There's something reassuring about talking to employees who work for a really large company. You can almost hear a well-stocked 401k plan in their voice. Now I'm not saying that Ford suffers from the kind of complacency that brought it to the brink in the first (second?) place. But it is certainly true that group think is the enemy of relative quality in all things. So I want to thank Ford for opening a dialogue with TTAC, which is, after all, a mighty hostile environment for an industry used to well-paid cheerleaders and toothless hacks. I invite Ford to continue on this openness arc and allow their employees to post on the Focus review and/or anything else that captures their attention. Of course, we're years away from that kind of non-spun honesty and PR-less transparency. But I'll say this: the first car company that fully embraces the internet in this way will have an enormous advantage over its competitors. And that's down to one simple reason: it will help them build better cars.

The European Union (EU) wants to see 10 percent of Eurozone transportation powered by bio-fuels by 2020. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has come out in opposition, claiming biofuels’ ability to tackle global warming is strictly limited. Cooperate and develop this: the organization concludes that biofuels are only economically viable with large state subsidies (surprise!). What’s more, they reckon the mandated European bio-fuel surge could lead to “rising food prices and damage to forests and wildlife.” The OECD wants the EU to rescind its biofuels targets. Their alternative? Legislate energy-saving and more efficient vehicles. “You cannot feed people and soak up carbon and protect biodiversity and fuel cars,” says Brice Lalonde, the former French environment minister who chairs the OECD’s round table on sustainable development. C’est la verite.

Even before I pronounced Ford’s “new” Focus a one-star car, FoMoCo PR had suggested a little tete-a-TTAC with one of their quality guys. Well fair enough. This website is always open to opposing or explanatory viewpoints– especially from the people who make the whips that fill our editorial crosshairs. And so it came to pass that Ford’s Manager of Global Quality Data Systems and I spent a little quality time talking about quality issues. As you might guess from his title, Mike Hardie is a combination data cruncher and messenger, rather than Ass Kicker General. But his dedication to his job is beyond reproach– even if some of the products under his purview aren’t. Part One below, with a special guest appearance by Anne Marie Gattari, Communications Manager for Manufacturing and quality.

Kids love to play connect the dots. When the dots are numbered sequentially (with a few outlining details thrown in to keep 'em focused), it's easy to do. When the numbers are missing, it's hard to see anything more than random points on a page. And so it is with Chrysler, an American automaker that's generated enough bloggable news during the last six months to keep Google News-alerted surfers away from their designated job for hours at a time. Even though only Chrysler's new owners know their real game plan, there's been enough new "dots" to form a recognizable pattern. What it reveals is a company on the cusp of a major revolution.

Ah, the politics of American sugar. I once read that Caribbean cane growers protected their power by lobbying the English parliament to prevent America's colonists from achieving political representation. Nice. Flash forward two hundred fifty years or so and The New York Times reports that a "little-noticed provision in the new farm bill would oblige the Agriculture Department to buy surplus domestic sugar caused by the expected influx of Mexican sugar next year. Then the government would sell it, most likely at a steep discount, to ethanol producers to add to their fermentation tanks." Note the word "surplus." in other words, the feds would be legally obliged to buy U.S. sugar at a price determined by the U.S. sugar industry, to provide the somewhat-less-than impoverished, already heavily subsidized industry an "insurance policy" against the impact of cheap NAFTA-enabled imports. It gets worse. The ethanol industry doesn't event want the sugar; they'd have to invest in new machinery to use it. “In today’s grain-based biorefineries, the amount of sugar you could introduce into the process would be fairly small,” said Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. Our tax money hard at work. 

