I know it’s hard to believe that the world’s largest automaker is going down– especially when the company’s management swears up, down and sideways that revenues are up, costs are down and market share is stabilizing sideways. But understand this: GM observers will only realize the extent of GM’s peril retroactively. Meanwhile, it’s clear that GM is trying to follow the old English adage “When you’re stuck in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.”

Back in the day, Subaru couldn’t afford to build a new vehicle to compete in the smoking hot SUV sector. So they took an Impreza, jacked it up a couple of inches, raised the roof and reskinned the body. The result was a hit, and helped define the modern small CUV. Ten years later, the Subaru Forester battles on, facing its third gen competitors (Honda CRV and Toyota RAV4) with nothing more than a few questionable sheet metal creases, a spiffed up interior, and the addition of the turbocharged XT model. The CUV pool’s getting more crowded by the day, and, compared to the Subie’s well-worn REI fleece, the competition looks like its wearing designer duds. We checked out an XT to answer a simple question: is it a classic or a relic? 

I don’t get veggie-burgers. If something didn’t actually die for my dinner, I reckon it should at least have been pretty severely inconvenienced. What’s more, a good burger is always bad for you (arterial distress on a sesame-seed bun). So it is with the Subaru Impreza 2.5i Sport Wagon. Why would anyone buy such an entirely sensible vehicle when they could drive away in a full-fat, hormone-injected WRX Sport Wagon? Why indeed. It’s time for a serious sampling of Fuji Heavy Industries Lite.

Since World War II, seeking national glory on the battlefield has become socially unacceptable. Countries now pour their national psyche into that great champion of industry: the car firm. As representatives of their homelands, automobile manufacturers live up to a national ‘meta-brand’, an image that is shared by its compatriots. National karma can now be read in meta-brands as if they were a pack of tarot cards.

Once upon a time, a dapper German auto exec named Wolfgang Rietzle dreamed of running BMW. When the Bavarians gave Wolfie the cold shoulder (twice), he left their employ to build his own, even larger fiefdom: the Premier Automotive Group (PAG). Technically, Ford owned Wolfie’s farrago of upmarket car brands. But as far as Wolfie was concerned, “his” five luxury marques vould vun day rule ze vorld! Three years later, Bill Ford tried to fail Wolfie upwards. The mad professor banked his bucks and blew town, leaving a Frankensteinian monster for Ford to fix. Yesterday, Ford said it lives! I say, grab your pitchforks!

Sweden is home to an automotive cult known as “Raggare” (roughly translated: “pick-up artist.”) Its adherents revere American hot rods and the cruising lifestyle depicted by the film "American Graffiti." It’s helpful to think of the Volvo C70 hardtop convertible in this context, as a latter day Swedish pony-car. I know; it's a bizarre concept. A hardtop convertible produced by a car company known for impeccable safety and wildly inoffensive design aspiring to super-cool sex appeal? Like Swedish meatballs, it tastes a lot better than it sounds. 

My first memories are of the womb. The enveloping warmth, the soothing sounds that correlated to alien activity. I remember the sensations of being propelled: forward, stop, turning, forward again, the gentle g-forces rolling me delicately from side to side, ensconced in my snug compartment on all sides, conscious of the rounded form that surrounded me. My first ride was a VW.

A forty-something friend once told me that I can’t have my cake and eat it too. I took it literally, as we were facing a well-stocked dessert table at the time. Though my 29-year-old metabolism burns off whatever sugar coated dish I cram into my mouth, I’ve had enough engineering education to understand the concept that two things cannot coexist in the same time – space continuum—at least until you get down to the sub atomic level. But then I found another loophole: a Honda Accord LX. 

To say the internet has become an important marketing tool for automobile manufacturers is like saying radial tires are beginning to catch on. And yet Forrester Research reports that many car companies' websites depend on clunky photo galleries, confusing spec tables, complicated car configurators and other layout clichés. “You can’t frustrate and annoy people into liking your brand,” counsels Ron Rogowski, one of the Forrester's senior analysts. “But a lot of automotive websites seem to be trying to do just that.” 

In last night’s State of the Union address, President Bush cooked-up a cute little saying: “20 by 10.” That’s a 20% reduction in American gas consumption over the next 10 years. In case you thought the Prez has decided to whack automakers with a 2 X 4, the fine print centers on renewable and alternative fuels: corn ethanol (E85), biodiesel, hydrogen and dilithium crystals. Bush also promised to change car fuel economy regs from current fleet averages to attribute-based (size) requirements. There’s a link to the plan below, and plenty of analysis online. So let’s talk about towing.

Now that Mercedes has released pictures of their new C-Class, I figured it was as good a time as any to sample the dead C. In Europe, the outgoing C-Class (W203 in Stuttgart speak) is beloved of German taxi drivers and penny-pinching poseurs with a little extra pomposity in their purse. Stateside, Merc’s three-pointed star shines more brightly; the C-Class’ price tag aspires to its second name– despite suffering from a reprehensible rep for reliability. As I drove off in a 2007 C280 4Matic, I wanted to know what ground the new C had to cover to make its bones.

Quick! Which is bigger: San Antonio, Texas or San Diego, California? It’s San Diego. And here’s the kicker: a classroom of German students is more likely to get the right answer than you are, for one simple reason: more of them have heard of San Diego than San Antonio. Try another one. Should GM build the new Chevrolet Malibu? Despite auto industry execs’ huge salaries, you, a car guy or gal, are more likely to get it right than GM's top execs. And for the same reason: your gut instincts are more reliable than factual analysis.

When Daimler-Benz began its Apache dance with Chrysler in 1998, everyone wondered who was leading and where the Hell they were going. At first, the “merger of equals” looked like it would bless Chrysler with Mercedes’ best engineering. When the 300C was built atop some last gen Mercedes cast-offs, and ye olde SLK-based Crossfire [dis]appeared, it seemed that Chrysler would at least get some natty hand-me-downs. Then DCX leadership declared "a Mercedes will remain a Mercedes.” Now it's Dancing With the Stars gone bad, and it's bound to end in an elimination.

Enthusiasts don’t tend to wax eloquent about seat tracks. They’re the automotive equivalent of the sliding rails that support file cabinet drawers when you pull them all the way out. A vehicle’s front (and occasionally rear) seats slide forward on them, they slide backwards. Done. No surprise then that seat tracks aren’t mentioned in commercials. They’re never part of a car salesman’s spiel. And there’s no seat track website or blog. Yet seat tracks are a key part of any car, pickup, minivan, SUV or CUV. 

The recipe for the original Ford Mustang was simple enough: a low price car with a trim, athletic body wearing the same sort of sexy, svelte sheetmetal of a contemporaneous European sports coupe. If you park a ’07 Ford Mustang GT next to its 1960’s counterpart, it’s clear that Ford missed the point by over two hundred pounds. But don't think of this retro-mobile as just another FoMoCo bloated barge; it's slim by Gran Torino standards. Think of the Mustang GT as a portly pastiche of pony cars past, present and yes, future.