Chevrolet offers Corvette buyers the opportunity to build the engine for their cars. By JAKE LINGEMAN

For a great Selection of 2010 Corvettes visit www.BradshawGreer.com or come by Bradshaw Chevrolet in Greer SC.

Chevrolet Corvette buyers can already take delivery of their car at the National Corvette Museum, get professional driver training and watch their cars being built. Now, General Motors will let them build the engine.

GM is offering buyers of the 2011 Corvette ZR1 and Z06 models the chance to build the engines for their cars. For a suggested retail price of $5,800, plus the cost of getting to Detroit, a Corvette buyer is welcome to GM's Performance Build Center in Wixom, Mich., where engines for the ZR1 and the Z06 are built by hand.

The Engine Build Experience package includes a concierge service that will set up most of the arrangements.

Buyers who select the option will work side-by-side with professionals at the Performance Build Center. Together they will build up an engine, starting with a bare block and moving through a series of assembly stations. Virtually all of the work is done by hand, with minimal automated assistance.

At the end of the line, the engine is test run on a dynamometer and the builder adds a personalized nameplate. Then the engine is sent the Corvette assembly plant in Bowling Green, Ky., for installation in the car.

The most important part? Whether built by you or by the professional technician, the engine from the Performance Build Center is covered by a five-year/100,000-mile warranty.

Chevrolet Volt nearer to reality

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General Motors has a lot of expectations riding on its upcoming Chevrolet Volt. GM execs have predicted the electrically driven sedan will vault them four years ahead of the competition in the high-tech vehicle race.

Now, the validation of the production process for the Volt has passed a major milestone.

On March 31, the first pre-production Volt rolled off the line at the Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant. Several pre-production Volts will be built to validate and fine-tune the production process. These pre-production versions of the Volt will not be sold at dealerships, but will be used to assure all steps in the production system will meet the quality targets set by the Volt engineering team.

Assembly workers will build more pre-production Volts in the coming months, before production begins in preparation for a late-year vehicle introduction. These vehicles will be examined by manufacturing engineers as the plant prepares to kick up full production of the innovative vehicle.

"We have a very experienced workforce at this plant, and through all of their preparation and training, workers here have been given the privilege to take GM into the future with this car," said Detroit-Hamtramck plant manager Teri Quigley.

The Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle with extended range delivers up to 40 miles of pure electric driving before an engine-generator kicks in to sustain the battery charge and extends the range to about 300 additional miles.

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