A new report from Brunel University's Driving Research Laboratory [UK] suggests that older cars provide more safety-enhancing sensory feedback than new cars, and that's a bad thing. "Cars provide timely ‘informal chatter’ such as engine noise and road noise, which keeps us attentive and informed of our situation on the road," posits the appropriately named Dr. Guy Walker. "If this feedback is removed through car design innovations, the whole nature of driving could change completely, potentially putting lives at risk.” Yes, well, the methodology used to reach this more-is-less conclusion involved just ten drivers using their own vehicles. "Drivers provided a concurrent verbal commentary as they drove around a defined 14 mile on-road test route, from motorways to residential streets. Analysis of the verbal commentary provided over sixteen thousand data points which were analysed in reference to the concept of situational awareness (SA)." Perhaps an analysis of the relative accident rates of an old S-class vs. a new model would have provided more relevant data. Or not.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Mlive.com reports that parts availability (i.e. lack thereof) has delayed Ford's recall of 1.25m cars for faulty cruise control wiring. Announced in August, the recall affects more than a dozen models built from 1992 to 2004. These include the 1992 – 1997 Lincoln Town Car/Ford Crown Victoria/Mercury Grand Marquis; the 1993 – 1998 Lincoln Mark VIII, 1993 – 1995 Taurus SHO and the 1994 Mercury Capri. To rectify the situation, Ford dealers install a fused wiring harness (there's your duct tape) into the speed control electrical system. Until the replacement parts arrive, Ford's inviting worried owners of these rolling relics to take their car down to their local dealer to have the cruise control system disconnected. For free! Speaking without a lawyer, Ford spokesman Dan Jarvis says there have been no deaths, injuries or accidents associated with the August recall. 

The Star reports that Ford's Canadian President is publicly pleading for the life of the St. Thomas factory that currently produces the dinosaurs-on-wheels Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis. Bill Osborne asserts that "strong volumes and margins in new production of the Lincoln Town Car next year could justify the continuation of production on one shift." Past history suggests our neighbor to the north is whistling Dixie. This summer, Ford shut down the Canadian facility's second shift. Although St. Thomas now gets the Town Car, sales volumes are such (down 72.5 percent from last year) that there are no plans to restart the second shift. Osborne's hopes that the big Lincoln will generate enough profits to stand pat and stay the executioner's blade seem highly optimistic. Shuttering St. Thomas would spike the last of Ford's full-sized, rear-wheel drive sedans.  

Pop the hood of the new Ford Focus and you'll see an infestation of duct tape worms. Every wire is wrapped in black duct tape. And the thing is, Ford didn't even try to hide it. There's no flash-casted plastic cover to hide the Focus' handmade electrical insulation. I mean, how much would that have cost FoMoCo? Five bucks? What's more, the duct tape I discovered in the economy car's engine bay was already unfurling. That's worrying. But it's nowhere near as disquieting as the overarching Scrooge You cynicism informing every nut, bolt and rock hard panel of this po-faced makeover. What’s worse, the new Ford Focus looks atrocious.

Yes, I've driven the "new" Ford Focus. And yes, it blows. I'm working on the review now, trying to summarize the vehicle's ghastly gestalt without resorting to scatological metaphors. But as bad as the Focus is, the fact that it exists is even worse. For the sake of argument, let's [safely] assume that the "new" Focus predates the tenure of FoMoCo's $25m man, CEO Alan Mulally. Let's also [hopefully] assume that both Big Al and his minions know the Focus is a dog, or what comes out of a dog 20 minutes after its gorged on Sam's Club's cheapest pet food. (Damn!) So why didn't Ford's top suit say STOP! We cannot claim to be a reinvigorated, reborn, chastened automaker and unleash this pistonhead pellet (oops!) on consumers in the world's most competitive automotive marketplace. Even if we take a billion dollar hit, we have to stop this train before it goes off the tracks. THIS is where we draw a line in our history between THEN and NOW. When we tell the world who we are going to be– not who we were. OK, granted, that kind of statement makes more sense when you have the new (as in new) Taurus under a sheet. But hey, sometimes you've got to work with what you don't have. Ain't that The Truth.

The boys over at ToMoCo NA are not insensitive to the fact that their critics have seized on Consumer Reports' recent reliability downgrade as [alleged] evidence that they've lost their mechanical mojo. So Toyota's released a statement on the PR debacle that assures quality-minded pundits and punters that "we're taking measures every day to continue to sharpen quality and enhance customer satisfaction." Not exactly a major mea culpa, now is it? In fact, the missive is something of an FU to the company's critics, devoting the majority of its editorial space to reminding nay-sayers who's boss around here. "Toyota, Lexus and Scion models collectively led the industry with the greatest number of models, 17, ranked "Most Reliable" in this year's Consumer Reports Reliability Survey. With dozens of models from three dozen makes vying for a spot on the magazine's "Most Reliable" list, only 39 were chosen. Toyota, Lexus and Scion models accounted for 44 percent of the list. Toyota, Lexus and Scion earned three of the top six places among most reliable makes. Collectively they ranked third place in reliability among all automakers." Clearly, Toyota Motor Sales Executive Vice President is a 3/4 full kinda guy. "Over all, this survey reflects well on our products," Jim Lentz pronounced. Oh, the humility!

