I'm guessing they weren't Texas Longhorns since they came from Oklahoma.

Speaking of Detroit, Peter DeLorenzo at AUTOEXTREMIST takes one last look at the show and "what it all means" for the auto industry circa 2008 and among much else comes away still muttering about a certain German product: "The Mercedes GLK small crossover is even more of a disaster than I first indicated in our show review. The thing is hideous."

At the other end of automotive journalistic enthusiasm, If It's Got An Engine's Dorrington Williams recently found Honda's Reverse Calculator and thinks it is quite simply the greatest thing since the invention of , I don't know,  the small-block Chevy V-8.
 
Looking for all the Gordons fit to print? Check out Full Throttle. Even if you don't care about either of the Gordons, you gotta love FT's gorgeous display of race cars.

Well, looks like this is the end of the road for this trip. See ya next week!