Ralph Nader has plenty of good reasons for opposing the $50b taxpayer bailout, sorry, “low interest federal loans” for Detroit. Namely, “decades of poor decision-making” and Detroit’s total inability to drum-up capital on Wall Street. Unfortunately, Nader’s name, reputation and government intervention fetish discredit his cause. GM wasted no time rising to the bait, brushing off Ralphie-Boy’s criticism with a suitably put-down. “There are many more relevant voices in this discussion that see the existing provision for what it is,” spinmesiter Greg Martin told The Detroit News. “A sound, smart policy to inject capital into the industry to get advanced technology vehicles on the road quickly.” For once, a GM toady gets it right. About Nader. The consumer advocate argues for government intervention on a socialist scale: a “public takeover of the corporations.” Though a thorough managerial reshuffling should be a condition for any government bailout, Nader’s proposal of a government-run U.S. auto industry is ridiculous. Any such move would lead to a British Leyland-type public ownership debacle. Opponents of the bailout plans would do well to keep their distance from his wild schemes.

Paul Ingrassia, former Detroit Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal (and current biz guy for same) is not happy with “the Detroit situation.” Ingrassia warns that backing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae deal with public funds encouraged management to make “reckless investments that have backfired badly.” He then scolds Detroit in a decidedly TTACian way. “The Detroit Three got into their current quandary by making decades of bad decisions, with some help from the United Auto Workers union,” with a special shout-out to lavish management bonuses and the UAW’s jobs bank. Ingrassia believes a company should only be bailed out if “its demise would wreak havoc on the entire economy.” Detroit doesn’t pass the smells bad test. “Even if Ford, GM and Chrysler were to go out of business — and it’s highly unlikely that all three will simply cease to exist — there will be plenty of good cars for Americans to buy. And many will be made in America, even if they carry foreign nameplates. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign car companies have expanded greatly their U.S. manufacturing operations in recent years. They’re doing so because Americans are buying their cars.” OK, so it’s no means no, yes? No. “All this said, if Detroit’s short-sightedness and political expediency make a bailout inevitable, let’s make sure taxpayers stand to get rewarded for their risk.” Illogically enough, offerring the re-tooling loans to ALL automakers is Ingrassia’s biggest string. “But if developing fuel-efficient and alternative-energy cars is deemed worthy of taxpayer subsidies for public-policy purposes, it’s just common sense not to put all our eggs in Detroit’s basket.” Bailouts for all? Go figure.

I never considered the California Air Resource Board (CARB) a motivating force for Chrysler’s Viper model sale– until I read this WardsAuto story. “The new minimum CAFE standard of 35 mpg (6.7 L/100 km) in 2020 and additional pressure from California and 15 other states to limit carbon dioxide is part of what may force Chrysler LLC to jettison its Viper high-performance model,” Wards reported after a chinwag with GM Car Czar Bob Lutz. “‘Setting lower CO2 limits would equal setting CAFE at 43 mpg (5.5 L/100 km),’ Lutz says. ‘This is why the sale of the Dodge Viper by Chrysler makes sense, because anyone selling fewer than 50,000 vehicles annually would be exempt (from fuel-economy requirements).'” The Car Czar’s got a point! OK, OK, so California bill AB1493 sets a fleet exemption of 60k vehicles. And the EPA has denied CA the waiver they need to implement the law. And the real– and really bizarre– threat is that each state would have different fleet-wide requirements, depending on the model mix in that state. Never mind. “So if someone else bought Viper,” Bob bitches. “They could sell to capacity, but Chrysler couldn’t. This is why we are concerned about Corvette.” Bob blames the hypothetical threat on hypocritical Hollywood environmentalists. “The reason California set the exemption for less than 50,000 units is that it would mean the Hollywood folks could keep driving their Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Porsche could sell 11-mpg (21.4 L/100 km) Cayennes, but we couldn’t sell 20-mpg (11.8 L/100 km) Chevy Tahoes.” [Thanks to KixStart for the link.]