I reckon Toyota's recent slip-ups– perceived or actual– will do little to dent the world's largest automaker's rep amongst American consumers. Just as it took Detroit decades to drag their reputation into the mire, Toyota would have to totally and repeatedly screw the pooch from now until at least 2017 to reverse their mindspace momentum. Meanwhile, over at the new look Detroit News, columnist Daniel Howes is already dancing on the ToMoCo's grave, and predicting Detroit's return to glory. "As Toyota falls, Detroit Big 3 rise" starts by listing the Japanese automaker's troubles: Consumer Reports reliability slippage, the defection of two top Toyota execs to Detroit and the sheen removal from the company's green credentials. Bottom line? "Toyota's stumbles show it is no more invincible than Detroit is congenitally incompetent." While you could argue that the key difference is that Toyota knows it isn't invincible while Detroit remains unwilling to acknowledge their incompetence (e.g. the "new" Ford Focus), I couldn't possibly comment. Anyway, Danny's faith in Detroit's renaissance comes down to one factor: brave new leaders. "There are more of them inside Detroit's automakers and atop the UAW than anytime in a long time." How great is that?

Agencie France-Presse (AFP) reports that Toyota is recalling 472k Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) vehicles for a faulty fuel systems. Although no related accidents or incidents have been reported to date, the defect could cause gas line leakages. All told, the company's recalling eight different JDM models, including the flagship Toyota Crown, which occupies the same slot in Toyota's JDM line-up as the Camry occupies in the good ol' USA. Arriving hot on the heels of Toyota's decline in Consumer Reports' reliability ratings, the news is sure to arm the pro-domestic crowd with more ammunition against the automotive world's new king of the hill. Interestingly, the recall includes models  manufactured from 1999 – 2004, when Toyota was thought to be the far-and-away leader in reliability and initial quality.

GM's sales are taking a beating in California, where an entire generation of drivers have grown up without once owning one of the General's vehicles. Few people know that the artist formerly known as the world's largest automaker has been communicating with children aged Kindergarten and up for years. The General's charm offensive comes via their education division, which provides free classroom curricula to civic-minded teachers. And anyone who thinks that GM's dragging its feet on green issues– at least in the PR sense– would do well to examine their latest lesson plan "The Energy Highway: Solutions Ahead." Although the words "global warming" are conspicuous by their absence, they're all about the CO2. Thanks to GM's partnership with The Weekly Reader, millions of kids will trace the domestic carmaker's proposed arc, from internal combustion engines to flex-fuel vehicles to "extended range" electric vehicles to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And that's OK because we'll use renewable energy sources to power the electric plants that create the hydrogen for the vehicles. Ta-da!  

It's true: TTAC panders to PR-meisters who use surveys to hook hacks into stories with only a peripheral link to the companies that sponsor them. And more than a few of these polls are about as scientific as astrology. Still, sometimes we can't help but share the bizarre-o info that nine out of ten spin doctors prescribe for their clients who chew gum. In this case, leasetrader.com— the e-Yenta of the leasing biz– claims they surveyed 2000 female customers/potential customers to discover that fold down rear seats are their most fave feature, car-wise. Then it's Bluetooth capability, MP3/iPod connectivity, automatic open/close hatchback and GPS technology. In an interview with TTAC (below), leasetrader.com's Vice President of Marketing Communications insists that women are crying out for somewhere to put their damn handbag (paraphrasing) and can't see the point of a sunroof (so to speak). In case you're wondering what this all means, John Sternal kinda promises he might poll men on the same topic eventually, although he reckons men's magazines auto coverage proves we're performance-minded oafs pistonheads. Ya think?