Gawker reports that Tesla spinmeister Daryl Siry left the Silicon Valley startup because CEO Elon Musk (above) was pushing to accept deposits on the Model S sedan. The Model S (a.k.a. WhiteStar) exists only as a prototype. Tesla has no factory or financing with which to build it. When Musk announced that the DOE would approve Tesla’s loan application (they haven’t and likely won’t) and decided to accept $40K Model S deposits (next month), Siry smelled fraud and bailed. Valleywag calls Musk “The New Preston Tucker,” revealing that Musk told a recent Tesla “town hall” meeting that Tesla deposits were not guaranteed. This despite earlier assurances that Musk would personally guarantee deposits. With reports of Tesla asking for up to $75K in unescrowed “reservation payments,” and difficulty reclaiming deposits as small as $5K, Siry’s fears were probably well-founded. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence from Tesla forums indicates that the real winner here: the Fisker Karma.

GM and Chrysler both must go bankrupt. Only then, out of the ashes, can a new company emerge, taking control of the best assets of both companies, with a new management team and a clean balance sheet. All financed by private equity and bank debt, not the government, and free from the political machinations that would result. It’s pure business – of making and selling vehicles here in North America and in selected markets around the world. It’s past time for the old empire of GM to make room for a new vision of the future based on market realities.

I admit, I have a strange fascination with watching cars crash. And though large, heavy cars can cause some of the most dangerous accidents, there’s something particularly satisfying about watching a small car hit the wall (or get hit by a large, heavy car). As an American I feel hard-wired to expect smaller cars to explode into a million pieces of tin foil and socialized medicine every time I see one making a slow-mo impact in a crash test. But the glory days of “hoo boy!” moments in compact crash tests seem to be coming to a close. Toyota’s tiny iQ just logged a five-star rating from Europe’s NCAP crash testers, and as this video shows, the drama just never shows up. A cocoon of airbags, some brilliant crumpling and surprising side-impact resilience take a lot of the “sucks to be that dummy” entertainment value from the iQ test video. Oh well. I guess it’s time to move on to watching Chinese car crash tests. Schadenfreude doesn’t feed itself.

As the salesman retrieved the key for the demo GranTurismo, I approached the trunk of the sleek silver siren sitting on the showroom floor. Even though I was opening the Maserati’s boot rather than its bonnet, I felt like a pre-teen rifling through a copy a Playboy while the drug store owner helped Mrs. Myers with her prescription. The fact that the Maserati’s electric rear lid opened at all was heartening. And then I saw it: a blue box. Genuine Maserati parts. Fumble, fumble. Uh-oh. A trickle charger. A classy, digital battery booster, but a direct link to the most troublesome car I’d ever owned (a British two-seater named after a man called Trevor). It seems that Maserati’s latest product for the American market is still a bit… problematic. But not for the reasons you might think.

General Motors has finally announced their fourth quarter results and its terminal. The ailing American automaker’s cash burn was a staggering $6.2 billion. That might have a little something to do with the fact that GM’s revenues shrank by 34.2 percent, from $46.8 billion to $30.8 billion. Q4 operating loss: $5.9B. Net loss: $9.6B (compared to a not inconsequential $1.5B a year previous). For those of you keeping score, today’s results mark GM’s fourth year without booking a profit and the second largest loss in GM’s entire history. Reacting to the carnage, the man at the helm recycled a press release from somewhere in the middle of this slide into bankruptcy. “2008 was an extremely difficult year for the U.S. and global auto markets,” CEO Rick Wagoner said in a statement. “We expected these challenging conditions will continue through 2009, and so we are accelerating our restructuring actions.” At GM, restructuring actions accelerate you. Nose first. Pro forma mea minimus culpa filed, Red Ink Rick is headed to DC with his well-worn begging bowl . . .