Ding ding! Round 2! The title of “Heavyweight Ego of the World” took a new twist today. VW’s powerful works council will summon thousands of employees to protest against Wendelin Wiedeking at a VW supervisory board meeting today. Herr Wiedeking has already has to put up with rumours in the German media that he would be ousted as head of Porsche. The Financial Times (UK) reports that Bernd Osterloh, Volkswagen’s head of works council, had lashed out against Porsche’s management, saying they were “amateurs” and “arrogant upstarts”. But Mr Wiedeking has also fanned the flames by criticising Volkswagen’s management for some of their decisions. Relationships between Martin Winterkorn (head of VW) and Wendelin Wiedeking are cool to the point of frozen. Welcome to the Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston of the auto world!

Jen Dunnaway, editor of the CarDomain blog writes this week:

“Yesterday in New On The Net, I poked a little fun at TTAC’s whiny diapers, and considering the gentleness of my goading, the results were nothing short of hilarious. Better yet, in the midst of the ensuing brouhaha, TTAC finally got some dealer to take pity on them and hand over the Challenger test car they’d been dreaming of! No need to thank us, guys, just enjoy that car.”

While “gentle goading” seems to be a self-identified strong suit for Ms. Dunnaway, reading is not. Our original story was not whining that a dealer wouldn’t give us a Challenger SRT8 to test drive: it was news that Dodge dealers are probably screwing themselves out of sales by denying actual shoppers a test drive of any Challenger, down to the lowly V6 model. So Ms. Dunnaway was 0 for 1. No big deal, surely she’d get it right on the second try, right? Erm, no. Sajeev drove a friend’s Challenger SRT8 for his review, not a dealership car. Oops, 0 for 2. As it happens, no dealer “took pity” on the fact that TTAC, because our insistence on integrity, is barred from access to Chrysler’s press fleet. Fortunately, Jen needs no pity to drive the Challenger – only a free plane ticket to One Lap of America in South Carolina, and a free hotel stay, free food, and then free time on the racetrack in a new Challenger (with free race gas) and some Dodge engineers. And all she had to do was say that the 4140 lb car “stuck to the track like it was on rails.”

Though GM’s new Cruze is likely to qualify for taxpayer funded “efficiency retooling” money, its predecessor the Cobalt is finally coming into its own. Automotive News reports that transaction prices and profitability are headed up for the Cobalt. Average transaction prices for the Cobalt rose $775 since mid-April, thanks to surging interest in one of GM’s most fuel-efficient cars. And the upswing in Cobalt-generated revenue is turning Detroit’s argument that it can’t make money on small cars on its head. GM’s marketing manager for small cars and crossovers, Brian Brown, says profits on the Cobalt are up six percent since 2007. “I don’t think anyone thought this shift of moving into smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles would be as dramatic and happen as quickly as it did,” Brown tells AN. “I have to laugh: In the last 90 days, one of the top five trade-in vehicles for a Cobalt is an F-series pickup.” Please note that Brown is laughing about getting trade-ins from a competitor’s truck rather than his company’s total inability to see this one coming. GM added an extra Cobalt shift in August, to keep up with the 9.6 percent (supply limited) increase in Cobalt sales on the year, which still lag behind booming sales of Ford’s Focus. Sales are doubtless being helped by the addition of the fuel-efficient (25/36 mpg) Cobalt XFE model, while sales of fully-loaded models are helping profitability. Taken together, the trend is clear: well-equipped, fuel-efficient small cars can sell in volume and turn a decent profit. If only Detroit had realized this a decade ago. Everybody else did.

