According to a survey by NEWCARNET, 87 percent of British drivers want to see the demise of "sleeping policemen" (a.k.a. speed humps or speed bumps). Introduced in 1991, these "traffic calming" measures range in size from 75 to 100mm high (three to four inches for the metrically challenged). The survey claims sleeping policemen are responsible for damage to cars and buildings, increased road noise levels and injuries to drivers with bone conditions. Their detractors also consider them a dangerous distraction that slows emergency vehicles, and oft times diverts heavy traffic onto less suitable roads. The speed bumps safety value is also a matter of debate. When Barnet City Council removed all of their sleeping policemen in 2005, accidents had dropped by 14.9 percent. Despite all this– and an anti-sleeping policeman petition that garnered 6,622 signatures– don't look for their extinction any time soon. The UK government has proven itself almost entirely unresponsive to public objections to road safety measures.

It looks like everyone wants a piece of the burgeoning Chinese auto market. The latest player: the Iran Khodro Industrial Group (IKCO). The Iranian conglomerate has joined forces with Chinese busmaker Jinhua Neoplan to build vehicles in China, according to China Car Times. IKCO is Iran's primary auto manufacturer; they assemble cars in Iran under license from PSA Peugeot Citroen and trucks under license from Mercedes-Benz. They also build cars under the Iranian brands Samand, Sarir and Soren. There's no word on whether IKCO's Chinese vehicles will be existing models or new ones, or whether they're destined for the Chinese market or export to Iran and/or other markets. So far IKCO's invested over $60m in the project, looking to sink another $140m into the venture in the near future.

The Jacksn Clarion Ledger reports that Mayor Frank Melton's plan to impound the vehicles of motorists with past-due city fines– designed to scarf-up some $10m in "missing" revenue– is running into strong political and practical headwinds. First, the Captain of the Hinds County Sheriff's Departmenthas publicly declared that he will do anything to enforce the law– but he won't do that. "We'll still be participating in a joint operation to serve misdemeanor warrants," Capt. Ken Magee said. "But as far as going to a person's home and towing their vehicle? No. We're not going to do that." Second, as University of Mississippi law professor Michael Hoffheimer points out, the campaign faces the law of severely diminished returns. "There are things cities can do to collect fines that are legal," he said. "But the problem is they are also expensive." And lastly, the Mayor's decision to target "high dollar" cars first will win him no friends amongst the cities movers and shakers– even if they are scofflaws.

The UAW could become a major player in the stock market. CNNMoney speculates if the union-administered VEBA health care superfund proposed by The Big 2.8 come to fruition, the UAW could have $60 to 70b to manage. The windfall would give them "newfound clout to push its agenda" on Wall Street. To keep the VEBA healthy, the UAW would have to make investments which will return enough to cover whatever percentage of the total bill the money transferred from the automakers won't cover. AND they'll need to grow their nest egg to keep up with rapidly rising health care costs. So which stocks will they invest it? Will the UAW show solidarity with their active members and invest in GM, Ford and other unionized companies? Or will they do what's best for their retirees' health care fund and invest in healthy companies that actually turn a consistent profit, regardless of union affiliation?

Yesterday, we reported that Saudi Arabia's blanket ban on women drivers was rooted in clerical  fatwas– rather than secular or Islamic law. As if to prove the point, African Business reports that the predominantly conservative, 95 percent Muslim west African country of Senegal is training two thousand women taxi drivers. Project "Taxi Sister" is the result of a government fund to help would-be female entrepreneurs and car dealer Espace-Auto. To allay critics, the taxi drivers will only work from seven AM to seven PM, wear distinctive (and chaste) uniforms and receive martial arts training. Espace-Auto's MD claims the project it's not all about the art of the deal. "(Male-female) parity should not be just a slogan," Serigne Mboup said. "It must be applied in the economic sphere." Amen.  

