OK; they're not the most detailed details. But we can "reveal" that like the new Mazdaspeed6 will have a turbocharged four-cylinder mill. This time out the 2.5-liter engine will be the base Mazda6 motor. Power will swell to something in the 280 horsepower neighborhood, with improved torque busting out all over. All wheel-drive will keep those horses harnessed, but no word as to whether Mazda has tweaked the system from the last iteration. Unleashing a Mazdaspeed6 is a little unusual for FoMoCo's partners. In days gone by, Mazda released the performance versions of their vanilla cars midway through the non-tweaked products' lifecycle (see: the Protege MPS, Mazdaspeed Miata, Mazdaspeed 6 and Mazda3). Still, the "early release" of the hi-po version is worth a try. The last Mazdaspeed6 was not what you'd call a volume seller.

Last October, we brought you the news that the United Auto Workers (UAW) was attempting to organize a union vote at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. As a part of an effort to broaden their base in the face of declining membership in the automotive industry, the UAW was hoping to organize the casino’s 3k dealers. Well, in November, the dealers dealt Foxwoods management (i.e. the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe) a new hand by voting in favor of representation by the UAW. Soon after, Foxwoods sought to overturn the results of the voting, but a Connecticut judge rejected that appeal. Now The Hartford Courant reports some 300 workers (mostly engineering types and interior landscapers) have voted against joining the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). As with casino gambling, sometimes you win, and sometimes (okay, most of the time) you lose.

Settle down people. Autoextremist Peter DeLorenzo isn't creating original content for TTAC. The no-holds-barred Motown pundit has agreed to double post (DP?) on his recently redesigned website and the soon-to-be-redesigned TTAC. DeLorenzo's latest rant will go live on AE and TTAC every Wednesday morning. As TTAC's Best and Brightest surely realize, this arrangement provides our readers with a unique opportunity to bat around DeLorenzo's combative ideas in a forum-like thingie. To get the ball rolling, I submit the following podcast. I apologize for the abrupt intro (guess the subject). My high-tech digital recorder suffered a loose connection; Frank had to lop off the first minute or so. And the levels are over the place. Still, it's worth it. Welcome to Sweet Pete! 

I know it's a small point, but it's worth making. Of course, first you gotta party like its 1999! Automotive News [sub] follows the Tesla-friendly PR template, kicking-off their coverage by putting the Silicon start-up's failure to deliver ONE customer car into its improper context. "Close to the crawling 405 freeway and the congested corner of Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards, the Tesla factory store makes a potent statement for gridlocked Angelenos to buy an electric car. Of course, Tesla needs to get its two-seat roadster into serial production to give its dealership something to sell. The company has 600 sold orders and a waiting list for 400 more, but only four production cars have been built. A development glitch with the Magna two-speed transmission has forced a rapid redesign of a one-speed transmission in collaboration with Ricardo UK Ltd." Not so rapid, Mr. Bond. But that's OK. Ish. "By December, Tesla hopes to have 300 cars built. At that time, serial production of 150 cars a month should begin, said Darryl Siry, Tesla vice president of sales, marketing and service." [emphasis added]. Meanwhile, you want to hear something funny, in a "we're not entirely drunk on Tesla Kool-Aid" kind of way? "The sales staff is salaried," Mark Rechtin reports. "Not commissioned."

Ford CEO Alan Mulally's turnaround plan might not be able to overcome the weight of history, but these guys sure seem to have a handle on, gulp, reality. To wit: FoMoCo analyst George Pippas' [above] acknowledgment of the American consumer's shift away from pickup trucks. Pippas' remarks come via BusinessWeek, which reports that April light truck sales (pickups, minivans, SUVs and crossovers) dropped by 17.4 percent across the board. That's compared to an overall passenger car increase of 4.5 percent. And a total new vehicle sales decrease of 7.8 percent, to 4,819,709 units. So, what does GM make of the pickup truck cash cow barbecue? "We certainly think the pickup truck market will bounce [back], but it's hard to say how quickly and how high that will go," pronounced Marketing Maven Mark LaNeve. Chrysler? "We don't see this market as a sea change against pickup trucks," spokesmouth Stuart Schorr said. "But it is a challenge. That's why we're developing hybrids, for instance. But Americans will continue to want pickup trucks." Toyota used PR-speak to split the difference between realism and delusion. ""Consumers are delaying their purchases now," admits ToMoCo GM Bob Carter. "But it's going to recover in the future." One thing for sure: the future isn't now. [thanks to jthorner for the link]

