“Is that yours?” Millions of car buyers spend billions of dollars hoping that this statement will be born of admiration rather than pity. When these words come out of a car dealer’s mouth at trade-in time, they can be especially hurtful– even if the salesman is as honest as their spiel is long. That’s the moment when most car buyers finally discover whether or not their automotive “investment” has walked off a cliff and fallen into the financial abyss known as depreciation. Here’s how to avoid the freefall…

The 2008 Green Car of the Year winner will be announced at the LA Auto Show in moments! [NB: that's an ironic spear.] The candidates were selected because they "stand out as exemplary models that forward environmental performance in meaningful and quantifiable ways" (per the LA Auto Show press release). They are: the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid, Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, Mazda Tribute Hybrid, Nissan Altima Hybrid, and Saturn Aura Hybrid. Our man on-site, Alex Dykes, sent back photos of the draped winner, and we're going to tell you who won. If you play with the contrast, brightness, and midtones on this shot, you can make out a gold Chevy bowtie in the middle of a split grille. That narrows it to the Tahoe and Malibu hybrids. The size of the vehicle means it has to be…. the Tahoe! How they can give a tank like that a "Green Car of the Year" award totally escapes me.

[UPDATE: A GM rep at the show just confirmed Tahoe's win, saying "Yep, the Tahoe is the winner, we're really proud."]

Click here to download the full-size photo.

With all this talk about green machines (both real and imagined), the LA Auto Show is in danger of boring the snot out of the average driver. And with GM and Chrysler busy hyping hybrid SUVs, those red-blooded American who like driving big ass trucks may be thinking the red dot of political correctness and emissions regulations is trained on their V8-stuffed whips. Leave it to Toyota, the maker of the chattering class’ favorite ULEV fuel miser, to understand that selling vehicles– not press releases– is the name of the game. And so I give you the new bigger (yes bigger) and badder (yes faster) Toyota Sequoia. SUV lovers can now order their supersized ToMoCo truck with an all new 5.7-liter V8, boasting 401 ft.-lbs. worth of bass boat-schlepping, ass-kicking torque. The Sequoia finally joins Lincoln’s Navigator by offering an independent rear suspension, with optional air support. The Sequoia's cabin interior is also longer, wider and taller than afore– making it suitable for eight genuine adults. Fuel economy's up by 12 percent. There’s more. Suffice it to say, the previous Sequoia couldn’t quite match the ‘Slade and Navi for comfort, style or performance. This one looks like it can. Who ARE those guys?

After inadvertently posting incorrect prices for their hybrid Tahoe and Yukon on the Internet, GM finally released the real sticker. The base prices [including destination charges] from a GM press release via Autobloggreen are: Chevrolet 2WD Tahoe – $50,490; GMC 2WD Yukon -$50,945 (I guess GMC hybrid badges are more expensive than Chevy's); Chevrolet 4WD Tahoe – $53,295; and GMC 4WD Yukon – $53,755. All these hybrid SUVs come well loaded, including a "tire inflater kit"– which gives you an idea of the games hybrid makers play and how GM expects these SUVs will be used. TrueDelta lists the price difference between a loaded Tahoe and a similarly equipped Escalade as $15K, so you can make an pretty good guess what the 'Slade hybrid will run. Autobloggreen is estimating a $3 – $4K hybrid premium over a comparably equipped 5.3L version of the Yukahoe, but that doesn't factor in the usual discounts and rebates piled on the gas E85 versions. So even with a claim of "the same city fuel economy as the 2008 Toyota Camry with the base four-cylinder engine," buyers will have to do a lot of driving to yield any hybrid-related savings. But the PC halo remains in place at all times.

News10 reports that Solano (CA) County Sheriff's Deputies hit Vacaville Ford yesterday, seizing 66 vehicles (the entire inventory) and all the dealership's spare parts. The Solano County DA did the deed at the behest of the Blue Oval Boyz, who haven't been paid jack in quite some time, apparently. As you might expect from the written version of a local TV news story, pithy quotes abound. "'The dealership was very surprised when we showed up,' said Solano County Sheriff's deputy Seth Garcia." Saying that, props to reporter Cornell Barnard for not jumping the gun, fact wise: "It remained unclear if the dealership would reopen for business Thursday." And also not making that old journalistic faux pas of putting two and two together. "Unrelated to the repossession, a D.A's office spoken said the office had been investigating the dealership for alleged fraud, claiming the dealership took in vehicle trades with outstanding payments, but allegedly never paid the balance off before reselling the car. Authorities said more than 200 potential victims have contacted the District Attorney's office."  

