Opening up a recent issue of Autoweek, I was astonished by a picture of a new SUV. The vehicle's design was clean, modern and butch, without the slightest hint of off-roader clichés or overarching futurism. The newbie's sheet metal instantly trumped the latest crop of SUV's: the hideously-nosed Subaru Tribeca, the narcoleptic Saab 9-7x and the ungainly Audi Q7. I was even more astonished to see the GMC logo on the stunner's snout. When I saw the words "Hybrid Fever" in the title, I was ready for a big plate of humble pie.

The GMC Graphyte is, I soon learned, a concept car; though not in the Chrysler sense of the phrase. It's not an SUV that will eventually appear at your local dealership in roughly the same form. It's more like "here's something we spent a lot of money on to distract you from the fact that our next generation of trucks is just like the current generation of trucks with slightly better everything, but nothing particularly interesting, and certainly no killer ap like a really good hybrid engine." In other words, if you think GM has a secret weapon waiting in the wings to counter Toyota's inexorable march towards replacing The General as the world's largest automaker, dream on.

There comes a point in every enthusiast's life when it's time to slow down– at least until some of the penalty points on their license expire. To avoid a complete loss of personal mobility, hamstrung throttle jockeys often find themselves transitioning into a slower vehicle. Not being attuned to The Ways of the Sloth, these once and future speed demons usually slide into some po-faced laggard. Bad move. The miserable car nut simply ends up thrashing the horseless carriage until it reaches extralegal velocities. If you have to go slow, there's only one way to go: the Land Rover LR3.

The LR3 is Oxycontin on wheels. Here's the pharmacology: command seating, a light and airy cabin, widescreen windscreen, superior sound system, silken slushbox, progressive brakes and roll-suppressing air suspension. Press the right pedal and the British-made SUV doesn't administer the G-force jolt pistonheads crave. Instead, it unleashes something just as intoxicating: a seamless surge of forward progress known to the luxury-class cognoscenti as "imperious wafting". Within minutes, driving slowly is as sensually satisfying as lying in a hot tub after a long day's work. Ten minutes later and the "go-faster" part of your brain goes numb.

Today's showrooms teem with vehicles with false pretensions. Four door 'coupes.' Hardtop convertibles. 'Sport' wagons. SUV-schnozzed minivans. Hybrid-powered trucks. At best, most crossbreeds and half-casts are insincere. At worst, they're incestuous counterfeits. In Nissan's case, the Maxima no longer lives up to its 'four door sports car' billing. The Quest is a minivan masquerading as modern art. The Murano is an SUV that doesn't want to get its feet wet. So consider the Xterra Nissan's mea culpa. It does exactly what it says on the tin: it's a truck's truck.

Nissan's new Xterra is based on yet another variant of the company's stout F-Alpha platform, first seen underpinning the massive Titan. As with the previous iteration, the new model is a fantastically buff, well-resolved form– butch without being vulgar. Clipped overhangs and purposefully-vesicated sheetmetal give it the muscular good looks of a gym rat. If the compact SUV segment were an elementary school playground, Xterra would liberate its classmates of lunch money, yet they'd all feel cooler by association.

Winston Churchill called it the phony war: the period between the Nazi conquest of Poland and their assault on Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg. During these eight months, millions of English subjects believed they were safe from the storm clouds of World War Two. By the same token, tens of thousands of GM employees believe that The General's future is assured, regardless of recent financial 'unpleasantness'. Military historians don't tend to use the phrase, but both groups can be characterized by the expression 'living in denial'.

For those with the courage to look, ominous signs are everywhere. Last month, Rick Wagoner stood in front of his shareholders and promised to end the incentive programs crippling GM's profitability and knee-capping its branding. Instead, The General's general launched the largest incentive campaign since 'Keep America Rolling'. In addition to the usual problems, 'Employee Discounts for Everyone' may be pulling GM buyers forward, rather than winning conquest sales. If so, the ranks of potential GM customers will be perilously thin come winter. Meanwhile, Rabid Rick is fully committed, extending the Employee Discount program beyond the July first deadline. Log this one under "friendly fire, ongoing".

When my Mom returned from a major shopping expedition, she'd justify her voluminous purchases by telling Dad how much money she'd saved. "If you save enough money we'll go broke," he'd remark. The reverse is also true. To wit: General Motors was losing $2331 per vehicle BEFORE they launched "Employee Discounts for Everyone". As it's safe to assume that the promotion's new, lower prices mean new, slimmer margins, The General's latest sales gimmick is actually hastening the financial demise of the world's largest automaker.

