I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: GM Car Czar Bob Lutz is a gift. To the media– not GM stockholders. The General’s Vice Chairman of Global Product Development feels free to make it up as he goes along, paying scant regard to the current state of the world market or his own company’s plans. Lutz proved the point, again, at his Swiss birthplace. Speaking to reporters at the Geneva auto salon, Lutz outlined his vision for Cadillac. Unfortunately, Cadillac’s General Manager was at the same show. 

As I closed the rear door of the top spec Cadillac DTS, I watched the side light above my head literally sputter and die. And there you have it: proof positive that the bean counters have been hard at work on The General's luxury brand. You want the lights to slowly fade up and down? Why? Anyway, we don’t have that part. What else you do you need? Actually, despite the death by a thousand cost cuts, the DTS has almost enough upmarket mojo to make it. Only luxury carmaking isn't horseshoes or hand grenades. Almost doesn’t count.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, things they are a-changin’ on The Truth About Cars. Our new look is evolving, several new writers have made the scene and a whole lot of new readers/commentators are joining us every day. With all that going on we thought we’d better answer a few of the questions we’ve been getting (and throw in a few more we just made up). 

As an immigrant back in the days of the “melting pot,” I was as eager to assimilate as a wide-eyed frat pledge amongst his potential brothers. I tried to forget German, made futile efforts to learn baseball and remained deeply smitten by American automobiles. I repressed memories of my abandoned European flames: Porsche, Mercedes and Jaguar. But my jilted lovers found me hiding in Iowa, and began to torment me with their seductive powers.

High gasoline prices, foreign wars in oil producing nations and fears of global warming have made fuel efficiency the new patriotism. Yet many Americans reject clown-sized economy cars and suppository shaped CUV’s and minivans. They cling to the outdoorsy lifestyle and the go-anywhere freedom embodied by rough-and-tumble SUV’s. In a second attempt to address these shifting values, Jeep has unveiled the Patriot. It's an SUV for gas conscious Americans! Actually, never mind all that. Please, oh please, just let it be better than the Compass.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner was once the automaker’s Chief Financial Officer. So why has GM twice delayed filing its 10-K financial statements (reporting their earnings for the fourth quarter and the ‘06 financial year)? You’d think that they’d be ship shape by now. "These are big complex businesses,” Wagoner told a reporter in Geneva yesterday. “When you do transactions at the end of the year it adds additional complexity." Fair enough. But Wagoner’s no dummy. The real reason for the delay is a fight over cash.

In 2002, Toyota sued Chinese automaker Geely for copying the Japanese automaker’s logo. In November 2003, a Chinese judge threw out the case. He claimed China’s trademark office had to reject Geely’s logo before Toyota could seek civil damages. The verdict provided yet more proof that China isn’t willing to lay down– or enforce– its copyright law. This lack of legal resolve is a clear and present danger to foreign automakers, and a stark warning of things to come. 

The Big Three entered the 1980’s in typical Three Stooges fashion. GM (Moe) knocked the other two automakers’ heads together, and then gloated over the market share he’d stolen– oblivious to the imports stealing it right back from under his nose. Mild-mannered Larry (Ford) scratched his professorial pate, and cooked up a brilliant scheme to avoid getting hit in the coming (import) brawl. And buffoon Curley (Chrysler) lay on the floor, doing his dry-swimming antics in a desperate attempt to draw attention to his only product: K cars.

The planet Saturn is a giant ball of gas. When it comes to selling cars to enthusiasts, GM’s “like never before” division is also full of hot air. In 1999, Saturn said their Opel-sourced LS sedan would be fun to drive. It wasn’t. In 2003, Saturn made similar noises over the ION Quad Coupe. Strike two. In 2004, the ION Red Line was supposedly da bomb. Pistonheads lined up none deep. But was the Red Line really at fault? Or was it sabotaged by Saturn’s nebulous image and boy-who-cried-wolf marketing?

Driving through Switzerland makes you feel like a million bucks (the annual salary required for comfortable residency). In early March, the Alps are still covered in snow, but the sun’s warm enough to shelter a scribe savoring a steaming cup of coffee and slice of rueblitorte by the shores of Lake Geneva. The fresh air! The dictators’ money! The tidiness! And then it’s time to contemplate the effects of global warming and enter the hallowed halls of Geneva’s seventy-seventh International Auto Show.

Those of us who lived through the 1970’s have thrown out, remodeled or psycho-analyzed away any lingering echoes of those economically, socially and politically divisive years. But the decade of pet rocks, big hair, anti-war protests, moon landings, presidential pardons, drug-addled introspection, Middle Eastern war and convulsive oil shocks left the Big Three’s collective psyche permanently altered. In some ways, they never recovered.

Consumer Reports has released the 2007 edition of its “Annual Auto Issue.” For the second year in a row, all CR’s “Top Picks” come from Japanese makes. For some industry observers, that’s a problem. They believe the magazine’s results indicate a hidden bias, especially against vehicles produced by domestic manufacturers. Which both is and isn’t true.

When a chain smoker develops lung cancer after thirty years of habitual self-annihilation, their ill-health should come as no surprise to either the smoker or a casual observer. Likewise, The Big 2.5’s current tailspin is the direct result of bad habits stretching back some fifty years. Like a pack-a-day puffer, the Detroit automakers “felt just fine” for several decades. Eventually, inevitably, their dirty little habits caught up with them.

Eight years ago, when giant SUV's roamed this fair country virtually unchallenged, The Blue Oval slipped the Ford Focus into the American market. Now that gas prices have U.S. consumers thinking small, you'd think that FoMoCo would be battling Fits, Versas and Yari with an updated version of their Eurobox. Nope. As far as Ford’s engineers and PR department are concerned, the Focus has fallen off the face of the earth. Which might just work in your favor.

If patriotism is a scoundrel’s last refuge, American automakers and their domestic defenders have been fixated on the end game for decades. The Car Connection’s Gary Witzenburg is only the latest industry wag to try to wrap The Big 2.5 in the American flag. In a rehash of a November 2003 editorial for Automotive Industries magazine, Witzenburg offers gullible readers a lesson from his school for scoundrels.