Way back in 1987, The New York Times began a story on GM with a lead that echoes through the ages: “Just about the last thing the General Motors Corporation needs these days is more ”cannibals.”’ With all the turmoil GM has endured since ’87, you might think that it would have taken The Gray Lady’s advice by now. But no. Motor Trend reports that the new Cadillac Escalade will be based on GM’s played-out Lambda platform, joining the Traverse, Enclave, Outlook and Acadia in cannibal Hell. As usual MT manages to look on the sunny side of the move, claiming that the Lambda’s “oversubscription” is precisely why “a Cadillac version makes economic sense.” And yes, it will likely be the only Lambda-based whip with a (small block- the new Northstar has been axed) V8 now that the planned Enclave Super has been canceled. Still, the new Escalade won’t just steal sales from well-equipped Enclaves, it will also put the squeeze on the Theta-based SRX CUV. Besides, if Caddy is still a legitimate luxury brand, shouldn’t its flagship Ute retain its fuel-swilling truck platform to keep it in line with such damn-the-fuel-prices competitors as the Range Rover and Hummer? After all, the new 2009 Escalade paid off its tooling costs within three months of going on sale. Unless of course this is just more cheap-and-dirty “retooling for increased energy efficiency” bailout loan fodder.

CNN reports that The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a second recall for Ford; Lincoln and Mercury vehicles that may (more or less) spontaneously combust, thanks to a defective cruise control part. “NHTSA remains concerned that many owners have yet to respond to multiple safety defect recall notifications from Ford. Of the 12 million vehicles involved in the recall, nearly five million have not yet been brought to Ford for repair. The vehicles contain a defective cruise control switch that could lead to a fire at any time, even while the vehicle is turned-off, parked and unattended.” NHTSA promises that “repair parts are immediately available.” That’s a step-up from the initial recall, where a lack of parts meant that many Ford dealers were simply disconnecting the cruise control switch. [Click here for a NHTSA Press Release with a full list of vehicles involved.]

Audi has released the pricing for the 2009 A3, which I’m comfortable saying is one of the most under-appreciated cars in the U.S. Or one of the most overpriced. Audi’s set pricing at $26,920 for the front-wheel-drive, six-speed manual model equipped with the 2.0T. The top of the line 3.2-liter Quattro variant comes in at $36,975. For the first time for American A3 buyers, the 2.0T is available with Quattro AWD– the first genuinely good reason I’ve heard to buy an Audi A3 rather than a VW GTI. Well, that and the better interior, more prestigious logo, and so on. The A3 2.0T Quattro with S-Tronic (that’s DSG in VW-speak) will weigh-in at $28,400. Leather seats become standard on all A3s. Audi is not offering a Quattro version of the A3 with a manual transmission, meaning many of you will likely say “deal breaker.” But it’s not because Audi hates you. Audi PR manager Christian Bokich tells me:

You might remember Henrik Fisker as the man whose SoCal coachbuilding company was trying to rebody BMW 6-Series and Mercedes SLs for ungodly price premiums (they sold about 15 total). Or perhaps you’ll think of Fisker Automotive, a would-be electric car company, which was sued by Tesla back in April. Today, Fisker Automotive has announced that they have raised $65 million in venture capital funds for the development of their Karma electric performance sedan. While some more “standard” Silicon Valley investors had been on board with the Karma project, the final investor that put the fundraising over the top is the Qatar Investment Authority, the investment arm of Qatar’s government, with $60 billion in assets. According to the same press release, initial deliveries of the Karma sedan are expected to begin in the 4th quarter of 2009, with eventual sales of 15,000 a year. Uh, whatever you say fellas.

Detroit refuses to contemplate the only possible savior for their broken businesses: bankruptcy. Unless Chrysler, Ford and GM use Chapter 11 protections to kill products, spike brands, close factories, “renegotiate” labor agreements, terminate dealers and generally reinvent themselves, they will continue to die by a thousands cuts. The automakers’ pride– and their belief that “no one buys cars from a bankrupt automaker”– prevents this radical move. So, instead, they’re pursuing a federal bailout. Only they don’t call it that. And therein lays the seeds of their final destruction.

