GM's $350m investment in Cruze production capacity in Lordstown, OH was big news for the "American Revolution." A compact car, built in America… and all it took was $80m in taxpayer-funded incentives to GM.  That, ladies and gentlemen is what passes for a PR win-win these days. In fact the good vibrations were flowing so freely at the big Cruze announcement that Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher even told Rick Wagoner that if he commited to another Lordstown model by Thursday, the good people of Ohio would "double the incentives." The Detroit News reports that Fisher was "joking" but goes on to say that GM did take the offer seriously enough to go on the record and decline the kind joke/offer. But the unrequited-love awkwardness isn't stopping the DetN from wallowing around in the Cruze-y feel-good. Check out their soft-focus paean to GM's once-proud tradition of actually employing Americans, featuring proud Hamtramck workers gushing lines like "We've got such an incredible history. I mean GM, of course, but I guess I'm thinking of my family too." As the kids say, Vom.

My wife and I have been studiously and dutifully test driving cars because we are about to buy two. So far she is insisting upon the better look, roominess and fun to drive 2009 Mazda6. I can't blame her as it is fun and I love our 05 3 hatch. And as of now, after driving the Accord and Nissan and Fusion it has now become my very favorite smooth and buttery 4 cylinder car.But here's the problem… We drive long distances to visit out second home in the mountains of southern MO and we are also looking for a great road cruiser. This is done every two weeks. We want the luxury, but still some hinting of sportiness. Now, after testing so many cars, is it possible that the very best drive for the money is a Hyundai? We half jokingly tested the Genesis…but after the drive, we both stood there with our six foot son and wondered what had just happened. It was absolutely wonderful:

Powerful and quiet 6.
Road softer and sportier than the Avalon.
Great luxury MPG.
Tomb quiet.
The insides felt like Euro pillow mattresses.
Great looks, finish and outstanding paint.
Room for the kid(s)to enjoy the 7 hour drive.
This for around 35K?????

So help us! Please tell us what we missed before we buy! This cannot be true! – PPellico

If you happen to be looking for a quick fix to GM's and Chrysler's myriad woes, the closest you'll come to a silver bullet is good old Chapter 11. But Rick Newman of US News And World Report's Flow Chart blog seems to think a quiet little housecleaning bankruptcy isn't even an option any more. Newman argues that unlike, say, airlines, the automakers can't declare bankruptcy and still expect consumers to buy their expensive, warrantied products. He cites a CNW Marketing Research study which shows that 80 percent of respondents would suddenly lose interest in a brand if it declared bankruptcy. Then there's the chance that Washington D.C. could just decide that Detroit had the bad times coming and not make with the bailout. And unlike the recently-rescued financial giants, GM or Chrysler wouldn't bring the whole economic party crashing down around them if they did fail. Finally, Newman reckons Detroit's complex issues can't be solved with a simple reorg. After all, GM and Chrysler are slashing costs and squeezing suppliers in the status quo. The real issues, argues Newman, are revenue and products, neither of which will be fixed by bankruptcy. Taken together, the arguments seem convincing, but there are a few details being left out. Like the epic cash burn, the need to slash dealer franchises, and Washington's apparent openness to a hefty bailout. I, for one, am not completely convinced that (at least for GM) a Chapter 11 filing isn't the way to go. Chrysler, on the other hand, should just be taken out back and shot (Chapter 7). What say you?

There isn't a whole lot to say here. Daihatsu has just revealed a special trim edition of its "Move" Kei car, calling it the Move Conte. To this writer at least, it sounds like something that a rapper would yell at other cars out the window of his Escalade. Or, in the words of one forum commenter, "What cupid stunt thought this was a good name?"

Last month we told you Warren. Michigan Mayor Jim Fouts had the answer to Detroit's problems in the form of tax deductions for interest on auto loans.  Now, in a video interview with the Detroit Free Press' Ron Dzwonkowski, we hear the next phase of his plan to save the American auto industry: ordering city employees to buy American cars.  But its not flag-waving patriotism or national pride that drives him to do so.  Nope, as with most politicians, it's all about the money.  He explains that GM and Chrysler are the largest employers in Warren and "without the success of General Motors and Chrysler, the city of Warren would not be able to pay my political appointees the good salaries that they make."  Well, at least he's honest about his motivation.

"What is more fuel efficient for automatic cars, accelerating quickly or slowly?  And what is generally peak torque for typical passanger cars and trucks? For manuals, quick and smooth acceleration is most efficient.  I would expect that the same is true for modern automatics, but don’t know for sure.  With my own automatic trans car, I notice no difference between the two, maybe a slight improvement with faster acceleration.  In the past, a study was done comparing slow braking and acceleration with fast braking and acceleration, but they didn’t investigate fast acceleration with light braking. I’ve been accelerating quickly (but keeping RPM below 3500 where I suspect efficiency drops off) and adjusting my speed mostly with the accelerator (easing off earlier to provide a little extra safe following distance and keeping near the speedlimit to time traffic lights).  I get pretty good gas mileage, between 26 and 30 MPG (mostly sub-urban highway driving during rush hour). Before I started accelerating more quickly I got about 26-27 pretty consistantly. Is the efficiency of slow acceleration just a myth?"