USA Today reports that two average-sized adults and their weekend luggage put a Corvette or MX-5 over its certified weight capacity. Pile your teenage son and five of his football teammates in your Grand Caravan and you're good to go– provided they each weigh less than 165 pounds and leave the gear at home. That's because their manufacturers use a federally-mandated maximum loading formula that sets a minimum average weight of 150 pounds per passenger. While manufacturers are free to increase that figure as they deem appropriate, many don't. It's a CYA tactic in the aftermath of the Firestone tire fiasco, where overloading was "considered a factor" in tire failure and subsequent accidents (and lawsuits). Honda spokesman Sage Marie says if you exceed their vehicles' limit, "we can't be responsible for the vehicle's dynamic characteristics." According to GM's energy and drive quality director, "when we put a label on a vehicle, we need to be conservative."

Cadillac is something of a comeback kid. The first time the brand was on the ropes, its divisional president interrupted a GM board meeting with a winning proposal: sell Caddies to America’s burgeoning black population. In the ‘90’s, America’s African-American community once again rescued the struggling brand; their passion for a rebadged Yukon infused the ailing automaker with fresh marketing momentum and a pile of cash. Now that the Escalade’s a bomb instead of da bomb, and Caddy’s passenger cars can’t cut the transplanted and/or imported mustard, Cadillac has a new plan. I call it The Beginning of the End. 

Failing upwards is a very strange concept, one that I don't pretend to understand. For example, Mark Fields took the reins of  Ford's doomed-from-birth Premier Automotive Group (PAG) from founder Wolgang Reitzle in 1998. During Field's four-year tenure, PAG continued its inexorable decline. Fields didn't staunch Jaguar's wounds (i.e. kill the X-type) or introduce hit models (i.e. the Jaguar F-type) or do anything to pull PAG into profit (i.e. launch the Volvo XC90). And yet his service at PAG earned Fields the position of President of the Americas and a temporary slot as CEO-in-waiting. No doubt Fields is a handsome, energetic, personable, intelligent and hard-working Ford employee. But it seems that his ascension has more to do with these traits than what business people like to call "results." The fact that Fields is still in situ tells me that Ford's diseased corporate culture remains intact– which is far more worrying prospect than even its bone dry product pipeline. Can ex-Boeing CEO Alan Mulally retrain Ford's old guard in his new (old) ways? Maybe. But I'm reminded of a piece of advice I found in an Atlantic magazine article some 20 years ago. What's the trick to training a dog? Answer above.  

Now that Ford has hocked everything but Mark Fields' mullet, el Presidente de las Americas says they could step-up cost cutting efforts to meet their financial goals in '08 and '09. The Wall Street Journal quotes the Blue Oval's Master of the Obvious as he explained, "there's more risk than there is opportunity going forward" and "if we see weakness on the revenue side, we have to take up the slack on the cost side." Never one to waste a convenient excuse, Fields echoed GM's mantra that their decline in monthly sales was due to cutbacks in fleet sales. Fields' comments came at the launch of the "all new" Focus which features a redesigned exterior and interior on top of the same old eight-year-old chassis. It seems that some of their cost-cutting efforts are aimed at the wrong target…

After listing everything from the "Top 10 Summertime Toys" to "10 Cars that Could Get a Computer Geek Laid" (not really), Forbes gives us the "Top 10 Things To Never Say To A Dealer." At the risk of denying Forbes a couple of dozen unique visitors, the eds say these words should never pass through a car buyer's lips: I'm ready to buy (ka-ching!), I can afford this much (over twelve years then), Yes, I have a trade in (let the games begin!), I'm paying cash (we HATE you), I'm not sure what vehicle I want (we know EXACTLY what we want to sell), I've wanted on of these forever (SUCKER), I'll take the popular options (yum!), What's the lowest price? (and we can't go ANY lower), Sure I'll look at the numbers (step into my parlor said the spider to the fly), I think you can do better than that (**** you!). Forbes doesn't say what you should say to car dealer. We'll start the bidding with "Stiff me and I'll kill you."

