Greentech Media reports that Tesla's "accelerating production" of their lithium-ion powered sports car. They're heading for their promised 100 cars per month. You know; once they get their transmission shit together. in October. Or thereabouts. Or later. Meanwhile, according to a Tesla newsletter released Wednesday night, the Lotus assembly plant in Hethel, England has fifteen cars "ready to be shipped" to CA sans battery and powertrain. I'll admit it: fifteen cars is fourteen more than I've built (don't ask). But have you seen Tesla's showroom? These Silicon Valley boys are not exactly Scrooge McDuck when it comes to overheads. Even if you figure each customer car at the new price of $120k, that's only $1.8m gross income. What's the bet that each of those cars will end up costing Tesla money (a la David Brown's Aston Martin era)? Never mind. Saving the planet is a tough job, but someone's got to do it. 

Why would Delphi's bondholders sue GM in Manhattan court to prevent a $300m cash infusion? Because Highland Capital Management and other bondholders fear GM's "undue" influence over the bankrupt parts supplier. [NB: the $300m is on top of an existing $650m loan.] In other words, GM's money could give it the leverage it needs to prevent its former division from selling off profitable bits of Delphi. Like, say, the parts of Delphi that supply the GM corporate mothership with parts. GM control would also mean that the artist formerly known as the world's largest automaker could forestall a Delphi Chapter 7, should the bondholders decided that the jig is up. "It is merely a band-aid (albeit an enormously expensive and porous band-aid),'' the bondholders told Bloomberg. "It is a truism that borrowing to fund losses is a loser's bet.'' You want to talk about cash burn? "Highland and other bondholders said in the objection to the additional financing that Delphi used more than $960 million in net cash to fund operating activities in just the first six months of 2008." Anyway, bankruptcy judge Robert Drain approved a $5m company payout for the legal costs of defending former Delphi officers and employees from lawsuits related to pension funds and the bankruptcy.

Despite swearing up, down and sideways that Toe Tag sales were a thing of the past, GM started a new "employee pricing for everyone" sale yesterday. It runs through September second. At least. All the new pricing info is locked and loaded on TrueDelta. Every GM model ["91 vehicles found"] is included in the EPFE sale, even the Corvette and Pontiac G8. The "employee discount" is $75 less than it was three years ago– no big deal. But Saab and Saturn now share the regular GM formula; they had their own employee pricing formulas the last time around. This means that Saabs are priced slightly higher than before, while most Saturns drop by a few hundred bucks. (Employee pricing is especially helpful with Saturns, as many dealers normally insist on charging full sticker.) With the other GM brands, you can often negotiate a price not too far above the employee price anyway. GM shaved rebates by $1k and even $1,500 in a few cases. Rebates actually increased by $250 for the last next big thing, the Lambda crossovers. The most heavily discounted vehicle: the Saab 9-7X. The Saablazer carries an $8k rebate on top of the employee price. If low-interest financing is your thing, fuhgeddaboutit. GM removed zero-percent financing from most models; 0.9 is now the lowest you'll find (except on a Hummer). For many models the "special GMAC rate" is now 6.9 percent. As in "get your financing elsewhere."

What if GM Car Czar Bob Lutz is the kind of hero General Motors needs, hurling Volts from high atop the Ren Center to stave off Chapters 7 and 11? What if he's fighting the bureaucratic beast from within, under the guise of corporate tool, a double agent, if you will? Could Maximum Bob be one of the good guys? Double Lutz?

Crash tests have shown that contemporary cars are pretty safe at middling speeds. You can hit a wall at 40 mph and walk away with a few bruises. But what happens at higher speeds? German automotive club ADAC crashed a five-star (Euro-NCAP) car at 50 mph and the results were not pretty. The Renault Laguna III is way up there is terms of safety, as good or better than any other passenger car (no Freedom Fries jokes here please, I've driven a Laguna and it's good). In this video, a grey Laguna hits a solid barrier at 40 mph, after which its occupants could exit unharmed (if dummies could walk). Taken to 50 mph, the orange Laguna is close to doing a Dianamobile. The A-beam collapses and the door sill folds. Physics rule; at double the speed, crash energy increases to the square, so even a relatively small increase in velocity can cause havoc. Passengers of the orange Laguna would suffer serious injury, despite being equipped with the works: chest airbags, seatbelt tensioners, and knee airbags. At the tested speed, the crumple zone is used up. Any faster and the car would basically fall apart. ADAC: "Appropriate speed can save your life". Which is not exactly news, but seeing the evidence is more, uh, "visceral" than just knowing the facts.

