Now that Detroit (plus Toyota) has decided that some hike in the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards is better than a BIG hike, Detroit's heavy hitters have hit the nation's capitol seeking support for their position. WSBT reports that Ford Boss Alan Mulally met with [union-supported] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts. Big Al pronounced that Ford is "absolutely committed to providing our customers with vehicles they really want and value. That is why improving the fuel economy of our vehicles and securing energy independence is important and that is why we fully support increases in CAFE." The Associated Press reports that GM CEO Rick Wagoner schmoozed with officials at the White House National Economic Council, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Wagoner poo-poohed CAFE, asserting that the country would be better off developing alternative fuels and advanced batteries for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. “Our only hope is that the policies we pursue in the next 10, 20, 30 years, I hope that we end up with better results.” Meanwhile, some of the proposals “look like a stretch and look tough” and others “don’t look achievable.” Chrysler's Nardelli kept a low profile and ToMoCo was nowhere to be seen. But all three U.S. execs got a tongue lashing at a Democratic party luncheon. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) declared that Motown had resisted past CAFE increases and was now running advertising saying a Senate proposal would “take your pickup truck away.” “I think the issue is over — I think you’ve lost that issue. I think your position is yesterday forever." Maybe, maybe not.

Does the UAW have its own version of a hanging chad? After telling TTAC they weren't concerned about union votes being reported in percentages rather than absolute numbers, the Detroit Free Press reports some United Auto Workers (UAW) members are questioning the lack of oversight in the voting on the new Chrysler contract. Chrysler retiree and union activist Larry Christensen summed up their fears: "I know that the people that run the balloting process are the same people whose fundamental interest is for this to pass. Because of that you can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be different if there were independent oversight of the process by the membership." The UAW declined to discuss the union's efforts (if any) to ensure the accuracy and security of the contract ratification process. With the fate of the UAW and Chrysler hanging in the balance, you can bet there will be a lot of questions about the outcome, regardless of which way it goes. Perhaps the union should enlist the services of former president Jimmy Carter to monitor their next "democratic vote" over at Ford. 

The Chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) doesn't believe "overdealering" should take the rap for Detroit's woes. In an editorial posted on NADA.org and published without comment in Automotive News, Dale Wiley attempts to refute a Detroit Free Press article claiming that a glut of franchisees costs The Big 2.8 some $4b a year. [NB: The article in question has mysteriously disappeared from the newspaper's website.] Rather than address the big picture, Wiley (both by name and by nature) hones-in on the Freep's assertion that the Bigs pick-up the cost of sending vehicles to dealer parking lots. Nit picked and any discussion of actual dealer numbers ignored (GM has some 7100 U.S. dealers while Toyota somehow "makes do" with about 1600), Wiley poses the "real" question. "Will the Detroit 3 will drastically lose market share if they drastically reduce the number of their dealers?" Good question, even if it mistakes cause for effect. Shame the NADA boss doesn't answer it. But we do learn that "research at GM found that a dealership only needs to sell 10 new vehicles a year to pay for the cost of supporting that dealership." Huh? Anyway, here's Wiley's bottom line: "Anti-trust laws impose restrictions on trade associations advocating actions that would reduce competition, so it is inappropriate for NADA to take sides in the debate over dealer numbers." Wink, wink.

There's a lot riding on battery-maker A123's high energy capacitors. Their technology must be improved, tested and perfected for GM's Chevy Volt to make the transition from vaporware to showroom smash. According to Red Herring (how ironic is that?), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and five blue chip companies have placed their chips on the Massachusetts-based high-tech firm: Procter & Gamble (think Duracell), Alliance Capital, Motorola (think cell phones), Qualcomm and General Electric. Not to mention YOU, the American taxpayer. OnPoint, the U.S. Army's investment arm (I'm not making that up) gave A123 a financial boost during its fourth, $40m round of venture capital fund raising. Earlier this week, existing (that's you again) and new investors added another $30m to A123's kitty. And yesterday, GE scored two Department of Energy projects worth $6.8m to "accelerate the development of plug-in hybrids." A123 will perform the research on GE's behalf. Meanwhile, A123 has a drop-deadline of 2010 to get the Volt's batteries ship-shape. If GM loses face on this one, A123 will find it a lot harder to raise funds in the future.  

"I would be surprised, shocked and dismayed if we decide not to do it." "It" is the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, and the speaker is Bob Lutz, quoted in the New York Times. Unfortunately, time waits for no man, even Maximum Bob. It's a little over two years until 2010, when GM has promised they'll have Volts on the road, silently whizzing around on their lithium-ion batteries. Except they still haven't developed a Li-Ion battery capable of powering the car. And once they finally have a viable design, auto industry economist Walter McManus surmises "when they break ground on a plant to make batteries, two years later the Volt will come out." In the meantime, GM is already advertising the Volt on TV, but with the disclaimer "Not yet available for sale" in small print at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps they should listen to Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Volt, who admits "Until the product is done there is always some degree of uncertainty. No such batteries exist today, but our confidence builds as days go on." And as days go on, the clock keeps ticking down to 2010. Tick. Tick. Tick.