The Detroit News reports that a "substantial signing bonus" could seal the deal on the new UAW contract with GM. The bribe bonus would be "something they could sell to members without making a long-term commitment that locks GM into something it can't afford down the road." The amount of the bonus hasn't been stipulated, but it's bound to be quite a chunk of change– especially piled on top of the billions GM will have to cough-up for the union-administered VEBA health care superfund that everyone but the retirees it'll cover seems to want. If the negotiating pattern follows past behavior, Ford and Chrysler will be expected to fork-out the same bribe pay out. Cerberus may be able to pull some cash for bonuses out of its deep pockets, but Ford isn't exactly flush. The UAW better finesse this one, lest they kill that proverbial goose.

Which carmaker has cleaned-up their act the most? Toyota with its Synergy Drive? Honda with its industry-high average fuel economy? GM with their fuel-cell Equinoxes? Nope. According to a study by Environmental Defense (reported by CARSguide), BMW wins the "most improved" award for its average fuel efficiency and CO2 emission rate. From 1995 to 2005, The Boyz from Bavaria increased their fleet's average fuel economy by 14 percent and carbon emissions by 12.3 percent. Toyota only managed a three percent drop in carbon emissions during the same period. Kia was the worst offender; their vehicle's carbon emissions jumped by 30 percent. Oxymoronically, GM placed at the top of one category with a 6.5 percent reduction in "overall carbon burden" (derived from factors based on vehicle emissions and the total sold), yet increased their overall carbon emissions by three percent. As Miss Piggy's paramour said, it ain't easy being green.

CBS' Sunday Morning program has joined the caravan of love for Tesla Motors' not-ready-for-prime-time electric car and GM's not-ready-for-prime-time electric car. New York Times correspondent David Pogue's report leads with the usual "gas sucks" mantra, and then gets down to business: repeating Tesla's oft-repeated (never proven) claims for their LiIon-powered electric roadster. Ah, but doesn't the electric car simply shift the energy problem to powerplants? The recently demoted Martin Eberhard demures: "If you do the math, you'll find that an electric car, even if you use coal to make the electricity, produces less pollution per mile than burning gasoline in the best gasoline-powered car." After gasping at the Tesla's sticker, Pogue trots out GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz, who promises a user-friendly price tag for the Volt: "My personal target still is to bring this car into the market at, you know, nicely below $30,000." Yeah, well what about the EV1? "Now, it turns out that from a PR standpoint probably the dumbest move we ever made," Lutz said. "It was done for all the right legal reasons, but PR-wise it was dumb. So, now I'm getting e-mails saying, 'I hope you rot in hell.'" After revealing that the first Teslas will hit the streets this fall and promoting the forthcoming film "Who Saved the Electric Car?" (really), Pogue gives Maximum Bob the last word. "…I think the future for electrics is absolutely unlimited."  At least the PR is.

The Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars will petition King Abdullah this week to remove the blanket ban on women driving. Although the petition has a snowball's chance in Riyadh of receiving acknowledgement– never mind consideration– it highlights the lack of anything remotely resembling democracy in The Land of The Two Holy Mosques. As the Associated Press reports, Saudi Arabia's prohibition against women driving is not based on secular or Islamic law. It's down to fatwas issued by senior Islamic clerics, who claim driving "creates situations for sinful temptation." Automotively aspirational women have attempted to overthrow the ban before– without success. "In November 1990, when U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, some 50 women got behind the wheel and drove family cars. They were jailed for one day, their passports were confiscated and they lost their jobs." And these are our allies against Islamo-fascists? 

Screw past performance. The most important factor in choosing a stock is… where the company does business. So says Jens Ehrhardt, Porsche-driving manager of Dr. Jens Ehrhardt Kapital AG, Germany's top international stock fund. Bloomberg reports Ehrhardt won't buy stock in the German automaker because about a third of its sales come from "debt-ridden Americans." He dropped almost all of his holdings in BMW because about one fourth of its sales come from the U.S., and dumped over half of his stock in ThyssenKrupp AG because they're putting a $4.2b steel plant in Alabama. Gunther Westen, head of asset allocation at at WestLB Mellon Asset Management in Dusseldorf disagrees: "I've heard doomsday scenarios on the U.S. since I've been in this business. I don't believe them." So where does Ehrhardt put his money? German companies doing business in China.