We’ve got to love Bob Lutz and his unabashed capacity to be wrong. In today’s Automotive News, he reports that “The Saturn Astra costs too much for U.S. customers, and sales and profitability of the small hatchback are suffering.” There is no question that sales have been anemic (between 1500 and 2000 cars per month) and that profitability for the Astra was always questionable at best. Or worse. Lutz went on to tell AN that “the profit is no longer there.” None of this has been in contention. But what is blindingly daft is GM’s explanation: the Astra costs too much for American consumers, at $16,495. Before we break out the slide rules and figure that the Civic starts in the mid $15,000s and the Mazda3 sedan starts just a hair under $15,000, keep in mind the comparable levels of equipment we’re talking about here. The Astra comes standard with loads of kit that you’d have to pay thousands more for in options. Many people don’t look at that when they are trying to buy the cheapest new car they can. But many people do want options on their Mazda3, or Corolla or Civic. And for those people, the Astra is not too expensive. The culprit from this writer’s mental CSI lab? First, zero advertising for the Astra. It’s not a legacy nameplate (i.e. Corolla or Civic) so they can’t just expect people to know it’s out there. Second, the mileage is a few pegs off from the class leaders: compare a 24/30 Astra to a 25/36 Civic. I don’t care, but lots of other people do. Third and finally, the Astra is hatchback only. I love hatchbacks. You might love hatchbacks. But Nissan was smart enough to realize that Americans are only warming up to hatchbacks; that’s why the ass-ugly Versa sedan outsells the more pleasant Versa hatch. Bottom line: the Astra (a truly decent car) is headed to the enthusiast’s scrap heap. There it can join other high-potential, half-executed Lutz ideas like the Merkur xr4ti, Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky, Pontiac GTO, and Pontiac G8. At least they’re all cheap to buy used.

Scion is still pushing the individualist, customized youth brand schtick. The melodramatic ad above– which one can only hope is meant in a tongue-in-cheeck tone– once again flogs the tuner car image and notion of a Scion owners’ community. There’s no question that Scion’s lineup has some character– even if the linch-pin xB was diluted beyond recognition last year. But pursuit of the Fast and the Furious set is so five years ago. A company with clever small cars, small engines, decent MPGs, practical hatchbacks, and low no-haggle MSRPs should be selling itself as just that. Or, to quote former Scion exec and current Lexus exec Brian Bolain, “If we could relaunch Scion, I wouldn’t ever have called it a youth brand, because it’s a kiss of death.” So why didn’t the ad department get the memo?

Wall Street Journal scribe John. D Stoll gets it right: if HUMMER can’t make it in Las Vegas, it can’t make it anywhere. The fact that a Vegas-based HUMMER dealer is now as dead as a dodo indicates that the entire brand faces the same non-future. “This closing is notable because of where it is taking place and who is pulling the plug. It is, after all, one thing for enviro-friendly people in San Francisco–another city that recently lost a key Hummer dealership–to shun the brand. It is entirely different when Sin City decides the vehicles are too excessive. [Dealer owner Dan] Towbin said Las Vegas is a custom fit for Hummer. ‘It’s all about bling and it’s in the desert.'” It’s also about price (high), demand (low), resale (horrendous) and incentives (Olympian). In fact, how’s this for a parenthetical aside? “(Towbin says he was offering $6,000 in incentives, not including GM’s employee-pricing discount, hurting profit margins.)” Followed by “Hummer discounts represent 22.6% of the price of the vehicle–the highest in the industry, Edmunds.com says. And still Hummer sales are down 47% this year, the largest decline of any brand, according to Autodata Corp.” So, will anyone take this three-ton turkey off of GM’s hands? How’s that old joke go? For a nickel I will.

Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” takes on urban myths that have been circulating through the culture. The show’s producers go to great extremes to prove or disprove the stories, and establish a coherent, no-nonsense scientific basis for their conclusions. Although copyright prevents them from using the term, GM has decided to play Mythbusters. Their new “GM Facts and Fiction” website claims its rectifying analysts and commentators (including this site) who have been trash talking The General and its wonderful products. Unfortunately, their “busting” consists of a lot of hyperbole. Their responses are short on facts, and constantly cherry-pick the stats they deploy in their defense. Let’s take a closer look, to separate fact from fiction.