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An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

And finally, the Nano: Tata’s Nano, slated to be the world’s cheapest car at under $2,000, will finally go on sale in April after months of delay caused by problems at its main production plant, Reuters reports. Tata said it would formally launch the Nano on March 23, and buyers could start ordering the model by the second week of April. “We expect only limited quantities to be produced now—maybe about 3,000 a month—so the waiting period could be long,” said Surjit Arora, auto analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher. Tata Motors’ new Nano plant in Gujarat, in western India, is not expected to be ready until the year-end. The company has said it would make the first Nanos at one of its two existing plants in Pune, about 170 km north of Mumbai, and at Pantnagar in northern India.

Aftermath: Japan’s eight passenger car manufacturers curbed their domestic output by 40 percent compared with a year earlier to 560,471 units in January as they stepped up efforts to correct inventory levels amid a sharp downturn in global demand, the Nikkei [sub] sums up yesterday’s reports. Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors, and Mazda had embarked on their biggest cutbacks since they began releasing production data. Daihatsu was the only one to keep its domestic output reductions in the single digits, at 2.7 percent. Production cutbacks overseas also gained momentum, with carmakers lowering output by 41 percent to 602,502 units. Honda curtailed US output 50.1 percent in January. Exports sank more than 50 percent.

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GM’s Saab Automobile has shut down production in Sweden until issues with a supplier and customs are solved, Reuters reports. “We had a problem with a supplier, but that has been solved now,” Saab spokesman Eric Geers said. “Now only the customs remains, and we will solve that.” A Swedish customs official said that after filing for protection from creditors last week, Saab lost a 30-day credit facility with Swedish customs. Saab owes duties for inventories and spare parts located in two customs warehouses, said Hans Ohlsson at Swedish customs. Saab has until March 4 to pay an undisclosed but “considerable” sum of money for the contents of the warehouses, Ohlsson said. In the meantime Geers denied that unpaid customs fees indicated Saab had acute problems in its payments. “No, that is not it at all,” he said. Automobilwoche [sub] says that Swedish customs has prevented deliveries of parts and assembled cars to Trollhättan, because Saab hasn’t paid its duties.

Update: According to Automobilwoche [sub,]  the difficulties have been resolved, and production is running again. Also, Jan-Åke Jonsson said that there are “seven to eight serious buyers” who are interested in taking over Saab.

The Detroit News reports that House Minority Leader John Boehner isn’t happy about the way their hometown heroes have been running things for the last, oh, three decades.

When it comes to the auto companies, they’ve avoided making the tough decisions for 30 years—and that’s why they’ve ended up where they are. Until I’m convinced they’re willing to make the tough decisions that stakeholders, their bondholders, their employees—everyone is willing to step up and do what they have to do, I’m not willing to commit taxpayer funds.

Boehner’s right. But this statement has enough wiggle room to hide Jeff for all time—“willing to make” instead of “make.” And speaking of weasel words . . . where does a federal politician get off lecturing Detroit on its refusal to make “tough decisions”? In fact, what does John Boehner know about business?

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What is quality? Consumers believe they find it in a car that never breaks. Engineers look all the way to the parts level and see how long a given component actually lasts. Advertisers bullshit their way through it, and dealers don’t care so long as the car gets out of the lot before the wheels fall off. As a car guy, I look at how long someone owns a car and WHY they get rid of it. Case in point. I now have access to a database that will eventually cover over 200,000 trade-ins over the course of the year. As someone who has a keen interest in metrics, I’ve found that the current vehicle’s mileage and condition at trade-in time can tell me an awful lot about quality. The findings?

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It’s not a question of if GM will file for C11. GM blew past “if” a long time ago. By the turn of the century, the artist formerly known as the world’s largest automaker was doomed. Still, if they had greeted Y2K by mortgaging everything (a la Ford) and used the cash to buy out dealers and kill brands and ditch models and pay off the UAW and… nah. By the time The General re-launched their refreshed GMT900 SUVs in May 2005, the gig was up. By that point, GM should have been in C11. In this alternate universe, GM might have had enough cash– their cash not our cash– to make it out of bankruptcy. Now, I’m not optimistic. But one thing’s for sure: this Death Watch series is, like GM, on its last legs.

