- Posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 10:22 am
VIDEO: On Tour with the Volt
By Gloria Huang
Guest Blogger
Editor’s note: Gloria was on hand for part of the Volt Tour last week. Here are some of her thoughts from the Volt’s stop in Miami.
This past weekend, the Volt tour headed south to sunny Miami. We visited popular spots such as CocoWalk in Coconut Grove, the Sawgrass Outlet in nearby Sunrise, and Bayside Marketplace. In addition, we stopped by the Florida International University campus to pay a visit to the engineering students and hear what they had to say.
Miami is a lively city; we enjoyed talking to the extraordinary variety of people who stopped by to see the Volt. The vibrant energy of the city is often complemented by fine cars driven on the street, and the Volt certainly fit in with its striking visual design.
On hand at the beginning of the tour was Mathieu Boimare, one of the interior designers for the Volt. Mathieu lives in Detroit, and was excited to have the opportunity to converse casually with everyone who stopped by to see the car. John Ferris, an E-Flex design team member, also worked at our Bayside Marketplace location to talk to people about the Volt. One-on-one interaction was our priority, and we hope that we answered many questions.
The concept model of the Volt that we are using for this tour is a one-of-a-kind, handmade model that cost a great deal of money to produce. The paint on the car is particularly sensitive to water; at the first sign of rain, we have to pull out a covering for the car. On Saturday, we were displaying the car at Sawgrass Mills when the sky darkened and thunder began sounding. Minutes after we covered the car and let down the plastic curtains, a heavy thunderstorm broke out. The crew was left huddling under the umbrella of a nearby picnic table, waiting out the storm. However, the Volt was successfully kept dry, and even drew a large crowd of interested onlookers after the storm as we pulled it out of the location to take it to more secure shelter.
In addition to all this, one enthusiastic fan flew in from Chicago to see the Volt. Bob Boniface, Design Director of GM’s E-Flex studios, answered his questions and even walked him through some interior design elements as he sat in the car. Take a look at his reactions to the Volt in this video.
To check out more photos from Miami, make sure to check out a special Flickr page we made just for the Volt Tour. To read more about the Volt, check out NowPublic.
4 Comments
Joe Gannon
So any chance of bringing the Volt to Phoenix?
Jim
I am sold as well. I have never been so excited about a car before. Especially a car that is not yet in production. I find myself searching the internet several times a week trying to find the latest news on the Volt. GM is going to have a hit with this car.
Creed Crutchfield
All I ever hear is this…
” a one-of-a-kind, handmade model that cost a great deal of money to produce. ”
You know, GM is good at guilt-trips. They con those of us who consume their cheaply produced products into believing they just have so much trouble (pardon me while I sniffle in emotional angst) creating the next big thing because of modeling costs. Pardon me you half-wits: You are insulting my intelligence. I used to build cars for a small company here in Georgia, I know a thing or 2 about proto-types.
THEY ARE NOT THAT EXPENSIVE!
1) They don’t or rarely run / drive
2)Man hours are consumed by people who are so thrilled about their project they typically work overtime for free.
3) College student interns typically handle most of the “creation.”
4)It gets expensive when cars much be crash tested and mass produced, otherwise molds are cast in house and by variable machines in PLASTIC.
This is why GM is essentially lost on me as a customer. The blatent Mushroom push of the GM Elite is nothing less than bothersome. Its seems like little than propaganda, to move these efforts to China, build cheap, quick products, and claim victory over the American worker. Meanwhile, they blame insurance and drug companies.
YUCK! Count me out! Im more interested in a REAL American Product: Toyota. Built and designed in the USA. They’ve come up with a design metric that avoids high costs and they even printed it in a magazine called Automotive Design and Production.
Read much, GM?
Michael
Wow! Three cheers for Creed. And I thought I was being cynical when it came to GM and the Volt. You are my new hero!
The Volt is all smoke and mirrors, a great PR stunt designed to hide the fact that GM blew it when it came to hybrids. GM thought no one would buy an half-electric car and basically gave the market to Toyota and the companies licensing its technology. GM is left with what it calls its “mild hybrid,” which is a nice way of saying it couldn’t license the hybrid engine from Toyota, so it came up with a pale imitation that doesn’t work as well.
As for the Volt tour, well, it’s nice to think there’s going to be a plug-in car, but it’s not going to happen in the near future (ie, no Volt in 2010 is what is being whispered now). Also, as I’ve said before, there’s no infrastructure in place to plug it in if you live in apartment building (or in NYC or both, in my case).
Go, Creed.
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