Is they is, or is they ain't? According to The Detroit News, Hummer's general manager, Martin Walsh told dealers that The General "never solicited offers and we have not negotiated with any parties" re: selling the company's eco-nightmare brand. However, "GM did receive expressions of interest from various entities." According to Walsh, reports that GM has talked with Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata and Russian Machines are "just speculation." However, Citigroup's Hummer review "is being conducted with the utmost urgency." So, Hummer sales are down 44 percent year to date. On June 3, Rick Wagoner said GM's reviewing Hummer for possible revamping or sale. They hired accountants to do the review. GM's received unsolicited interest in the brand from rapidly growing companies with a strong presence in the international truck market. GM needs cash. It looks like there's a much more sound basis for all the "speculation" about selling than there is for GM's dismissal of same. Just sayin'.

TTAC commentator Brent asked why fellow members of our Best and Brightest aren't cutting the new Cruze some slack. "All I ever see are comments (rightly) digging on GM for having no truly competitive small cars, and for having none in the pipeline. Now we learn of one that in fact *is* in the pipeline. Furthermore, it just might be competitive. And what do I see? A bunch of comments digging on GM for even trying." As a cynical bastard, I think the cynicism has been well and truly earned, through dozens of less-than-stellar (i.e. crap) GM small cars. And, lest we forget, Chevy is a brand that touts itself as "An American Revolution" whilst selling a Korean car. In fact, what equity/credibility remains within the Chevy brand? Like a Rock reliability? Not for cars. (Not yet, anyway.) So, really, it all comes down to one word: Corvette. And if that's true, what IS a Chevy? No matter how good the Cruze may be (Jonny), it simply can't traverse GM's branding issues. Nothing can. [PS: DON'T FORGET THERE'S A PODCAST BELOW]

2009 Corvette ZR1 - First Drive

Those wacky Brits– you never know just what they'll try next. From Motor Trader comes a report that farmer Steve Burgess has become the first person to cross the Bering Strait in a land vehicle. He floated across the 56-mile stretch from Russia to Alaska in a Land Rover Defender equipped with pontoons, a propeller and motor. His 10,379-mile trek from his home in Yorkshire was sponsored by Cooper Tires. Back in Merry Olde England, earlier this month Top Gear's James Mays and oenophile Oz Clarke ran a Radical SR4 racing car from 0 ot 60 in 3.5 seconds using "a special distillation of whisky." Bruichladdich distillery manager Duncan MacGillivray said "The exhaust smells much better than petrol. It's a sustainable biofuel; but at £26 a litre, the duty and VAT isn't, so it's not a viable alternative just yet." Of course, that just begs the question of whether the police could charge you with DUI if your car had whiskey on its breath.

TTAC prides itself on scanning obscure sources of info to keep you inside the loop on some loopy, car-related stuff. And nothing is quite as bizarre as America's corn-based ethanol industry, depending as it does entirely on government subsidies, mandates and market manipulation. One of the best sources for info: industrialinfo.com. In an "interview" with an endlessly annoying, pig-ignorant, honey-toned professional broadcaster, the news org's Alternative Fuel Group Veep offers a blunt assessment of a bio-diesel and ethanol industry deep in the doldrums. "We're in a bust cycle," Jay Brunson says. "Over the first part of 2008, not a single corn-based ethanol plant has started construction, and the biodiesel industry has had only a handful of construction starts." And then Jay moves quickly on to non-corn ethanol sources. Does this mean U.S. farmers are, you know? Not if their legislators have anything to say about it. And by God, they do.