Toyota doesn’t want to gloat or anything, but it’s going to make real money on its new Prius. “We reduced costs of hybrid systems for the current Prius by 50 percent from the first generation,” ToMoCo Vice Chairman Kazuo Okamoto tells Automotive News. “For the next-generation Prius, we will be able to cut costs by another half, so I think we’ve been able to ensure profitability will be similar to regular vehicles, such as the Corolla.” And though Okamoto-san comes across as lacking empathy for the plight of the American worker in these troubled times, this isn’t the case. In fact, emotion had nothing to do with Toyota’s decision to expand battery production to the United States. “It is very difficult to make the main parts of batteries outside Japan,” says Okamoto, “but we have to have battery production in North America. We just don’t know when.” Considering that the first American-built Prius is set to roll off the lines in 2010, US battery production was only a matter of time. And the fact that it should help Toyota pull down regular-car profits on the Prius is just the icing on the cake. Oh, and what of Bob Lutz’s hating on the plug-in Prius’s (theoretical) range? Okamoto confirms that plug-in Prius prototypes currently get only 8 miles of “initial EV range,” but that chasing the Volt’s (projected) 40 mile range would compromise cargo space and price point. What, that’s it? Aren’t space and cost are mere triflings, in the face of the monumental marketing achievement it will be when someday a company finally claims to sell cars that can go 40 miles without gas. I’m sorry, did I say someday?

The “Solar Taxi” has arrived in Philadelphia a year, two months and 27k miles after it left Switzerland. A substitute high school teacher from Lucerne named Louis Palmer built the contraption, with help from four universities. The three-wheeled cluchtless, gearless gizmo weighs 1,000 lbs, including 500 lbs of sodium-nickel-ceramic Zebra batteries, manufactured by MES DEA in Stabio, Switzerland. The latter give the car and its 500 lb trailer toting 6 square meters of PVs a range of nearly 200 miles at night. Top speed is an electronically limited 55 mph at 1800 rpm. The 20 hp motor pulled the car up the Rockies at 40 mph. Though billed as 100% solar, Palmer tells TTAC the trailer produces half the car’s energy, the “other half” produced by solar cells on a collaborator’s rooftop in Switzerland that feeds the grid with power equivalent to the supplement the car requires from the grid. In any case, the car’s top speed sinks to 10-15 mph when powered by direct sunshine alone. But Palmer’s goal is to show the world that solar-powered automotive transportation is feasible. He says that $5,000 worth of rooftop solar cells in the US Mid-Atlantic could provide enough electricity for 10,000 miles/year.

Thanks to epic leasing losses, bad loans and Chrysler’s declining market share, Chrysler Financial has been taking a beating on the Street, with a capital B. A month ago, ChryCo Financial struggled to re-new its loans on Wall Street, only managing to raise $24b of the $30b it wanted to stay in business. It now appears that the conditions of the re-fi include the end of the leasing (done) and new terms for Chrysler dealers. Automotive News reports that the lender has told dealers it will jack-up their floorplan interest rates by an unspecified amount and force them to pay off older, unsold vehicles. More specifically, “Dealers will be required to pay monthly fees on new-car inventory 180 days old and older. The fees start at $10 per unit, go to $15 at 270 days and $25 at 360 days. 2008 and older units more than 360 days old must be paid off at 10 percent a month. All used cars more than 180 days old must be paid off.” This is bad news for Chryco dealers; they won’t be able to get alternative wholesale financing elsewhere on better terms. It also means they’re going to be very careful on inventory. And that’s bad news for Chrysler’s factories (i.e. Chrysler). Other captive floorplan lenders, like GMAC, may soon follow suit. All of which means its hardly likely sales have “bottomed out,” although it’s for sure that dealers will have to do something to get rid of old inventory. As in price cuts. 

The internets have been abuzz with news that anti-environmentalists have vandalized Toyota Priora in the Golden State. Autobloggreen dutifully reports one hybrid flambée in July, and vaguely alludes to seven Priora attacks back in April. The site ends its blog with a condescending if PC plea: “Come on, people, this is ridiculous. Just because some SUV and some hybrid drivers act like jerks, that’s no reason to get violent. Let’s just live and let live.” Tracing the story back to Edmunds Inside Line, we learn “Violence Against Prius Hybrids Hits All-Time High.” Yes, “In the most brutal of a spate of attacks against the Japanese import this year, investigators concluded that a fire that consumed a newer Prius on a residential street in Los Angeles seven weeks ago was the work of an arsonist.” While the April outbreak seems real– “All of the [seven] attacks occurred at night while the cars were parked and unoccupied. Weapons included large rocks, bricks, and a motor vehicle used to ram a Prius”– are we sure there were no other vehicles involved? And connecting those dots to a single incident some three to four months later is a bit of a stretch. Common sense suggest that any coordinated “anti-green” group would claim responsibility for their actions. Maybe this last one was insurance fraud, or a neighborhhod vendetta, or… a technical glitch. Perhaps the police/Toyota suppressed vital information. Anyone care to speculate?