In Farago's editorial about the domestic automakers' attempts to get $25b in federal loans, he stated, "it's a prelude to a kiss: the REAL bailout (in for $25b, in for another $25b)." Well, it didn't take long for both sides to pucker up. The International Herald Tribune reports this morning the total has grown to $50b– it turns out the $25b was just for the first year. That would be followed by additional $15b in the second year and $10b more in the third year. Why? The UAW's legislative director, Alan Reuther explains "the amount of concern and urgency from the Detroit companies has increased in the last month and significantly ratcheted up what they're communicating what their funding needs are." But he makes it clear you don't dare call it a bailout: "We don't see it as a bailout. We see it as government assistance to help retooling tied to the production of these advanced technology vehicles." Whatever. It still amounts to billions of the taxpayer's dollars going to fund companies which have been driven to the brink of bankruptcy by inept management who collected obscene salaries for doing so. If they do get these handouts, it should include an oversight committee from outside the industry and from outside congress to make sure the money goes for vehicle design and retooling. Not a cent should be allowed to go to executive salaries or perks, bonuses, lobbyists or any of the other thousands of ways the automakers seem to find to fritter away money. And once that's gone, that's it. No third chances! And furthermore… Huh? … Oh… OK. Here comes the attendant with my Thorazine. I'll go sit quietly in the corner now.

As you might expect, with Toyota nipping on GM's heels sales-wise, the two companies' financial arms have also been neck-and-neck. Automotive News [sub] reports for the first half of 2008, though, Toyota Financial Services pulled ahead of GMAC as the biggest U.S. auto lender. Research done by AutoCount estimates TFS had a 6.35 percent share the lending market, while GMAC held 6.2 percent. With GMAC's cuts in leasing, they expect TFS to stay ahead for the rest of the year. In the first six months of this year, 58 percent of Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles sold in the U.S. were financed in-house. About 46 percent of GM vehicles in North America were financed by GMAC. Other captive finance companies in the top ten were: American Honda Finance at fourth overall with 4.95 percent of market share; Ford Credit at fifth with 4.77 percent; Chrysler Financial holds seventh place with 3.15 percent and Nissan Infiniti Financial is eighth with 1.87 percent market share. The other four spaces are held by various banks. Perhaps a more interest and relevant stat would be the total lost in over-estimated residuals and bad credit risks.  Anyone want to guess who'd be most likely to top that list?

Ford says it's not killing Mercury but their actions indicate otherwise. In the past two years, The Blue Oval Boyz have cut their ranks by 400 dealers, mainly by merging the three brands under one roof in many areas. Automotive News [sub] reports that starting this week, Ford execs will tell the remaining stand-alone Lincoln-Mercury dealers their latest and greatest consolidation plan for rolling them into Ford dealerships. The dealers aren't overly pleased with the prospects, but they see the handwriting on the wall. While Ford says they stand behind the Mercury brand and will give it a new small car, "one Ford insider told Automotive News that company executives want to make it clear to dealers that no major influx of new product is coming for Mercury." Once the dealer consolidation is done, you can just about bet that the Mercury brand will be starved for product, with all of the new models going to Ford or Lincoln. Then it's just a matter of time before Mercury just fades away like DeSoto in the early 60s.

Continuing its push down market, Cadillac disclosed it will introduce a four-cylinder car in late 2010 as a 2011 model. The rear-wheel-drive model, which they may even saddle with the BLS moniker, will slot below the CTS. Even though it'll have a four-pot engine standard, Cadillac execs are discussing whether to offer a V-6 as an option, because they think (and probably rightly so) that U.S. buyers won't accept a four cylinder Cadillac. Caddy GM Jim Taylor told Automotive News [sub], "I don't think Americans are going to become un-American that fast. They still want power. We still have big open roads. People do not want to stop enjoying driving." Or maybe they're just still smarting from Cadillac's last four-cylinder fiasco, named Cimarron.

The Forester XT is living, breathing proof that Subaru has lost its way.  The Toyota-fication of the brand has now reached its pinnacle in the redesigned Forester, and it stands tall (really, really tall) as the perfect example of how to alienate the hippies and hoons that bought Subaru after Subaru.  To put it succinctly, driving the new Forester XT is like answering the door expecting Ed McMahon with a check for a million dollars and finding your mother-in-law standing there instead.  At least the MIL eventually goes home.  The Forester XT just hangs around and keeps disappointing.