[Thanks to Factotum for the tip.] 

Not content to stand on the sidelines and watch GM and Toyota grab all the planet saving glory, Ford is jumping onto the green bandwagon. Again. According to Bloomberg, FoMoCo's CEO Al Mulally says The Blue Oval Boyz will make a "significant investment" into "more fuel-efficient vehicles that emit fewer greenhouse gases." They'll concentrate on smaller, turbocharged engines, lighter vehicles, diesels, hybrids, hydrogen and hamster wheels (just kidding). Big Al better be careful. A lot of people still remember Billy Ford's promise in 2000 to increase the fuel mileage of Ford's SUVs by 25 percent by 2005; a noble goal that remains resolutely out of reach. But SUV's won't be Ford's primary focus this time. The first model to receive the benefits of their greenification will be the Lincoln MKS. Changes to the drivetrain will be made "less than year" after it's introduced. Mulally didn't explain why Ford doesn't make the changes before the big Lincoln's showroom debut.

I make "typos" (a.k.a. spelling mistakes) all the time. Even though WordPress has a built-in Jacuba spell checker, like all such programs, it's an idiot savant (that doesn't recognize the word "Jacuba"). If you misspell a word, but it's a legitimate word (just out of context), the hidden school marm says nought. And Jac doesn't do Jack on the headline bit (i.e. this morning's Freudian header about the "Dodge Durange"). All that said, if I was a highly-paid copywriter carefully crafting laudatory prose for a glossy Car and Driver insert on the "world's first two mode [why no hyphen?] SUV," I'd make damn sure I correctly spelled the ALL CAPS text underneath the arrows pointing to the vehicle's seven salient features. And you'd kinda hope that if I did miss something, the next guy up the literary food chain would catch it. No such luck here: "LOW ROLLING RESISTENCE TIRES." An indication of GM's quality control? Perhaps. Oh, and Jacuba caught it. 

[Thanks to Arcata Eye for the tip.]

The Detroit Free Press reports GM's Vice Chairman of Global Product Development's most recent product prognostication: the Chevy Volt wil be "on the road" by November 2010. The comments came after the usual Lutz blusterfest, during which GM's Car Czar trash-talked Toyota. Or was it TTAC?  Anyway, Bob promised that his employer will have a test Volt on the road in early '08, and then couldn't resist adding "About Easter, we'll find out who's right and whose credibility takes a hit." Yes, well, there's a big difference between getting a hand-built prototype on the road and producing said vehicle. Considering Chevy's just taken delivery on experimental battery packs from A123 and LG Chem, considering how long it will take to gear up production of thousands of said  battery packs, considering that GM has had to totally redesign the car, and considering how long it'll take to gear up for production and train the line crew how to assemble a radically different drivetrain, you might think Lutz would reel back the rhetoric a bit. Or not. After all, spin doctors have families to feed too.

When it comes to TrueDelta (TD), we have to choose our words carefully. TTAC's information provider is what you might call a stickler for details– in the same sense that TV detective Adrian Monk is a bit bothered by asymmetry. So we couldn't proclaim "GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook: Worse Than Average Repair Rates," even though TD's consumer panel reported it so. 'Cause then Karesh would crucify us for not reminding you that all these repair rates are pretty low. (Which we've just done.) I suppose we can quote from his press release without fear of contradiction. "The current update confirms the moderately high repair rate for the 2007 versions of these crossovers; there has been no improvement. Common problem areas include a valve within the air conditioning system, the front seats’ lumbar support adjusters, and the lid for the storage compartment on top of the instrument panel." But then we'd have to point out that "Based on survey responses, the repair rate for the 2008 Buick Enclave, along with the 2008 GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook, is substantially lower than that of their 2007 counterparts: 38 successful repair trips per 100 vehicles per year. This compares to 98 successful repair trips per 100 vehicles per year for the 2007s at a similar age." Jeez, this fairness thing is a bitch. 