Ford's developing their new compact car, the Fiesta, all over the world. America will be getting a sedan version (huzzah!) and, hopefully, at a later date, a hatchback or two. While ours is still covered in camo in test, the European hatch version is already out in the wild. And even in a hideous color, I think it looks great. Keep in mind that we're talking about a B-segment compact car here, While the European market for this car category is as crowded as Camden Lock on a sunny Sunday afternoon, stateside, the Mexican-built Fiesta will go head-to-CAFE against the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Chevy Aveo and [sort of] Nissan Versa in the US. Even from a distance, the new Fiesta looks set to be the new class-leader (a Flexible Flyer would beat the crap out of the Aveo ). With Honda Fit sales up over 50 percent and even the not-so-wonderful Focus up 30+ percent, Ford's new Fiesta can't fail– or appear in the U.S. soon enough. 

Sorry about that. But I spent a good part of today listening to two of my young daughters singing songs carefully selected to rattle around my brain like a marble in a glass jar. It left me with a strange desire to infect others with any piece of music with more hooks than a bridge full of anglers. It's a world of laughter, a world of… Oops! And that TV ad really bothers me– not just because a Vegas-class hypnotist would have trouble extracting the tune from my subconscious. Or the fact that there's no such thing as a free anything. But what really annoys me: the ad's anti-hero bemoans the fact that his failure to check his credit report means that instead of "a cool convertible or an S-U-V," he ends up "driving off the lot in a used sub-compact." I'm thinking this ad is WAY out of whack with the times, as plenty of SUV drivers would dearly love to ditch their gas-guzzlers for a compact car. Unfortunately, depreciation means it's harder to get out of an SUV loan than stop hearing that damn song. 

In today's Cayenne GTS review, we learn that the autobox-equipped porked-out Porker blasts from zero to sixty miles per hour in 6.1 seconds. So what? Aside from the fact that doing so costs about $4 worth of gas, sprinting from rest to five miles over the double nickel is not something you could or indeed should do on a regular basis. More specifically, TTAC does not condone racing for pinks or blowing someone off at a stoplight (as stoplights tend to indicate areas with speed limits well below 60mph). More importantly the sprint stat tells you nothing about general driving pleasure; such as the fact that the Cayenne GTS' befuddled gearbox makes the SUV lousy at smooth in-gear acceleration. While we're at it, what's the point of knowing a 730hp modded Merc's zero to sixty time? So, is it time automotive journalists ditched this shopworn performance metric? Is there a better way to measure a car's accelerative excellence and/or general desirability? Quarter mile? Just kidding.   

Automotive News [sub] interviewed Jerry York, former Chrysler CFO, GM board member and, most importantly of all, Kirk Kerkorian's man about Motown. Now that Captain Kirk owns five percent of FoMoCo, 'Jer's handing-out advice on how to fix The Blue Oval Boyz. York says he's "very confident that (Mulally's turnaround plan) is the answer." But then the Lion's cub demonstrates how much he really knows about the business: he says Ford should sell Volvo and Mercury. OK, we're with you on Volvo, although I'm not sure how you'd separate all the Volvo/Ford products (Ford Taurus/Sable, Lincoln MKS, Ford Taurus X, Ford Flex, Ford Galaxy, Ford S-MAX, Euro Ford Focus just to name a few). But York's suggestion for "selling" Mercury has to be some kind of joke. Selling Mercury would be like GM selling the Chevy LTZ models and keeping the LT/WT/1LT/2LT models. One can only hope York meant Ford should sell the name. But who in the world would buy it? Perhaps Mr. York should stick to selling Ford, er, I mean, selling Fords. You know; the actual cars. To real customers.