If business and government both agree that hydrogen is the future, they must be right, right? Well, the "Hydrogen Road Tour 08" has just completed the first hydrogen-powered, cross-country road trip despite the fact that there are only 60 hydrogen stations in he country. So how did the public-private publicity tour manage this feat? Well, they didn't actually. "There were stretches without hydrogen fueling stations when the vehicles were carried on flatbed trucks," reports Reuters. The longest was a 937 mile jaunt from Rolla, Missouri to Albuquerque, New Mexico. But wait, cries DOT Administrator For Research and Innovative Technology (really) Paul Brubaker, all those hydrocarbons were not combusted in vain! One of the goals of the tour was to actually demonstrate the need to build more fueling stations. So, y'know… failure is success. Not to be out-Orwelled, the Department of Energy put out its own fawning "Suggested Talking Points For The Hydrogen Road Tour" (PDF) . There you can learn that the DOE has purchased a fuel-cell Chevy Equinox, and that it is refueled at a Shell station. Furthermore, "data collected from this effort will be integrated with data from the National Hydrogen Learning Demonstration to validate real-world performance." Which is important, because you'll want to know how often you'll have to be towed in a flatbed truck between fueling stations. Unless the hydrogen-producing firms behind the tour get their fat government checks to build an expensive new infrastructure. And all this despite the fact that in a best-case scenario, automakers will only sell about 2 million electric vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2020 according to the National Research Council.

Wesson veggie oil, lye, high quality methanol, an old margarita mixer, and some patience; thats all you need to create your own batch of pure biodiesel, suitable for use in your average two-year old, raceworthy Jetta TDI. Sure, it looked more like something you would dip your bread in at Olive Garden, but I was not only going to be driving like a hooligan at the local SCCA event, I was saving the planet (I should sell some carbon credits)! Using directions I found on-line, I planned to whip up a five-gallon batch of biodiesel (to see if I could) in the 11th-floor confines of my apartment. Not knowing what to expect, I ended up with a huge mess, a ruined margarita mixer, and about three gallons of biodiesel of dubious quality (it was supposed to be nearly translucent). Turbidity issues aside, I put a single gallon in the tank of my Jetta, along with five gallons of regular diesel, and ran around town. No issues, so the weekend's race was on! The other two gallons were then thrown in, and the race commenced. One hundred bhp aside, the Jetta performed admirably with mild body lean, communicative steering, decent brakes, monster torque, and laughable grip. The oppressive Oklahoma heat erased all perception of driving a commuter sedan; no, I was piloting the Audi R10 TDI down the Mulsanne straight in the Le Mans! But unlike Audi, I couldn't claim victory, as I was the only one in my racing class. But my adventure in going green shall not end there. Stay tuned as I attempt to make ethanol for my Porsche!

With the auto industry in the midst of wrenching change, the most valuable resource is brainpower. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study says that the U.S. could face a shortfall of 160k engineers by 2016, but JCI-Saft CEO Mary Ann Wright thinks the situation could become even worse than that. Arguing that the BLS number doesn't take retirements into account, Wright tells MLive.com "I think that's too low. Today the United States is not producing the right skill sets." Part of the problem could be the efforts to educate engineers to be better communicators rather than technical geniuses. John Fuhs of the auto supplier firm Swoboda says "We try to hire engineering people for our company, but typically they come up way short in basic skills. They made a very big point of switching 25 years ago for more rounded engineers, and that's what we got. They all want to be project managers now, but they don't know the science or what's going on to get the job done." But the problem doesn't end there, as too few American engineers are graduating to fill demand in other industries as well. So the industry has to either inspire newly-graduated engineers or hire away talented engineers from other countries. Or simply continue the trend of outsourcing product development abroad. 

Hyundai's U.S. niche is just below the the Toyondissan's offerings. Nowhere is that role more valuable than in the burgeoning hybrid segment. Considering the forthcoming Honda hybrid is set to be priced several thousand dollars less than the industry-standard Toyota Prius, Hyundai's pressed to deliver the hybrid Sonata at an even lower price point. And so they have. Li-on-powered, no less. Reuters reports that Hyundai could release a lithium-ion hybrid version of its Sonata as early as (you guessed it) 2010. Unlike other li-ion hybrids set to launch in that most magical of automotive years, the Sonata will not be a plug-in model. With Korean hybrids deliveries beginning next year, any early-adopter glitches should be resolved before sales ramp up stateside. Meanwhile, liquid-petroleum-gas-hybrid versions of Hyundai's Avante hatchback are also set to go on sale soon in Korea, although its chances of coming stateside are almost nil. Similarly, Hyundai VP for Product Development John Krafcik rates the possibility that they'll sell their Indian-built i10 city car stateside as "very unlikely."