After I labelled the Volvo P1800 ES a hideous mutation, TTAC commentator beetlebug questioned my aesthetic sensibilities. The usual reply to such cavil: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My fellow pedants will have grasped the facile nature of this aphorism long ago. Hearing is also in the ear of the listener. And? Of course, this oft-repeated gem is nothing more that a rhetorical upraised middle finger to anyone who disagrees with its proponent's idea of beauty. In other words, your opinion of beauty is as subjective as mine. So if I think a Pontiac Aztec is a beautiful vehicle who the Hell do you think you are to tell me it isn't? Nonsense. I once read a study wherein an anarchic academic set out to prove the fallacy of this shibboleth. He schlepped a range of pictures of female beauty all over the world and asked representative of over a hundred different cultures to identify which photographed females were babes, and which ones were dogs. Some eighty percent of ALL respondents identified the same ten percent of subjects as the most comely amongst them. This is not a long-winded and unctuous way of saying I'm right and beetlebug's right. I mean, wrong. OK, it is a bit long-winded, but my main point is this: I'm satisfied with both our readers' initial Ten Worst nominations and the TTAC writers' final twenty. Just as humans have an innate ability to choose which women deserve a little genetic blending, pistonheads are a reliable indicator of automotive excellence or lack thereof. We may not be the ultimate arbiters of which cars suck and which cars soar– the commercial marketplace serves that role– but we are pretty damn good at identifying a pile of steaming crap when we see one. If someone then steps in it, well, disgust is on the foot of the easily offended. 

At a Ferrari Owners Club (FOC) track day at the California Speedway, Lamborghini owner Corey Rudl is sidelined by his car's cooling problems. When Rudl admires Ben Keaton's Porsche Carrera GT (CGT), Keaton offers to show Rudl what the German supercar can do. As the Porsche speeds around the track, a flagman waves a Ferrari onto the front straight. The driver hesitates. The flagman tries to stop the Ferrari. Keaton CGT swerves to avoid the slow-going Italian exotic. The CGT hits a concrete barrier at approximately 145mph. Both men are killed. Rudl's widow files a lawsuit against various parties. Sports Car Market reveals the $4.5m settlement, as follows. Ben Keaton's estate (49 percent): "Keaton was warned about the handling problems with the CGT, ignored his mechanic’s advice, and invited Rudl for a ride without mentioning the problems. California Speedway and the track organizers (41 percent): "The pit-out design… brought the drivers onto the track in the middle of the straightaway and the pit-out driver’s view of the straightaway was completely blocked by a guardrail." The FOC "allowed [Keaton] to sign his own tech inspection form stating that the car was fine." Porsche (eight percent): "…one engineer testified that Porsche did not think that its PSM system would work on the CGT because the car’s frame structure and suspension mountings would create strong vibrations that would interfere with its operation. The other engineer testified that PSM was not offered because the customers didn’t want it." The Ferrari driver (two percent): "the Ferrari entered the track too slowly, forcing Keaton to evade him."

As Ford prepares to jettison Volvo, it's worth noting what could have been. While Volvo's mindspace is mostly occupied by boxy wagons that you can't kill with neglect, road salt or repeated blows with a ball peen hammer, it's important to remember there was brief shining moment when Volvo was drop-dead sexy. I speak here of one model and one model only: the P1800. Wikipedia has plenty of rivet-counting revelations on this certified classic, but the bottom line is that Simon Templar's steed turned out to be an evolutionary dead end (along with an equally doomed and thoroughly hideous mutation called the P1800 ES). Perhaps someone at Ford thought they could add a little P1800 back into the Volvo mix when the company scarfed the Swedes back in '98. Or did they really think Volvo's preppy design language could morph from middle class stolidity to upmarket aphrodisiac? In any case, Irv Gordon bought a P1800 back in the day, piled on the miles and found himself a G-list celebrity in the process. Now that he's retired, Irv's got time to explore the possibilities of his hard-won status. Will someone get this guy an agent? If only "Broadway" Danny Rose was real.  

