In 2001, GM named Progressive Progressive Molded Products supplier of the year. Boston investment firm Thomas H. Lee Partners bought Progressive in 2004. With '07 revenues cresting $1.4b in 2007, the company's been a major GM supplier (TTAC is still investigating which parts they make for which GM vehicles). Yes, well, like so many other suppliers, Progressive got stuck between rising raw material costs and declining prices. Progressive filed for Chapter 11 on June 20, listing $500m in debt vs. $50m worth of assets. And now, as the court prepares to liquidate the supplier, GM has asked for court approval to seize tools from Progressive. Reuters reports says GM's filing cites "potential supply disruptions" that could "force the carmaker to shut its assembly lines." "The tooling is essential to ensuring the production of the component parts GM's assembly lines depend on," GM said in court papers, describing the company as a "single-source" supplier. You may recall that a federal bankruptcy judge withheld supplier Plastech's tooling from Chrysler, which forced ChryCo to temporarily suspend production. That's all GM needs right now. Or, strangely, maybe it is. 

The LA Times reports that nobody tells Bob Lutz how to sell electric cars. In response to a NY Times article on GM's woes, an unnamed EV activist wrote a letter to the editor suggesting GM bring back the EV1 using Panasonic lead-acid batteries. This might have flown under the radar, except that the plucky rabble-rouser copied Maximum Bob on the email. Besides proving that he knows how to use email, Bob's reply proved that his world famous piss-and-vinegar approach hasn't been blunted by GM's recent bad news. "The EV will not meet any current safety laws," writes Lutz. "Putting a version into production that meets regulations would put us out to '11 or '12. They cost us well over $80,000 to produce, and, being a two-seater, we could only sell 800 in four years. We lost over one billion dollars on that experiment." And to the assertion that the Volt "depends on Lithium batteries which don't yet exist," Maximum Bob says "I don't know why you insist that lithium-ion doesn't exist… trust me, the battery will not delay the car." Though the last point might have a little more nuance to it than Bob lets on, it's good to see him put dreams of an EV1 comeback tour to bed.

Last we heard, Ford tried to shop Volvo to China's SAIC. Now Automotive News [AN. sub] reports that The Blue Oval Boys are trying to dump sell its troubled Swedish division on to Renault. We now learn that initial talks with Renault began last fall. But those broke down over "price differences" (as in Ford thought Volvo was worth something). Apparently, talks have now resumed. Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has said on numerous occasions that he's looking for a partner in the American market. Someone. Anyone. GM? Chrysler? So, why not Volvo? You know, other than the fact the brand's only successful U.S. product– the XC series SUVs– just rolled-over and died. Of course, Ford continues to deny Volvo's on the auction block. "We are focused on improving Volvo's business results," says FoMoCo spinmeister Mark Truby. Meanwhile, AN says that Ford is also talking  with Dongfeng Motor Group. With Ford burning cash, and credit in short supply, expect a Volvo sale as soon as a sufficiently gullible partner is found.

Andy Grove, the man who led Intel to dominance, has a new cause: The Electric Car. Ken Thomas of the AP interviewed Grove on his new passion and found a true believer. Grove notes that "the beauty of electric power is its ability to be produced through multiple sources such as coal, wind and nuclear, and its 'stickiness' — it can be transported only over land." Typically the ability to transport stored energy by sea is considered an advantage for coal, oil and the like. But Grove touts the fact that electricity cannot be readily traded on the global market. Coming from the former leader of the quintessential modern multi-national, Intel, this is quite a surprise. Indeed, Grove says that the inability of the US to export electricity to voracious China means that electricity prices can be kept lower than they otherwise would be. He may have a point. Back in the 1960s a crash in US automotive sales would be paired with plunging steel prices, but not now. Grove's other hot button is the promotion of aftermarket plug-in conversion kits for hybrid cars. He sees parallels between plug-in conversion kits of today with the way hobbyists and home users got the whole personal computer industry up and running a few decades ago. 

After purchasing Land Rover, Tata aren't wasting any time trying to turn the British brand into a cash-cow. Apparently, introducing a new seven seater, based on the Freelander is their first move in this "Roverlution." Yes, they already have a seven-people carrier in the Discovery. But in these fuel-fastidious days the ol' trucks seem a little… out of place. The new car is said to be more road-oriented. [Sigh. It had to happen eventually.] It will use the Freelander 2's elongated platform. Styling will be a mix of what we see on LR's smallest and the LRX. I struggled to maintain the rugged lines fans love so much while making the vehicle fit into the next decade. How often will seven people travel in the same SUV is still arguable. But I guess, knowing that you can transport an entire girls volleyball team is enough of a reason for some.