As compelling as Ford’s executive paycut for Easter Monday holiday “compromise” is, there are still plenty of stormclouds brewing around Dearborn. For example, Ford’s supplier spin-off Visteon is tanking, telling Automotive News [sub] it “cannot assure that it will remain in compliance with the terms of its outstanding debt instruments.” The firm’s $328m fourth-quarter loss is being blamed on a billion dollar revenue drop and “asset-impairment charges” of $200m. This coming from a firm that has never turned an annual profit. Amid growing rumors of bankruptcy filings (and 13 cent stock price), Visteon’s only other choices are asset sales or government bailout. Meanwhile, inquiring minds (OK, MSNBC) are beginning to wonder when Ford will succumb to the siren song of the federal bailout.

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Whoa. I mean, way-hey! It seems like just a thousand years ago that GM started hyping their retro-styled rear wheel-drive Chevrolet coupe. And now, at least a week before GM scarfs another “bridge loan” and a good month before the company files for Chapter 11, one of our valued contacts has sent us these dealer prep sheets (PDF) for the new 2010 Chevrolet Camaro. Thank God GM Car Czar Bob Lutz is still alive to see this day.

The New York Times reports that the European Union is drafting trade duties on imported American biofuels to protect its own $10b biofuel industry. Even though both the US and the EU subsidize biofuels, European producers complain that American producers benefit from production subsidies in the US and retail subsidies in Europe. The EU has been investigating these claims, and tariffs of 44 euros per 220 lbs of imported biofuel could be put in place by this summer. Meanwhile American subsidies for corn ethanol production are set to expand indefinitely. We’ve argued that trade disputes could bring the bailout boom to a rapid close, but perhaps such a dispute will rid us of wasteful ethanol pork first.

The merge-and-nationalize “solution” favored by those who don’t know their history has a new lease on life, reports the Financial Post. And the new champions are none other than GM’s bondholders, who continue to negotiate an equity restructuring. The logic goes that since bondholders are being asked to swap their debt for equity, a larger merged firm would make for a safer investment. And the idea might just be crazy enough for the government to buy in too. “From the government’s perspective, a GM-Chrysler combination offers the appeal of collapsing two problems into one and achieving necessary consolidation,” reckons Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli. “But it would likely also entail additional government funding.” Just $4B-$6B extra though, and worse job loss. No biggie. But, argues Michaeli, “if a true buy-in exists that [a merger can generate US$6 billion to US$8 billion] in annual EBITDA synergies . . . we would think that the GM bondholder committee would attempt to condition the [debt-for-equity] exchange on M&A, since the upside would essentially accrete to them.” Of course that’s an “if” of epic proportions.

George Carlin famously opined, “Everyone who drives slower than you do is an idiot; everyone who drives faster than you do is a maniac.” I took a fair amount of stick from the B&B the other day for admitting I’ve exceeded the speed limit in the past. The squeaky wheels here at TTAC seem to consider 123 mph not acceptable; which makes me wonder what some of those people would have said if they’d ridden up I-75 with me a few years ago when I decided to “max out” my 911.

Some of you feel that any speeding is unacceptable, but I’d suspect you are in the minority, even at TTAC. The average driver does speed. [ED: gasp!] So, B&B, the question becomes: where do you draw the line? At ten over? Fifteen? Double the limit? 300 kph? Sure, conditions vary, so let’s stipulate a set of familiar conditions: a Florida freeway, five lanes, wide, good weather, visibility to the horizon, clumps of traffic with long gaps between. What’s safe? What’s acceptable for the “average driver”? What are you willing to do in that situation?

I’ll open with my personal opinion: in a car I own, by myself or with consenting passengers, with the V1, Lidatek and various other devices in play, I’m willing to floor it until we reach the limit stamped on the sidewalls. You?