2009 OC Auto Show: I saw Bumblebee!
 

The OC Auto Show was just last weekend and I went. I didn't know these were going to be there.

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Obviously that's a big mockup of the TF1 Bumblebee. The car is the TF2 Bumblebee with its ridiculous fake brake rotors.


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It's a startling car, the Stingray. Too bad it was in the movie for such a short time. As the movie shows, the car runs. Mechanically, it's based on the C6 Corvette, and it runs on a V8 powertrain (concept actually outlines it as a hybrid with cylinder deactivation, but probably not in real life). If you take a closer look, you can see that it has a different exhaust design than in the movie. Perhaps the round pipes were specified for the movie only, or perhaps the GM designers went back and changed it to a more coherent look. In any case, the concept was the sexiest car at the OC show, even with the Audi R8 V10 and the Maserati GranTurismo S sharing the same roof.

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The first pic is the overall picture of the Chevy booth. OC Auto Show isn't an international player, but it is the last show of the standard auto show season, so we get a review of the car year. And it's important enough that there have been a couple of significant North American reveals here. Also its proximity to the Los Angeles Auto Show (probably bigger than the Detroit show now that so many manufacturers are pulling out from there), location-wise and time-wise means that sometimes they'll show something here and in LA.

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One of the Chevy officials were cool enough to open the door to the Vette riiiiiiiiiiight before (like 5 mins before) the auto show ended. I had been there for at least 5 hours and it hadn't been open before. It's got an awesome interior, as you can see, that mixes the classic Vette cues with futuristic touches, much like the exterior itself.

Transformers-licious. I still don't get why the Transformers edition Camaro doesn't look like the car from either the first or second movies.