I am going to guess November.

 

I'm guessing it should be popping up on the internet at the end of November/ begining of December & in car mags the end of December.

So far, I'm out of the loop on this one, so I haven't seen any pictures.......yet.



BTW:
Guys, this is the 1st car made from scratch to showroom done ENTIRELY on Bob Lutz's watch!

Everything to this point has been from some degree or another already in GM's system. Solstice was a design that was pulled from the "discard" file. Lucerne and Lacrosse were already in the pipeline, with Lutz influencing some of the interior & styling details. Aurora has Lutz's fingerprints everywhere, inside & out, but it was still on the books when he 1st got there, and is largely based on the G6 chassis. The GMT-900 has been under development since at least 2000. There was a Ion based Cavalier replacement on the books when he got there.

Malibu, on the other hand was concieved, hashed out, market studied & market placed, engineered & designed, completely under his supervision.

Aura was a dry run.

Malibu is the 1st no excuses, 100% Bob Lutz car.

Everything from here on (till at least 2010 if he left GM today), are the real vehicles from the Bob Lutz era.

 

Wouldn't that seem kind of odd that the rags would get it this early, w/out the car even being shown at the NAIAS first? I would think they would do a simultaneous release, like they did for the C6 and Camaro Concept. Or is the '08 going to be an early '08? If so, fine, but if it were not going to be out until Aug next year or so, I'd wait for NAIAS if I were GM.

 

Pictures of most new vehicle being unveiled are typically available to the press well before unveiling because of the lag in print media.

Magazine need at least a 2 month window for last minute additions. A picture of a new car for a March magazine (which comes out late January-early February) magazines nned to have the photos before the end of November. If an automaker wants the pictures of the car out at the same time a car is unveiled or shortly afterwards car mags get the pics in October, no later than the 1st week in November.

These pictures are under an "embargo", in which you can't release them to the general public till a certain date & time... usually the scheduled time for introduction. Mags are free to take the picture, put it into their magazine, & send it to the printers at anytime. Because the mag doesn't hit the news stands till late December or early January, it usually is on the stands after unveiling.

Every so often, someone on the road between setting up the pages on the computer and packing the printed editions in storage for delivery gets ahold of the pictures and posts them on the internet. It's rarely someone who had access to the website (embargoed pics are often coded so that any picture posted can be traced to whoever leaked it).

The computer generated & artist drawn Camaro pics went out just before introduction, press Belair pics came out in late November, media C6 pics came out in December as did Z06.

If Malibu is going to be unveiled in early January and GM wants to plaster pics of the car on the newstands at the same time, pics should be out in early November, and as things go to press things should start poping up on the internet early December, and we should see it in print sometime early January in February editions from some of the mags that go to press late.

 

Was this a deliberate slip?

 

I knew all that, I just read it like the mags featuring the pictures would be out before the car is actually shown in person. I remember we were in DTW the day before, and the actual concept pix had leaked, not that silver clown suit one, but I remember the red one was out at least the day before. GM was none too pleased.