[For more Avarvarii photochopistry, click here]

When word that GMC wouldn't be bothering with a 2nd Gen Acadia hit, I was a bit shocked. But only a bit. The world needs more CUVs like I need a hole in my head. That said, of the three four Lambda based crossovers, I've always liked the Acadia's styling the best. As does the rest of The General's public; it's the best-selling of the bunch. Even weirder, GM is planning some Lambda-based SUTs (4-door pickups) and GMC, the truck division, ain't getting any. The General pulled a similar weird move a few years back when they neglected to kick down an Avalanche to their "Professional Grade" division. The elephant in the room seems to be saying GMC's about to be put out to pasture. Chevrolet is fully capable of handling GM's truck needs. Furthermore, with gasoline cresting $143 per barrel this very morning, an all-truck brand must be screaming "red ink!" into the accountants' ears. You think GMC has a future? Really?

The perfect storm we predicted is rapidly approaching hurricane force. Whether or not you believe Motown's automakers could have predicted the soaring price of gas (hint: they could have at least hedged their bets a little), it's increasingly clear that the truck-heavy domestics are in deep, deep shit. The price of oil has jumped again today; this time on rumors that Israel is about to attack Iran over their nuclear weapons program, "disrupting" Iranian oil supplies. Bloomberg reports that OPEC President Chakib Khelil predicted that the military threat– and the falling value of the U.S. dollar– may drive oil prices from their current price ($143 a barrel) to $170 a barrel. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has declared that supply and demand, rather than speculators, are responsible for oil's rally. All of which has raised gas prices, killed the U.S. new car market, murdered light truck sales and torn a hole in Ford, GM and Chrysler's balance sheets. Tomorrow is Black Hole Tuesday for The Big 2.8, when the full horror of the sales stats are revealed. In anticipation of this bad news, The Detroit News reports that GM stock hit a 34-year low ($10.57). Ford's stock tumbled to $4.46 a share. Barron's reports that late last week, "some [funds] designed for individual investors are selling at about 50 cents on the dollar-almost as if GM were headed for bankruptcy." Almost?

When GM announced the Traverse, they insisted the new Chevy was different enough from the GM's three Lambda-platformed CUVs that it wouldn't cannibalize sales. It looks like they were right; there won't be anything left to cannibalize. GMINsidenews is reporting that neither the GMC Acadia (the best-selling Lambda flavor) nor the Saturn Outlook (the worst selling) will make the cut. That'll leave only the Buick Enclave and the Traverse to carry the Lambda Gen 2 banner. GM's answer to the slow-selling Honda Ridgeline, the Lambda SUT (due in 2011-2012) will also lose the GMC variant; the Chevy SUT will be GM's only entry in the almost-but-not-quite-a-pickup-truck market. All this leaves only one new GMC product in the pipeline: the GMC version of the Pontiac version of the Chevy version of the Theta CUV (Equinox). Clearly, GM's decided to starve GMC to death. The question is: do they have enough time? 

It looks like New Mexico's SOL. The Land of Enchantment tempted Tesla with a $7m incentive package (or was that $20m?) to locate the plant for their sometime-or-other upcoming electric sedan. Despite a big announcement from the then-governor's office, Tesla's changed their mind. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the electric car manufacturer promoter will announce today that they've chosen the Bay Area as the ertswhile production site for the vehicle formerly known as WhiteStar, in honor of the owners of the ill-fated Titanic (as far as we know). What swung the deal in the favor of the Golden Gate State? Well, besides the governator placing an order for his own $100k toy, Tesla will get a sales tax exemption on purchasing manufacturing equipment and grants for training new employees. The company says they'll start production of the $60k sedan (when else but) in 2010– even though there doesn't seem to be even any concept drawings of the new car.Time to revive the Tesla Birth Watch?

Source Interlink Media owns Motor Trend magazine. Both conglomerate and car mag are heading south, quickly, in a big way. Ad revenues and circulation are in free fall. Motor Trend (MT) is fighting for it survival with glossy pimpatorials for equally doomed advertisers. The August issue features a glossy "special advertising section" for Buick ("Drive Beautiful") and a slick "advertisement" for the Dodge Challenger ("Motor Trend drives the new Dodge Challenger Through Europe"). Meanwhile, the chronically undercapitalized columnist arthur st. antoine takes a whack at a premium car brand: BMW. Huh? 