A jacked-up A4 with a slightly longer wheelbase, a soft top and an even more hideous rendition of their gaping Billy The Big Mouth Bass front grill. While we're happy that Audi didn't unveil the truncated version of their mutant version of Porsche's inbred Cayenne (which is significantly less attractive than its VW variant), this is not what we'd call "bringing the noise." Saying that, the concept's got the latest Gee Whizzery. We're talking a GPS system that incorporates Google Earth. And the car is listening; on-board microphones pick-up all four occupants' voices and blatt the blather through the B&O sound system– so the driver can tell the passenger to stop snoring when blasting at 155mph, top down, on the German Autobahn. Anyway, the concept makes us long for the equally jacked-up, now Euro-only Audi Allroad estate (a.k.a. station wagon). They're still sought after on the used car market. In fact, we reckon Ingolstadt would have found some upmarket SUV refugees if they'd hung tough and hadn't sent the last model year over in V8-only trim, without rear-facing seats. Oh well. 

Chrysler has finally joined the hybrid party (symposia?) with the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango Hybrids. The slow-selling platform partners share the two-mode gas- electric hybrid system developed with partners BMW, Daimler and General Motors. On the surface it looks like Chrysler LLC is ready to give the tree huggers some love. As it turns out, the operative word is "some." Early in the unveiling at the LA Auto Show, Chrysler reps said the two-mode system would yield a 40 percent improvement in city mileage and 20 percent better highway mpgs. In practice, the extra batteries boost the TTAC Ten Worst-winning twins' expected mileage from 13/18 to 18/19. If Chrysler thinks that's the difference between sale/no sale, with a premium to pay to boot, they're kidding themselves. That said, the Durango Hybrid has the increasingly familiar HYBRID stencil across the bottom of the doors and the best hybrid gauge we've seen, nestled in that Lego plastic dash. This year's designer accoutrement?

As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously opined, the rich aren't like you and me. Ipso facto. What would you be like if you could do anything you wanted to do from childhood, without ever having to acknowledge (never mind deal with) the consequences of your actions? If you could simply walk away from school, job, marriage, even your home town and start again? It's no wonder that the children of the super-rich are prone to drug addiction, failed relationships and depression. No sympathy? At the risk of trampling on PC notions (for the fiftieth time today), these "poor little rich kids" have more potential positive impact on society than people with less financial resources. All of which is my way of saying my heart goes out to Bill Ford. Clearly, Bill wants to make a difference in this world. Clearly, he doesn't understand his own limitations– because he's never had to. Turning over the corporate reins to Alan Mulally was the right thing to do for Ford, but, perhaps, the wrong thing for Bill. In the same sense, starting-up this new think tank is a bad idea. Ford needs to ground himself in reality, rather than drift off into the world of fantastic ideas. How do I know this? Bill's legacy at Ford speaks for itself. And the man who left it behind. 

Lincoln introduced their MKS "flagship" sedan based on the Five Hundred Taurus platform at the LA auto show today. A day late, two cylinders and at least 60 horses short and sporting a prow that would look more at home on a 4-8-2 Mountain Type Steam Locomotive, this Towncar replacement represents the status quo more than the Way Forward. Fit and finish is higher than the standard Ford fare but the beancounters in Dearborn are still well employed, making sure that not all the plastics are tactile rewards. We might excuse the ill-fitting exterior panels and parts installed backwards (assist handles were not installed the same in the two cars shown, so one must be wrong) if this were a prototype instead of the cars they're using to strut their stuff.  Unfortunately, though, it looks like business as usual in Detroit.

As their respective logos suggest, driving a Ferrari requires courage and finesse; piloting a Lamborghini means taking the bull by the horns and hanging on for dear life. In fact, driving a Lambo is something of a pistonhead rite of passage. It says you’re able to control– or at least survive– a monster. Anyway, that’s the old rep, before Audi started playing with the bull’s balls. I mean, finding a way to harness automotive testosterone for more “civilized” progress. Though enraptured, Farago wasn’t entirely convinced by the Gallardo’s Audiefied manners. Nuts to that.

GM plans to be the first automaker to produce one million fuel-cell-powered vehicles in a year. When? Good question. In May, GM's VP for R&D, Larry Burns, said his employer aims to have fuel-cell vehicles in the showroom "around 2011 or 2012" then ramp-up production to a million worldwide after that. But today in Shanghai, where GM unveiled "environmentally friendly" models to the Chinese market, Elizabeth Lowrey (another GM VP) told Reuters they now have no target date for mass production. In a blinding flash of the obvious, she revealed "You have to bring the technology along before you know when you are going to get to a million vehicles." Then to show her environmental acumen, she added "You have to make sure that any of these technologies are out there in great volume to make a difference for the environment." With executives like this waiting in the wings, it shouldn't be hard selecting a suitable sound-bite successor to Maximum Bob Lutz if he ever when he retires.