We've reported on calls from environmentally-minded academics and academically-minded environmentalists to ban cars completely from England's capital city. Up to now, these anti-car campaigners' only vision of an auto-free urban utopia arrived via London's annual "car free" day. The Telegraph reports that they could get 16-days of automotive respite when the Olympics blow into Stratford. Although the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA, sponsored by FedEx?) is not calling for a ban on car travel to and from the 2012 games, they do want "100 per cent of spectators travelling to the Olympic Park in Stratford by public transport, walking and cycling." Hmmm. Anyway, this "encouragement" doesn't include dignitaries and officials from the International Olympic Committee and sponsors, who will be able to drive in special Olympic lanes during Games time. As for the plebs, the ODA recently accepted delivery of their first "javelin" test train; a plethora of which should– I repeat should— ferry 240k people to and from the newly renovated Olympic park station every hour. The Commons transport select committee shares my skepticism.  Earlier this year, they published a report criticising the ODA's draft Olympic travel plan for "not exhibiting any sense of urgency" and being "vague." A highly budgeted, non-elected government quango that's slow and mellow? Who'd a thunk it?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Senate voted yesterday to cut $2m from the Office of Labor Management Standards' (OLMS) budget. That's the federal agency in charge of collecting and checking LM-2 forms, which force unions to disclose their income and expenditures. Amongst the revelations contained therein: the Food and Commercial Workers Local Union 1 spent $26k on golf, another (unnamed) union forked-out $3m on hotel bills and Don Hunsucker, President of Local 1288 of The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, pocketed a $679,949 annual paycheck. The OLMS also flags corruption; with their help, the Labor Department announced 13 indictments and seven convictions last month (raising their yearly total to 97 indictments and 115 convictions). With over $30b heading for a United Auto Workers-controlled VEBA health care superfund– that's GM alone– you'd think that our representatives would want to beef-up enforcement, rather than pull the rug from under the watchdog's feet. The Senate's 47 to 46 vote to trim the OLMS' budget was almost entirely along party lines; 45 Democrats voted to cut the funding. Make of that what you will.

Bill Reinhert is Toyota USA's national manager-advanced technology group. He wants you to know that Toyota's decision to offer an E85-compatible (a.k.a. flex fuel) Tundra pickup has nothing to do "greenwashing." “It’s a longer-term strategy," Reinhert told WardsAuto. "What we’re not going to do, in the short-term, is say: ‘Look at us! Aren’t we green?’” Bob Carter, ToMoCo NA's group vice president and general manager, seconds the motion. He claims Toyota's decision to develop the flex-fuel full-sizer was designed to help the company capture more sales in the American heartland; where corn is grown, ethanol subsidies flourish and E85 stations abound ('cause they don't have to schlep the pipeline aversive juice cross country). Be that as it may, the Midwest is certainly a key battleground for the new Tundra. "The Midwest is where we’re seeing our strongest sales growth percentage-wise, not volume-wise.” Oh, and the fact that inexpensively converted E85 Tundras will boost Toyota's CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) ratings may have a little something to do with it too. 

After Chrysler's executive [I have a] dream team addressed the issue of Canadian pricing in Sin City, they may soon wish that what they said in Vegas stayed in Vegas. Speaking to WardAuto, Ex-Toyota Prez Jim Press said Chrysler had inflated their sticker prices north of the border to account for the historic 10 to 40 percent gap between the dollar and the loonie. And now that the currencies are at parity? “Currency is a long-term move," a pressed Press confessed. "It goes one place to another, and when cycles come up, you take (that) into account. What you have to do is price at where the market is, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.” As for Canadian customers who dare cross the border to buy a Chrysler product, the automaker admits it's trying to cut them off at the pass. Steve Landry, executive director-North American sales, told Wards that he's sent memos to U.S. dealers warning them against selling vehicles to Canada on the gray market  Needless to say, Landry claims it's for the customer's own good, considering Canadian auto regs. “It’s not just homologation of an odometer. You have to also change the daytime running lights, which is a pain… Our dealers are more into selling vehicles where they can take care of the entire lifecycle of that customer in that vehicle." Convinced?

Before I respond to Steven Wade’s article “In Defense of Saab” and the resulting comments, I want to say a few words about the medium of discourse: the automotive blog. A few years ago, when automotive blogs first appeared, I was thrilled that I could comment on objectionable opinions. The ability to lodge instant feedback instantly rendered car magazines an anachronism. Or so I thought. After a month of commenting, I reread my previous posts. I was shocked by what I found. My comments were filled with hearsay evidence, unfounded opinions, attacks on cars I had never owned and a general prevalence of bullshit.

It is time. You've nominated 136 candidates for The Truth About Cars' (TTAC) recently rechristened “Ten Worst Automobiles” awards. TTAC’s stable of underpaid and overeducated scribes surveyed the damage and did their duty: they've winnowed the roll call of automotive abominations down to the terrible twenty. Now it's your turn to tell the truth about cars. Go to the bottom of this post and vote for ten vehicles you consider worthy of public recognition as TTAC's Ten Worst for 2007.

Henry Ford firmly established the economic benefits of leveraging large economies of scale– for both the automaker's profits and the customer's wallet. But time and technology have moved on. If you look closely enough, you can see we're heading for the end of corporate consolidation in the automotive industry, slowly heading towards the long-predicted era of mass customization. So-called "flexible manufacturing" allows carmakers to build various vehicles on the same line (e.g. Honda's Civic sedan, Ridgeline pickup and Acura MDX CUV). MINI has reinvigorated the idea of "have it your way." Uber-tuners and ride pimpers have graduated from bolt-on to bespoke. Tender shoots to be sure, but there's no reason to think mass customization shouldn't continue. Just have a look at the staggering number of vehicles for sale, and the consolidation of franchised dealers into multi-branded mega-dealerships. I'll go out on a limb here and say that we'll start to see MORE car brands, rather than less, as manufacturing hives-off from tied retail (a.k.a. franchised dealers). In short, motoring's golden age lies ahead, in a radically different form than we know it now. Put that in your UAW contract and smoke it.