Yesterday, The Detroit News caught-up with Maximum Bob Lutz at the Geneva Auto Show. GM's Car Czar was busy unveiling Saab's Aero-X, a Corvette-based concept car from a brand that's lost GM several billion dollars over 17 years. It probably seemed as good a time as any to ask Maxi Bob about GM Board of Directors' member Jerry York's call to axe the Swedish brand. 'I've spoken at length with Jerry York,' Lutz said. 'And he's off this get-rid-of-Saab thing.' Thing? Calling the Turnaround King's strategic recommendation a "thing" is so condescending it qualifies Lutz for a British knighthood. More importantly, Maximum Bob's summary dismissal tells you all you need to know about Saab's future, and it ain't good.

Lutz' alternative to York's Saabicide is badge engineering. Or, more specifically, MORE badge engineering. Yes, now that The General has sold off its share in Subaru, the plan to transform Japanese Scoobies into Swedish Saabs has been ditched in favor of turning German Opels into Swedish Saabs (with an Ohio SUV thrown in for good measure). In other words, GM is fully committed to integrating the Saab brand into the bureaucratic clusterfuck known as GM's "global vehicle development system." Saab's ignition key slot will remain in between the front seats, but the decisions about its major components will now be taken somewhere a long way away from Sweden. And the choices will be made by a series of committees with far greater responsibilities than "just" Saab.

Growing up in Southern California, I never understood the whole Swedish car thing. SoCal drivers need an all-weather automobile like tacos need herring. Although a Volvo wagon was the left-wing equivalent of a Ford F250 and a Saab was a cap and gown on wheels, speed-crazed Angelinos found Nordic transportation about as exciting as farm machinery. Then Ford bought Volvo and GM scarfed Saab. Suddenly, performance, handling and luxury were piled onto the Smorgasbord. To freshen-up its range, GM instructed Saab to reengineer an Opel Vectra and call it a 9-3. In this guise, the new Saab 9 – 3 Aero joins German rides in the land of palm trees and lip-injections. Perhaps the General was on to something…

Saab's decision to ditch their traditional hatchback for a three-box sedan raises immediate and uncomfortable questions about the intersection of corporate ownership and brand identity. The Aero attempts to distract the faithful with a rear that looks like a hatch (but isn't) and sporting cues. The Jay Leno chin spoiler certainly grabs your attention, and the dual pipes poking out from the blackened derriere make all the right noises. But the 9-3 is too narrow for such deep cladding and there's an excellent chance parking lot rampage will hammer the low-slung ground effects. The Aero's profile is its best viewing angle, projecting European rakishness. Even if Saab newcomers don't catch a Trollhattan vibe, at least they'll know they're not in Kansas anymore.

If you were going to invent a way to control an automobile, you wouldn't ask the average driver to develop the skill and coordination of a church organist. Note I said "average." As far as hardcore automotive enthusiasts and skilled pipe organ players are concerned, there's nothing more natural or satisfying than making beautiful music with a sublime dance of hands and feet. Yes, well, the average person would rather drive an automatic and download an iTune. Pistonheads and pipe worshippers may sneer, but if the majority of humans didn't take the path of least resistance our species would still be stuck in the trees. Meanwhile, just as digital sound has invaded God's house and rocked the organist's world, Audi's DSG transmission is here and tripedalists are toast.

The day F1 racing cars switched to paddle shift control, the clutch pedal was doomed. Only the paddle system's violence kept the left pedal from a date with old Sparky. Ferrari's ground-breaking attempts at a passenger paddler were representative rubbish; the clunky F1 system transformed the sublime F355 into a herky-jerky one-track pony. Other early systems were equally obtrusive, equally foul. At the same time, style conscious high-end manufacturers added wheel-mounted button shifts and gate activated "tip shifts." Although the technology simply handed customers slushbox control, computers eventually transformed the systems into a reasonably convincing halfway house between mindless ease and endless excitement.