I know; it's got to the point where you start to feel sorry for these guys. I mean, what would YOU do if you had 1.2 million new cars sitting on dealer lots and abandoned airfields, waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Godot to walk through the showroom door? (Remember: new vehicles continue to emerge from The General's sausage-making machine 24/7.) The temptation to just give the damn things away must have been intense. Instead, GM had to pay for the privilege. It's true: when a manufacturer loses money on every sale, they're literally paying customers to buy their product. According to recent projections by Edmunds.com, GM's lastest incentive program will cost them nearly half-a-billion dollars. And that's only ONE of the ways this employee discount thing stinks.

It's been a while since I've driven a death car. My mind casts back to tail-happy 911's, centrifugal Corvettes, terrifying TVR's and flaming Ferraris. These days, very few car companies build cars that seduce you into serious speed, then blow up, fall apart, flip over and/or throw you into a solid object. I reckon I've survived enough motorized mayhem to know a death machine when I Ford GT one. So I was a little surprised when I turned at a four-way intersection, squeezed the gas and nearly drove the new Mitsubishi Eclipse GT into a parked car.

Torque steer. It's that squirrelly squirming sensation that tells you that a front-wheel-drive car's driven wheels are desperately scrabbling for grip. The Mitsubishi Eclipse GT is a torque steer poster child. Feed the Eclipse's 263hp engine some major revs and mid-course corrections are instantly out of the question– and that's WITH traction control. All you can do is saw away at the steering wheel, back off the gas and wait for the tires to grab enough tarmac to return you to normal programming.

Rex Raider recently ranted about The General's sales doldrums on GMinsidenews.com. The senior camp follower recognizes that hundreds of thousands of [former] GM customers wouldn't buy a GM car if it came complete with an employee discount, cash back, zero percent finance and free health care (no co-pays and dental). Raider posed a simple question: what would it take to win these buyers back?

The obvious answer is great product. But it isn't the right one. Even if GM built cars, trucks and SUV's that looked like sex, never broke and cost twenty dollars, most Americans wouldn't put them on their shopping list. That's because the average person (not you) is almost entirely risk aversive. When they purchase a product– whether it's a baked potato to a Pontiac G6– they're not looking for a Bigger Better Deal. They're not looking for a fantastic new taste sensation or the world's best car. They simply don't want to experience LESS pleasure than they did before. They don't want to lose.

Bob's blog is back. Once again, GM's Main Man has gone online to tell it like it is. Once again, T-TAC's ready to read between the lines, looking for the lead cloud surrounding the silver lining. Interesting enough, Mr. Lutz' June 10th entry, 'Only the Best', begins with a major mea culpa. GM's Vice President for New Product Development gives us a full and frank explanation of how The General earned its recent (as in 40-year-old) reputation for lackluster design and dubious build quality. Well, more frank than full, but it's still worth a careful read…

"A few years ago,' Bob writes, 'planners would sift through reams of data, segment the market, analyze and deconstruct the data until they discovered a niche in which we needed a new product…. the designers were given a formula to work with. Not a blank canvas, more like a paint-by-numbers scenario." So NOW we know why the Pontiac Aztec is so ugly: the design team lacked numeracy. Quite how the beancounters arrived at the formula that is the Corvette-powered SSR convertible pickup is anybody's guess. But wait! There's more! Things have changed! There's an answer!

You wouldn't turn a golf cart into an SUV, so why turn an SUV into a golf cart? And yet here we are in a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, gliding away from a traffic light like we're heading for the eighth tee. Mash the gas and the hybrid's petrol-powered engine kicks-in with the tiniest of judders. Instantly, there's more than enough petrol-powered propulsion to quickly distance ourselves from the following foursome– just as long as we stay on the fairway. According to the Toyota Motor Corp, even the high-spec, four-wheel-drive Highlander Hybrid SUV is "not designed to be driven off road".

Nor is it designed to be driven like a sports car. Which is a shame. You only need a Nissan Pathfinder or Ford Explorer doggie-sniffing your rear bumper once to realize that a surprising number of SUV owners like to drive like Hell. On the face of it, the Highlander Hybrid seems the ideal whip for supersonic Soccer Moms and NASCAR dads: 268hp (gas and electric engine power combined), zero to 60 in just 7.3 seconds and a tree-hugging rep to hide behind at cocktail parties and speed traps. The reality is less stirring.

