You might’ve seen the Volt make a gues t appearance on the futuristic Surrogat es movie already, but now Chevy’s taking the opposite approach by looking toward the past to promote its PHEV. Bob’s Big Boy fast food restaurant in California got treated to a surprise visit by a production model of that m ost bodacious Chevrolet, and as you can see above, it doesn’t look horribly out of place seated in among its elders, a 1969 Camaro and an Impala SS. Joining in the weekly classic car meetup hosted by the restaurant, this appearance was a prelude to the production Volt being shown off at the LA Auto Show, which kicks off this coming Friday. So if you wanna see it, you can either attend the event or wait for the car to roll up at your nearest Wendy’s.

The Chevy Volt is one vehicle we can really get behind. It’s hard not to be a l ittle excited over it — we have, after all, been watching its development for quite a long time now. The electric car gets an impressive 230 miles per gallon in the city (and, all shaky rating practices aside, that’s nothing to scoff at). Autoblog Green’s just taken one of Chevy’s 80 IVER pre-production prototypes for a little spin, and they s eem to have come away pretty impressed with the car. They report that the brakes are better than most hybrid veh icles, and said that when the engine does kick in after the battery’s depleted, they didn’t even notice it until they stopped and heard it running quietly. It was a short spin, so they weren’t a ble to gauge, for instance, whether the car can actually pull the full 40 miles per battery char ge that Chevrolet claims it gets, but check out their full, detailed observations at the Source link.

W hether it’s voluntary or enforced, it seem s to be a safe bet that most electric vehicles will eventually break their silence in one way or another to warn nearby pedestrians — especially the blind. Chevrolet looks to be taking a slightly different approach than most with the Volt, however, and it recently tested out its system with a group of visually-impaired folks at its Milford Proving Grounds. Rather than simply making the vehicle sound like a regular car, Chev y has implemented a driver-activated system that emits what’s described as more of an “excuse me” sound than “hey you” sound whenever you want to warn people you’re approaching. Of course, depending on the driv er does have its limitations, and Chevy says that future iterations of the Volt are likely to incorporate a more active system that can automatically alert pedestrians. Check it out in action after the break.

The presenters of Top Gear, among the finer specimens of British television talent (Dr. Gregory House being another), were this past week engaged in designing and building an electric vehicle purportedly intended to compete with the likes of the Chevy Volt. Set a time limit of a mere 18 hours, they produced the marvel of rushed eng ineering and s hoddy workmanship you see above. The Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust (believe us, you’ll have no reason to remember the name) was even put through its paces by Autocar magazine, whose video “review” can be found after the break. We won’t spoil the details for you, but if you want a conclusion, this one’s pretty unequivocal: “there’s a real ly good chan ce you could kill yourself” riding in this car.

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