Back when fuel was below $3 a gallon, renting a car was like playing Wheel of Fortune. Though you usually got the car you rented, once in awhile, a big prize like an SUV or a Cadillac DeVille came up. ABC News reports that rental customers are now avoiding upgrades to bigger cars and SUVs because of high fuel prices. In turn, they've created a shortage of rental compacts, forcing rental companies to respond with more aggressive tactics to "upgrade" the customer to bigger and more fuel-thirsty options. The oversupply's sending SUVs daily rental rates downward, to the point where renting an SUV is becoming  cheaper than renting a compact. As ABC notes: "an Internet search by ABC News this week found Budget Rent A Car offering a daily rental of an intermediate SUV from Newark airport in New Jersey for $66. An economy vehicle was $76, and a compact car cost $77." [NB: TTAC could not duplicate these deals on AVIS.com or Nationalcar.com.] One frequent renter has a word of advise for rental car companies: deal. "[They] need to anticipate what's coming. If Avis came up tomorrow and said, 'Our vehicles are fuel-efficient vehicles,' they'd see a surge in people wanting to rent from Avis." Oops! Looks like Hertz's Green Collection PR team dropped the ball. 

The only thing worse than losing your job is having to sit around and wait to lose your job. Ask Ford's white collar workers. The Blue Oval Boyz have already announced plans to cut the salaried workforce by 15 percent; in some areas like product development it's as high as 20 percent. With the bulk of the cuts coming in late July, morale and productivity are lower than the chances that CEO Alan Mulally will earn less than $20m in any given year. The Detroit News reports "work has ground to a near-halt in some offices as workers fret about their futures and spend time browsing job postings on the Internet." (Hi guys!) Even those who aren't scheduled for layoffs are looking elsewhere for employment, not knowing if they may be shit-canned in the next round of cut-backs. Does it make sense to cut product developers and engineers while struggling to get new products to market? Oh… wait. They'll just import designs from Europe three years too late or let Mazda handle it. In fact, it looks like they'll do anything they can to save a buck as long as it doesn't interfere with executives' mega-salaries, perks and golden parachutes.

You may recall the Plastech debacle. Chrysler's interior supplier got bailouts from ChryCo, then filed for Chapter 11. ChryCo tried to swoop down and take the tooling. A federal judge said no. Since then, the supplier's been sold off. And much to somebody's chagrin, the owner of the mismanaged parts maker has pocketed, wait for it, $12m for running the company into the ground. And if that's not bad enough, and I say it is, Crain's Business Detroit reveals that the federal judge overseeing the break-up allowed Plastech to hide Julie Brown's compensation from public view. And no wonder. "Those documents show that Julie Brown's husband, three brothers, two sisters-in-law, a sister, a cousin and a nephew were on the payroll to the tune of about $6 million a year. Of that, $2.25 million was paid to Jim Brown, Julie Brown's husband. From other documents, it appears that Brown's personal driver, cook and two housekeepers were paid by the company." Strangely, Crain's sense of righteous indignation also files for bankruptcy. "Employing family members is no crime. Trying to keep how many relatives and what they were paid from the public suggests that Plastech's owner thought she had something to hide. If each family member performed his or her duties well, what's the problem? Surely the compensation is not the cause of the company's overall financial problems." No, of course not. Nor is it any indication that the company was poorly run. At all. 

Back in the 70's former TTAC columnist Brock Yates coined the term Grosse Point Myopia: the tendency of Detroit's execs to use each other for their frame of reference. [Our own Andrew Dederer revisited GPM in October 2006.] And now Ford's Presidente de las Americas, Mark Fields, evokes the concept with his insistence that doing better than before is as good as doing well. Or being prepared. But you'd expect these sort of revisionist weasel words in an article by The Detroit News on the D2.8's troubles the day before the June sales numbers drop (as in off a cliff). Did you know that after last May's numbers, Ford and GM "executives were alarmed?" Yes, "eventually [eventually?] they made almost desperate decisions that will cost thousands of jobs, change the vehicles people drive and determine whether their businesses survive." And check this: Mike DiGiovanni, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis, told scribe Tom Krishner "oil prices in February began to rise, still not to an alarming level because they were consistent with previous seasonal spikes. Gasoline was still at a nationwide average of $3.03 per gallon. In March, though, pickups' share of the market dove to just 11.6 percent and gas rose to $3.24. 'That's when I said 'Red Alert,' Digiovanni remembered. 'We're worried.'" To which Krishner adds "Even critics say it would have been nearly impossible for the automakers to predict the 74-cent-per-gallon spike in regular gas prices between February and May." This is going to be one Hell of a wake-up call. Or, even more worryingly, not. 

I drove the Audi TT 2.0T Convertible prepared to hate it. Its wrong-wheel-drive, mandatory two-pedal transmission, extra-chunky-style curb weight and econobox-based platform violates all that I hold sacred in a two-seat drop top. Similar formulas have belched forth such embarrassments as Mercury’s legendary (for all the wrong reasons) Capri. But the topless TT is no Capri. And thank Gott for that.