Last Thuesday, Automotive News [AN, sub] was busy towing [sic] the GM party line, suggesting that the U.S. new car market had reached its nadir (not Nader) in August. TTAC immediately called bullshit. And now AN is doing the same, to themselves, backpedalling so furiously they just might achieve reverse traction. “Has the mix been fixed?” Amy Wilson (and pals) asks, redundantly. “Are the truck behemoths really back? And has the slim-profit small-car craze peaked? Bean counters, beware. It ain’t over till it’s over. Small-car sales were constrained last month by low inventory levels, and don’t forget that gasoline — while cheaper than it was — still costs more than $3.50 a gallon. And although full-sized pickups posted their highest sales and industry share month of the year in August, manufacturers had to shell out. The average full-sized pickup incentive was $5,723 per vehicle last month, Edmunds.com reported. That’s the highest monthly pickup incentive since Edmunds began tracking the data in January 2002.” And then it’s back to the same old spinmongery, from Ford and, of course, GM’s Marketing Maven. “At some point, gang, the market bottoms,” said Mark LaNeve. “Nobody knows when the hell it is — me especially. I’d like to think it was June and July, and we’re starting to crawl our way out of this thing.” I’m sure he’d like to think that. The question is, is it the truth? Hopefully, this article marks AN’s resumed pursuit of same.

If you believe Iran will abandon its nuclear ambitions in the face of economic sanctions, there’s nothing to see here. If you believe there’s no way deny Iran The Bomb short of a military strike, the question becomes who and when? It’s hardly likely the Bush administration will want to engage in yet another military “adventure” before the next guy to accompany the football takes office. On the other hand, Bernard Baumohl thinks the Israelis want to get this thing done before Barack or John assumes the position (so to speak). ABC News reports that the Economic Outlook Group’s Chief Global Economist says a strike would disrupt oil prices (surprise!), one way or another. “It all depends on the success of the Israeli strike. If it was a quick, successful strike and Iran doesn’t block the Strait of Hormuz — a key oil route in the Persian Gulf — Baumohl sees a quick spike in oil prices and then a steady decline. He says that within three days of the strike oil could costs $175 to $225 a barrel. The record of $147.27 a barrel was reached back in July and oil today closed at less than $108. But within three months the price would fall because Iran’s nuclear weapons program would be destroyed or crippled. Oil would cost $70 to $85 a barrel. Of course, Baumohl has a more-dire scenario with oil prices between $200 and $300 a barrel. This happens if the strike fails, triggers a bigger war and the flow of oil is disrupted. In that case, the price of gas in America would climb to $5 to $7 a gallon.”

New York Times Op-Editorialist Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz is an expert in infectious diseases and something of a professional essayist. Having dispensed with the “inexact science of penis length,” Sepkowitz is out to stop speeders. As you’d expect, he begins with a bit of statistical manipulation, or more, precisely, an accusation of same. “In Texas, in 2005, 3,504 people died in a traffic accident; 1,426 (about 41 percent) were considered speeding-related. In sharp contrast, for Florida, 3,543 died yet only 239 were considered speeding-related — about 7 percent. Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana and New Jersey, among other states, also report rates well below 20 percent. This variation is not just shoddy government work. With alcohol, for example, the 39 percent national rate varies only by a whisker when examined state to state (except for Utah’s admirable rate of 13 percent).” The bottom line for this non-expert expert: there ought to be a [new] law, ’cause speeding is dangerous and immature. “The technology to limit car speed has existed for more than 50 years — it’s called cruise control. In its common application, cruise control maintains a steady speed, but a minor adjustment would assure that vehicles, no matter the horsepower, never go past 75 miles per hour. This safety measure should be required of every new automobile, the same as seat belts, turning signals, brake lights and air bags. Sure, it would take us longer to get from here to there. But thousands of deaths a year are too great a cost for so adolescent a thrill as speeding.”