General Motors has pulled the plug off its 19-year long relationship with the Academy Awards, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Despite the fact that the Oscars are one of the biggest annual events on broadcast television, GM decided to end its long-time sponsorship of Hollywood’s flashy annual awards that included heaps of advertising time and the use of its vehicles to transport celebrities to the event and to Oscar-related parties. “It is a great property, but it simply didn’t fit into our plans for 2009,” said a GM spokeswoman.

Falling gasoline prices didn’t seem to help automakers avert the downturn as U.S. light vehicle sales plunged for a tenth consecutive month in August. Overall sales for the month were 1.25 million vehicles, down a hefty 15.5 percent from August 2007 while for the first eight months of the year, sales are down 11.2 percent to 9.8 million vehicles, according to Autodata Corp.

The growing economic recession in the U.S. has finally caught up to the iconic Corvette as General Motors’ officials confirmed to Automotive News that production of the two-seater sports car at the Bowling Green assembly line in Kentucky will come to a halt during the week of October 6th.

In typical GM style, the American automaker (re)introduced the all-new Chevrolet Cruze to the members of the press for the second time in less than a month. Following the initial introduction of the Cruze at the at the company’s Lordstown plant in Ohio on August 22, today GM took the wraps off its new global compact sedan once again here in the States, but this time at its Detroit headquarters in Michigan as part of its Paris Auto Show preview.

As part of its Centennial celebrations, GM finally took the wraps off the production version of the long-awaited, all-electric Chevrolet Volt that will be available in the States in late 2010. As many might remember, GM’s media partner had released a few teaser images (by mistake) of the Volt in early September but now we have the Full Monty. Just hit the jump to check out the preliminary specifications as well as the initial details and a high-resolution image gallery that includes photos of the production interior. And stay tuned as we’ll be bringing your more information and media content throughout the day.

You knew it was coming, meaning the way fuel prices have spiked the past few years, it was only a matter of time before GM gave its attention to smaller displacement engines. According to the General’s latest announcement, it plans to double its global production of small four-cylinder engines (1.0L to 1.4L) by 2011, with more than half of the increase coming in North America.

According to separate reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, two of the most iconic and troubled…. names in the American industry, General Motors and Chrysler LLC, have been in preliminary talks the past month or so concerning a possible merger. It is also reported that Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler LLC is also holding talks with other automakers including the Renault - Nissan Group.

In response to rapidly declining full-size SUV sales and the ongoing economic crisis, GM announced on Monday that it will not wait until late 2010 to close its Janesville, Wisconsin assembly plant as it had originally announced. Instead, the troubled American automaker has decided to shut down the factory bythe end of the year. The Wisconsin plant employs around 1,200 workers and it assembles the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban and the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL large SUVs.

Adding to the gloomy economic atmosphere, GMAC, General Motors’ consumer financial arm announced on Monday that is implementing a tighter policy for auto loans. The changes include limiting purchases to vehicle buyers with a credit score of 700 or above while the company will also restrict contracts with higher advance rates and longer terms. GMAC officials attributed the more conservative purchase policy for consumer auto loans to the lack of stability in the global capital and credit markets.

China is yet another significant market were General Motors is losing ground to Toyota. According to a report from Bloomberg citing data issued by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, Toyota’s two Chinese auto ventures raised their sales by a whopping 30% to 407,427 cars and SUVs during the first nine months of the year in the domestic market. At the same time, GM’s passenger car sales remained stagnate at 373,945 vehicles.