No, really. The Detroit News says that The General didn’t mean to release snaps of its plug-in electric gas hybrid Chevrolet Volt. GM blames “human error” for the plug-in’s premature publicity– I mean the most recent premature publicity. “Those were put up in error and taken down quickly thereafter,” Chevrolet spokesman Terry Rhadigan said. “It was not intentional.” What, putting them up or taking them down? I kid. Marty Padgett, TTAC’s good friend over at The Car Connection got the scoop. And he ain’t buying the GM “oops we did it again” line. “I think they’re getting very good at playing the game of public relations,” Marty Padgett told the DetN. “Everyone is interested (in the Volt), so why not let some teases float out there?” Because the Hail Mary is more than a year away from production? Here’s a more interesting question: even if it’s true, that the Volt snaps were unintentionally leaked, why is GM admitting it? Like we need something else to convince us of their institutional incompetence?

Supplier relations in Detroit continue to take a beating, thanks to the OEM’s insistence that parts makers can simultaneously cut costs and deliver higher quality. And nowhere has that strategy been so fully embraced and/or embarrassingly revealed as a pipe dream than at Chrysler. Under the Cerburian fist of John “win-win proposition” Campi, Chrysler has squeezed suppliers into bankruptcy while continuing to rank at or near the bottom of most quality ratings. And now it seems the Campi-led attempts to squeeze money from nothing (and his chicks for free) have conjured-up yet another egg on the Pentastar’s face. Automotive News [sub] reports that Chrysler paid consulting firm Accenture “at least” $7.7m as part of its “Project Magellan” aimed at uncovering $900m in savings by identifying suppliers in India and China. But Chrysler “saw virtually no savings,” from the project. An enraged Campi is suing the Arthur Anderson spin-off, claiming “Accenture demonstrated virtually no experience in identifying low-cost-country suppliers for the automotive business and had no knowledge of the supply base in China or South America.” So why did Chrysler pay Accenture in full for services rendered? Since Campi took over after Project Magellan fell apart, he couldn’t answer that question. How about this one: Why should our tax money be used for low-interest loans to automakers to create U.S. jobs when these same automakers are so damn busy outsourcing jobs to Mexico, Canada, China, South America, etc.?

Last Friday, at the celebration of the Model T’s 100th anniversary, Bill Ford kept referring to the $50b federal loan guarantee proposal in the most oblique manner possible. “I’m very happy that both presidential candidates have endorsed this,” Ford said, as reported by the The International Herald Tribune. “The leaders of both parties are embracing this as something that they believe in, so that’s got to help us.” Billy’s once-heir apparent Mark Fields shared the non-nomenclature: “This is not about benefiting Wall Street like maybe some of the other actions that have been taken. This is benefiting Main Street, the working men and women. The auto industry is part of the backbone of the U.S. economy.” OK, so that brings us to today’s article in Automotive News [sub], where Ford CEO Alan Mulally has announced to the world that FoMoCo is “ready” for the bailout loans. “The only conversation we have now is, what is the right way to finance, and what is the right provision for deciding which companies participate,” Mulally opined. “We are very positive.” And that’s it. No wait. “I absolutely don’t think it’s a bailout.” And “We are in very good shape as far as liquidity.” That said, Mulally stressed that “current conditions” are the toughest he has seen in his nearly four decades in U.S. industry. Really? C’mon. I thought Boeing was on the ropes when Big Al took over. And what about the LAST energy crisis? And if liquidity’s so great, why borrow from the feds? These guys want to play it both ways: we need the money and we don’t need the money. That’s so annoying.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its unemployment numbers for August, revealing that joblessness has hit a five-year high at 6.1 percent. And rather than raising some of the many legitimate concerns over the accuracy of BLS statistics, the Detroit Free Press jumped right in to throwing fuel on the presidential campaign fire. Noting that automakers and parts suppliers shed 38,000 jobs in the past 30 days, and that the industry has lost 127,800 jobs over the past year, the Freep frames these losses in the context of Detroit’s proposed $50b bailout. The industry job losses combined with 14,000 jobs cut from car dealers and auto parts vendors “could add pressure” for Congress to back the Detroit bailout, reckons the Freep, and with swing-state Michigan’s unemployment levels topping out at 8.5 percent, the news is certainly putting pressure on the presidential candidates. And as McCain and Obama trade jabs on the economy, momentum simply builds for the government to do something. Since the only proposal on the table amounts to a blank-check bailout for three firms which have conclusively proven their lack of competitiveness, isn’t it time for one of our would-be leaders to show some y’know, leadership, and propose a different option? Otherwise, the bad news will keep coming, and Washington (and its aspirants) will have no choice but to offer more bailout money than the next guy.