When politics interferes with automotives: Motor Trend "Car of the Year" the Volt? Are you kidding me?

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This will be the last year I subscribe to Motor Trend, a heretofore reliable gauge of what is good, and what isn't, in the automotive world.

Calling the Volt the Car of the Year is as moronic as believing that the local Three Liateers (Leavitt, Stuart and Boldt) give a damn about what the public they govern actually wants concerning the I-5 Bridge/Loot Rail extortion they're cooking up.

With that decision, MT has lost all credibility.  The Volt is too expensive, too slow, corners like a cow, and is completely impractical for the average consumer... precisely the thing you DON'T want a car to be.

For example:

Chevy Volt Sales Slump, Prompting GM to (a) Ask for More Taxpayer Handouts; and (b) Introduce New, Unsellable _Convertible_ Volt

"It’s electric unless you’re driving in it."
Need a $41,000 gas-electric-nuclear-and-coal-powered hybrid? Well, neither did everyone else in America.

Recent reports find that General Motors (GM) is lobbying for the passage of legislation by Michigan [Democrat] Senator Debbie Stabenow that would turn a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit into a rebate that will be available to all consumers at the point of sale. It's been dubbed "Cash for Clunkers II".






...Apparently, Chevy is not pleased with its sales -- 321 units sold in January and 281 in February -- out of 30,000 cars made for 2011, and a planned 45,000 to be made in 2012... At that rate, just 3,600 of the cars will be sold this year, [only] 12 percent of the supply.

...Since GM's initial public offering in November, the government sponsored automaker has been desperate to boost overall sales on a monthly basis. As such, GM boosted buyer incentives for the past four months. GM's incentive spending averaged about $3,663 per vehicle in January, and $3,732 in February, more than $1,100 over the industry average.

...According to the CarConnection.com, "That's increased GM's market share - albeit at the expense of image, resale value, and even company profits - oddly, at a time when most other automakers have admitted that such a strategy doesn't make long-term business sense."

Since they can't sell units to actual customers, GM has convinced Barack Obama to buy costly, inefficient, ghastly vehicles on your dime.
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More:
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Reviews on this massive waste of money, which has trashed almost as much cash as it would have taken to build The Liateer's Nightmare, are, at best, mixed to awful.
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Consumer Reports says, among other things:

Consumer Reports has deemed the most-anticipated car to come out of America in years a lemon.

GM's electric Chevy Volt is "a tough sell to the average consumer."

Chief product tester David Campion tells the Detroit News: "When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy."

Among other failings, the car traveled only 25 to 27 miles on electric power alone, while testing on winter roads. GM says the car regularly achieves up to 33 miles.

And it's "annoying" that the car takes five hours to charge.

And it costs twice as much as Toyota's Prius, a hybrid which is more fuel efficient when driving long distances.

Read more at Consumer Reports.

These results speak for themselves. And to MT, it's been a long trip... and now it's over..