Nissan's taking a hit where it didn't expect, thanks to their failing full-size truck sales. According to the Madison County Journal, when Nissan built their plant in Canton, Mississippi, the automaker struck a deal with the county for accelerated depreciation on machinery. The company claimed it would depreciate faster, as it would be "used more frequently across multiple work shifts." Obviously, the local politicians would have said yes to a back massage write-off clause to get the plant. So they agreed. But things aren't working out quite like they planned. The county pays $1.67m per year on debts related to incentives they bestowed upon Nissan. Last year the plant only brought in $1.64m in taxes. And now that the plant isn't generating the estimated tax revenue due to production cuts, the county wants to tax the machinery using a standard depreciation scale. Of course, Nissan protested, saying "the assessment should not be based on a bond payment, it should be based on true value… nothing has changed to take away from the spirit of [the original] agreement." The county says that that may have been the case originally, but running two shifts instead of three changes the equation and doesn't wear out the machinery as fast. The county board of supervisors passed the new tax assessment unanimously. Anyone want to place any bets on whether Nissan will invest any more on expanding their operations in the Magnolia State?

Larry Webster at Car and Driver (C&D) noticed a marked performance difference between some of the five Nissan GT-Rs the mags' reviewers had driven (in case you were wondering, Berkowitz' GT-R count is zero). Suspecting "a ringer," the eds decided to stick the uber-Nissan on a dyno. The Godzilla press car was making 420 horsepower at the wheels. Using an estimate of 20 percent loss, the buff book reckoned the GT-R produced 519 horsepower at the crank. This is, of course, based on that assumption (despite Nissan's claims) that the GT-R has unusually low crank-to-wheel power loss. The carmaker attributed the difference between published and actual hp to "early build" cars' varying computer software programming. Translation: Nissan sent out ringers so that C&D, Edmunds, and the other buff books could trumpet "GT-R DOES 0-60 IN 1.1 SECONDS!" As most of us won't be driving a GT-R, the car's PR importance vastly outstrips the importance of honesty, consistency and integrity. Obviously. And this renews questions (raised at the time by TTAC and others) about the validity of the "production" GT-R's Nürburgring record-setting lap time.

After our characteristically snarky blog on the launch of ecodrivingUSA.com website– courtesy of The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers– the organization reached out to TTAC to defend its PR campaign. Like every professional spinmeister I've ever met, AAM's Senior Director of Communications proved to be an affable, sensible, persuasive guy. And how can you argue against saving gas? So I let the not-so-sibilant Charlie Territo make his case, then explored other mpg-related issues: federal fuel economy regs, state's rights in the matter and suchlike. TTAC encourages any newsmaker (or their rep) to contact us about any published story to make their case on the site, including, should they desire, unedited editorial space for their reply. (robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com) 

While GM PR is milking the plug-in electric – gas hybrid hybrid Chevrolet Volt for all its worth, the automaker is shifting emphasis towards it latest savior. The Camaro. Wait. No. That's not it. The Beat. Nope. Hybrid SUVs? Uh-uh. The Cruze! "Wider and longer than most of its competitors, Cruze has a purposeful stance…" Yada, yada yada. Engines? At its European launch, the Cruze control will feature a choice of a 1.6-liter (112 hp), 1.8-liter (140 hp) or a new 2.0-liter turbo diesel (150 hp) four banger; with a five-speed stick or all-new six-speed auto. U.S. spec? Mpgs? No se. But here's the real news: GM reckons they can make money on building and selling this sucker in the U.S. "Small cars are becoming a permanent feature of the U.S. market, and the odds of earning a decent return have gone up" for domestic auto makers, auto analyst John Casesa told CNNMoney. "The window of opportunity for GM is now." Only, as Dow Jones' anonymous writer points out, "GM is counting on one more critical – but still uncertain – element to turn small cars into money makers, which is that consumers will ante up thousands of dollars more for a new small Chevy." Now what are the odds?

TrueDelta has released the August results of its Vehicle Reliability Survey. Among the models surveyed: the 2009 Nissan Murano, 2009 Jaguar XF, 2008 smart fortwo (no caps) and 2008 Saturn ASTRA (all caps). The Murano follows the Rogue in requiring fewer repairs in its first few months than Nissan's previous redesigns. The smart requires more repairs than the average car, but not too many more. That would be the Jaguar. Though the sample size for the new XF was small, the reported repair rate was nearly four times the average of a nearly new car. Most commonly reported… wait for it… electrical glitches. Finally, the most reliable of the three European-sourced models, with a require rate about half the average, comes from… GM. GM designs often require far fewer repairs in their second year of production. Following what used to be a common practice with new Japanese designs, the ASTRA also spent its first year overseas. So it comes to the U.S. nearly glitch-free. Full results at the link below.