Maybe it's because my father's Canadian, but I always pull for the underdog. Right from the start, I wanted Nissan's upstart Infiniti brand to kick Lexus's polished derriere. And so it did. The Z — make that G — 35 made the original IS250 look like an over-stressed poodle. Where Lexus offered an overwrought interior (ahoy there diving-watch gauge cluster) and under-cooked mechanicals, Infiniti served-up a four-door Camaro. The G35 dispatched the IS, yawned and started hunting Germans. When Japan's 'other' luxury brand (not counting Acura) re-launched its 5-Series fighter, I thought right; here we go. Round two…

At first sight, all bets were off. Why would Infiniti produce such a fat, unsightly beast? Up front, the sedan's massive chrome grill clashes with the body's not-so-svelte proportions, and the brash headlights are just plain wrong. The M's obese hind quarters are more offensive than a cartoon of the Prophet lounging by the pool. I'm not saying the M45's taillights are garish, but they'd look huge on a school bus. From the side, the M45's not a tragedy, but that's only because you might mistake it for the more comely G35 at twenty paces. In all, the M45 is only vaguely alluring, like a post-partum Britney.

A couple of days ago, I was talking to an auto industry analyst about the world's largest automaker. We were discussing the cracks in GM's hull, trying to figure out which of The General's compartments were already breached, which are filling with water and which remain viable. A wistful tone in the analyst's voice indicated head-shaking dismay. "I'm no longer hearing anything positive about GM," he revealed. "The conversations range from how bad it is, to how bad it's going to get." I didn't want to sound like a paranoid fantasist to a new source, so I tried not to out-pessimist the doomsayers. But it wasn't easy.

GM's supply situation is dangerously dire. If former subsidiary and mission critical parts supplier Delphi doesn't reach an agreement with its unionized workers by March 30th — the third and "final" deadline — a judge will void the company's labor contracts. Pundits poo-poo the possibility; they reckon the UAW will make concessions and GM will fork over the necessary union blood money to keep Delphi chugging along. But… over at Tower Automotive, the smaller but equally bankrupt GM supplier tried to cut $1.50 to $3 from their union members' $13 to $15 hourly wages. The United Auto Workers (UAW), United Steel Workers and International Union of Electrical Workers (IUEW) said no. On Monday, a judge will void Tower's union contracts. The inevitable strike will deprive GM's Hail Mary GMT900 SUV's of vital suspension components (amongst other things).

Anyone who looks at the new Audi A3 3.2 DSG and sees an overpriced economy car should not be allowed to play with Rottweiler puppies. While Ingolstadt's diminutive four-door may seem like a hatchback for badge snobs willing to sacrifice size for breeding, it's actually a four-wheeled fiend, a beast born and bred to take a bite out of the time – space continuum. Everything else about the A3– the foot on the Audi ownership ladder thing, the four-wheel-drive peace-of-mind shtick– is nothing more than a glossy coat on a vicious little monster. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

The A3's aesthetic dissonance should tip off neophytes that something wikkid this way driveth. Calling the little Audi "ungainly" is like saying a Saab stretch limo lacks a certain finesse. The unconscionable gaping maw that is Audi's house snout never looked as hideous as it does here, attached to a car whose creators seems to have given up around the halfway mark. I presume the A3's sloping rear roofline was designed to distance Audi's $35k 'entry level' hatchback from the traditional econobox. At best, the A3 looks like a dwarf station wagon. At worst, it joins Mercedes' SLK as another petite whip suffering from Peter North syndrome.

Five grand.  Depending on options, incentives and fire sales, that's the difference between the cost of a Saab 9-2X Aero and a Subaru WRX Sport Wagon. Underneath, there's not much in it: same platform, same bag of tricks.  No wonder auto industry wags have taken to calling the Saab 9-2X Aero the 'Saabaru."  Now that GM has sold its share of the Japanese automaker and relocated Saab's badge-engineering department to Opel's German digs, the time has come to ask a simple question: Why God, why?

The Aero's exterior offers the best justification for its existence. The WRX has always been a visually challenging automobile.  Not to belabor the point: the '06 WRX Sport Wagon refresh is still ucking fugly. Thanks to its nose graft, the Saab 9-2x Aero is a far more handsome sled than its Japanese half-sister.  As Saab proved with its brand-stretching Trailblazer into 9-7X trick, their house schnoz gives even the most awkward beast a handsome, vaguely European vibe.  Although the Aero's C-pillar is as Swedish as unagi, at least Saab removed the Scooby's roof rails, making the Aero seem lower and sleeker, and added some black cladding around the exhaust, slimming the bulbous butt. If only they'd taken a blowtorch to those tortured side sills… 

While it's often said you can't be all things to all people, someone forgot to tell Toy Yoda. While GM, Ford and The Dodge Boys are still trying to gentrify their rough-and-ready SUV's into cultured outdoorsmen (before urbanites abandon their automotive Wellingtons), the Japanese automaker took a light saber to traditional SUV demographics, sliced them into pieces and built a vehicle appealing to every single [up]market segment at the same time. No question: the force is with this one. Powerful it is too.