OK, so you want to save all eight remaining GM brands. Good for you! It sure would make a lot of people happy. So let's do it, starting with each GM division's USP. Each brand has to produce vehicles that do one thing better than anyone else in the world. No clones. No model overlap. Each vehicle must reflect, embody and personify its unique brand identity. If you look at a car, truck, SUV, minivan or crossover and know it's a GM product, we've failed.

Let's be clear about this: the United Auto Workers is not going to let General Motors cut ANY union benefits without a long and vicious fight. GM Vice President Rick Wagoner knows it. UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker knows it. GM workers know it. Wall Street knows it. And if you don't know it, listen up: last Friday, The General formally asked the UAW to re-open its contract. The UAW told them to fuck off.

Of course, we don't know if Shoemaker's crew used that expression. Both GM's request and the UAW's rejection took place behind closed doors. Still, you can get a feel for the UAW's perspective from their official response to Wagoner's promise to trim health care payments. Shoemaker ended his three paragraph reply with a simple statement: "We will do all that is possible to protect the interests of our members and their families." In other words, fuck off. And don't fuck with us.

Strolling through one of Honda's vanilla dealerships and coming across the new Ridgeline is a bit like happening upon Mike Tyson supping Earl Grey tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Not that you'd say it out loud, but the word that springs to mind is 'fugly'. Which doesn't really do Honda's first-ever pickup truck justice. For better or worse, the Ridgeline is right hook to your aesthetic expectations, instantly redefining the pickup genre in both form and function.

'We aren't going out of business in the next six months.' After yesterday's stockholder meeting, GM Chairman Rick Wagoner faced reporters and jokingly predicted that his company will last until November– just in time for the long-delayed launch of the new Pontiac Solstice. The irony would be delicious if there weren't so many diners at the table. GM's continuing slide threatens the financial future of hundreds of thousands of shareholders, workers, suppliers, dealers, even the Seven Million Dollar man himself. And yet Wagoner's "big idea" to revive The General's declining health is a sham.

While Wagoner unveiled a five-point plan for GM, the headlines focused on plant closures and screamed "GM to slash 25,000 jobs!" The Chairman's committment to downsizing was a guaranteed spin winner. You know the drill: American manufacturing jobs are disappearing. It's a crisis! Something must be done! Equally important from Wagoner's POV, there's a market-pleasing corollary: times are tough, but GM is taking tough action. News of the move sent GM's share price (which has lost over 50% of its value in recent times) up fifty cents.

Once upon a time, enthusiasts bought a car's underpinnings from an automaker and then commissioned a coach builder to drop a body on top. The result: non-identical twins. And so it is with today's Dodge Charger R/T and Chrysler 300C. The two cars share chassis, engines, gearboxes, suspensions, wiring systems, the lot. It's not so much platform sharing as automotive cross-dressing. Of course, I don't mean that in a feminine way. The Dodge Boys have given the gangsta C a comprehensive muscle car makeover. But is it enough to lure NASCAR Dads into the showroom?

"Real" muscle car aficionados hate the new Charger on principle. How DARE Chrysler name a four-door sedan after a legendary two-door muscle car? I reckon that's a bit like being anti-Pammie because Ms. Anderson breasts are one cup size too large, but I feel their pain. There's nothing like driving a pavement-scorching two-door Yank tank to make you feel young, sexy and single– especially if you drive with your elbow on the window sill. Yes, well, sorry guys; those days are gone. The first time you strap your tantrumming rug rat into the back of your Charger and slam the rear door, you'll secretly thank The Dodge Boys for sacrificing authenticity for utility.

The Nissan Maxima is the Madonna of mid-priced motors. It can perform wild and sensational stunts, come home, pop on the kettle and write heart-warming children's books. Not bad for a car whose roots stretch back to 1981, when it was a 120hp wagon called a Datsun 810. Those days, salesmen probably threw in a couple of lawn chairs and two tickets to Grease at the drive-in to move the metal. Now all they have to do is toss a potential customer the keys.

Or just let them study the car for a while. The Maxima's body looks the way the Cadillac CTS wishes it did, before its designer decided to run for Mayor of Polygon Town. It's a clean, fresh design that's deceptively attractive. At first glance, it's easy to mistake the Maxima for another Japanese blandmobile. But then, as you experience the car's perfect proportions and restrained detailing in various lights and settings, the design begins to work its magic. Before you know it, words like 'handsome' and 'Nissan' seem less like oxymorons, and more like an invitation to a VIP room.