Volkswagen has been toying with the pickup segment since the 2000 Advanced Activity Concept (AAC), a prototype that blended a luxurious premium interior with… a truck. As Elvis monologued, honey why I've never known (you LIED when you said you loved me; and I had no cause to doubt you). Anyway, the AAC was more of a prelude for the Touareg than a serious design exercise for a production pickup. Almost a decade later, VW's finally going for it, offering a competitor to the Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, et al. Spy photographs indicate that the VeeDub will lose the chrome, Alcantara and all the rest of the upmarket bits that don't look so hot when they're splattered with mud. Black plastic fender flares, bumpers and mirror casings will provide the requisite heavy-duty attitude and affordable price (U.S. full-size pickups are as cheap as chips these days). It's expected to be available as a single cab and double cab– and even in a full SUV version. Is this the small pickup American pistonheads have been pining for?

Chevy has its Cobalt XFE, VW its special Polo Bluemotion edition. And now Ford has joined the party, at least in Europe with a special edition Focus called ECOnetic. Manufacturers are getting this down to a bit of a formula and that's a very good thing. Better bumpers, more flush wheel covers, lower resistance tires, and in this case "lower viscosity transmission fluid" all contribute to the mileage and CO2 improvements. The benefit? Fifty-five American miles per gallon on the combined cycle (though their testing methods are considerably more forgiving than American fuel economy standards) and low enough CO2 emissions that the car will be exempt from London's congestion charge. The secret, of course, is that Ford's Focus 1.6 diesel already qualifies for exemption, but don't tell the advertising guys. Still, this is unfortunate news that perhaps the market can adapt to more intense fuel and emissions standards, albeit with limited run special edition versions of existing cars. And no, for the last time, we can't have the Euro Focus in America for a few more years because Ford hates each and every one of us.

Why did Daimler AG– already involved in aerospace, a French limousine company, synthetic fuel and (God help them) Chrysler– purchase 22 percent of Tognum AG? The German carmaker claims its €585 million investment in the  fabricator of engines for agricultural threshers, military tanks and ships– makes good business sense 'cause Tognum is a major supply-chain partner. Hey, it's new tech! New markets! But wait, there's more! Under the prosaic project name "Business Innovation," CEO Dieter "no corporate diet" Zetsche has charged several high-ranking managers with finding new targets for synergy (a.k.a. whatever). Automobilwoche agrees with analysts and investors who find this acquisition strategy deeply worrisome. "There can only be one reason for Zetsche to be interested in unrelated businesses: apparently Daimler does not see enough growth prospects in its core business of making cars." The news that Daimler is getting back into its old conglomerate habit "should be alarming to any investor," says the German magazine. Looks like Daimler's ability to keep to the old adage "stick to the knitting" is coming undone.

Not long ago, persons unknown snapped a picture of a full-size clay model of Ford's next Taurus, taken deep within Ford's secret hilltop fortress (unleashing the dogs of law on the websites that published it). Today, we bring you a computer rendering by photochopper Joshua Byrne, who riffed on the spy shot to give us an idea what the 2010 Taurus (yup there's that date again) will look like. Take it away Jason: "Design wise, the next generation Taurus blends in elements of Ford Europe's Kinetic design theme with a watered down version of the Ford Interceptor concept car, albeit looking a bit Camry'ish in the side profile. The three bar grill has evolved into something less Gillette razor-like, with less chrome and more detailing. Overall the 2010 Taurus is nothing too radical, but it should have the appeal that the current car doesn't." Like it wouldn't. [Note to Andrei: You're still The Man.]

According to Automobilwoche, FIAT signed an agreement to purchase 70 percent of Yugoslavia's Zastava in Belgrade Wednesday. This is a marriage made in Heaven — if you're a comedian. Picture Jay Leno combining Yugo jokes with "Fix It Again, Tony" witticisms. Or Stephen Colbert commenting on a car the grandchildren of Mussolini would build in joyful cooperation with the children of Milosevic. FIAT is investing 700 million Euros in a new modernized plant which will build 200,000 subcompact cars in (you guessed it) 2010 with a new mid-class car to follow. And the punchline of the biggest joke? The Yugo car Americans loved to hate was derived from a FIAT: the 127 model.