Ironically, the RX 400h is not Lexus' most cohesive design. From head-on it resembles a baby elephant: all legs and a tiny, short body. From the side, the strangely kinked C-pillars and double quarter-windows are a self-conscious attempt to give the standard SUV box some sedan-like horizontality. The blacked-out rear roof spoiler proclaims sport, while the nanodetailed LED taillights say insect. The RX 400h's aesthetic appeal resides in the details, like the gorgeously crafted adaptive headlights and backlit company emblems in all four doorsills. And, lest we forget, there's the ultimate badge of honor: the little 'h' on the boot badge proclaiming your intention to use less fossil fuel, keep the globe cool and avoid red meat (providing there's a suitable salad option).

With so many superb high-end sedans for sale, I'd be hard-pressed to name the automaker building the world's best luxury car. But I'll tell you which one makes the best chocolate cake: Volkswagen. At VW's 'Glass Factory" in Germany, a PR flackling served-up a Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte whose cherry-flavored choctasticness established an insurmountable standard for the field. The same could not be said for the car being built below. The Phaeton was doomed from day one, minus the number of days between the moment of conception and the first commercial example. And yet, despite its inevitable withdrawal, the Phaeton may prove to be one of the most important cars of its time.

When the ghetto fabulous Bentley Continental GT made its debut, VW's boutique brand took great pains to distance their erstwhile British sedan from its German roots. But there was no getting around the fact that the Conti's rap sheet included some hard time on the Phaeton's platform. The baby Bentley's mighty mill was a twin-turbo version of the W12 engine powering the big Vee Dub. Should [all] US Phaeton owners pile into a modern Bentley, they'd immediately recognize the swankmobile's climate control and air suspension systems. By the same token, the current Audi A8 owes much of its character to its humble (though pricey) predecessor.

This is a tale of two Tahoes. The first is a wildly successful SUV that's flying off the lots at full price: a Hail Mary pass that will put General Motors back in the end zone, saving them from the unthinkable humiliation of bankruptcy, with only moments to spare. The second is a gas-guzzling truck that's being swept out to sea by the vast receding tide of SUV buyers: a four-wheeled indictment of GM's inability to build what America wants to drive at a price that makes the company enough money to stay in business. For the time being, which vehicle you see depends entirely on which one you want to see.

Over at The Detroit News, Brett Clanton paints a portrait of the new Tahoe as the corporate lifesaver The General needs it to be. His article on the Tahoe's initial fortunes is sprinkled with the kind of upbeat non-contextual factoids that German newspapers relied on at the end of WWII: "Tahoe sales were up more than 50 percent in January. The 2007 model is fetching a higher average selling price than its predecessor… Only on sale since Jan. 10, GM has booked just more than 4,000 sales and is still in the process of shipping Tahoes to dealers." To be fair, Clanton mentions Wall Street's unenthusiastic response and sensibly states that "a true verdict on the vehicle is probably still months away." But the article's overall tenor is reflected by the headline "Hot Tahoe fuels GM Optimism."

Over at Edmunds.com, automotive journalist Alistair Weaver reckons Dubai's Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road is "The World's Greatest Driving Road." Judging from Marty Padgett's rhapsodic description of Maui's Heavenly Hana Highway, The Car Connection scribe may beg to differ. It's a dual-branded debate. BMW paid for Weaver's wanderings; Volvo footed the bill for Padgett's peregrinations. I'm not saying these corporate subsidies rendered these writers less qualified to choose the world's best tarmac, but neither journalist could make that call without car company cash. In other words, once again, money talks, bullshit walks.

Both Edmunds and The Car Connection neglected to tell their audience that their travelogues were made possible by a grant from a company whose cars were described glowingly therein. I have no qualms with Weaver's assertion that the MINI's "success is a testament to the brilliance of its design." Nor do I quibble with Padgett's assessment that Hawaiian C70 drivers should "bring great music for the C70's top-notch 910-watt audio system." But these stories wouldn't exist without the manufacturers' undeclared interest. Withholding that information from site visitors is unethical.

Last Thursday, GM's Vice President of Global Communications sat with the suits and outlined his plan to rescue The General's image from public crucifixion. The man in charge, Steve "Twisted Sister" Harris, had been lured out of semi-retirement from a PR firm specializing in "reputation challenging situations." Ironically, The McGinn Group's website lists GMAC and The US Department of Justice as customers (although the federal seal is too blurry to be sure exactly which federal agency spent our tax dollars burnishing its image). More to the point, the opening animation silently intones "Experience. Accountability. Judgement". Talk about foreshadowing…

Yup, GM's Judgement Day is on its way. Meanwhile, Twisted Sister wants American consumers to know what a great job General Motors has done, is doing and will do, bet your bottom dollar, tomorrow. We're talking high mileage vehicles, clean-running ethanol engines, JD empowerment, we-must-be-doing-something-right sales figures, that kind of thing. Like most people paid to spin straw into gold, Sister doesn't trust the media with this message. He prefers working with cappucino-fuelled creatives to fashion fabulously expensive TV, print, radio, direct mail and web-based campaigns– rather than sitting down with cynical journalists prone to going "off message" and arguing about silly things like facts.

The SUV is dead. Long live the sedan on stilts! Yes folks, Chevrolet has transformed their Tahoe from a cheap and cheerful workhorse for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms, to a deluxe cruiser for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms. The change is so well executed, so completely earnest in both scope and scale, you almost feel sorry for the beast. Like the Wild Things watching Max sailing back to his bedroom (already regretting his rumpus at the pumpus), the new Tahoe cries out to departing SUV buyers "Come back! We love you so!" What say you, America?

The new Tahoe is certainly a more alluring monster than the big bland boring box it replaces. Bob Lutz– the GM executive who once dismissed a passel of motor show concept cars as "angry appliances"– will be delighted with what Chevy's American Revolution has wrought: a happy appliance. The Tahoe's sheetmetal displays all the subdued modernism, implied practicality and aesthetic solidity of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, right down to the sleek door handles– I mean "pulls". The Tahoe's hood is as perfectly creased as an Armani suit. The SUV's bowed nose and tail, the gently curving C-pillar, the side mirrors' blacked-out bottoms – every detail reflects an entirely successful attempt to give the Tahoe's exterior a contemporary kitchen's supercool coherence.

As our GM Death Watch series gains traction, I've taken to scanning the skies for black helicopters, stashing Glocks around the house and avoiding the fine city of Detroit. But I would have loved to been at RenCen to see the look on Bob Lutz' face when his boss sliced the Car Czar's salary by 30%. If you recall, Turnaround Tycoon Jerry York originally suggested executive pay cuts as a way to send a clear message to workers throughout the world's largest automaker: WE'RE IN DEEP SHIT. At the time, Maximum Bob responded to the suggestion with characteristic bravado: "I gave at the office." I guess he's learned that bankruptcy is the gift that keeps on giving.

To be fair, Mr. Lutz had something of a point. Although his employment contract isn't a matter of public record, much of Bob's compensation package is tied to the company's performance, both directly (through incentives) and intimately (through stock options). As GM bleeds out, shedding value like a dot com bomb, Bob's lost theoretical millions. OK, it's more than partially his fault. But as an employee stockholder, Lutz has GOT to be worried. Yesterday, Deutsche Bank took a hard look at the state of GM's finances and issued a Lutzian pronouncement: "sell."

If there's one group of people within the GM universe who elicits less sympathy than the current management team, it's the legions of loud-talking, loudly-dressed GM dealers. Despite the media's fixation on the corporate mothership, the survival of the world's largest automaker depends just as much on its dealer network's success as any new initiative coming from GM's RenCen HQ. All the flailing and failing in Detroit shows you that all is not well on the sharp end. In fact, GM's dealer network mirrors the automaker's ancient, costly production process: a fundamentally flawed institution in need of radical restructuring. Ah, but who will bell the cat?

Actually, euthanasia would be a better option. It's a little known fact The General's dealer network is roughly the same size as it was forty years ago. Back in the day – when GM owned the US car market lock, stock and double-barreled carbs – The General's network provided a significant advantage to both franchisees and the corporation. (Potential customers were never more than a twenty-minute ride away from their local GM dealer.) Now that GM buyers are increasingly thin on the ground, dealers must squander precious resources warding off "poaching". (Disgruntled customers are never more than a twenty minute ride away from a rival GM dealer.) Internecine warfare for conquest sales is even more damaging, forcing each store to engage in cut-throat pricing and blanket advertising. And that's without considering competition from rival brands, some of which may be closer than they appear…