Dear God, will no one pull the plug on this company? I know the Obama administration needs to wait until March 31st to appear as if they’ve fully contemplated all the options. But even for me, a professional General Motors Death Watcher, charting the final dissolution of what was once the world’s largest automaker has become a painful pursuit. The breakup of the global empire. The raiding of the pension fund. The kow-towing to politicians. Automotive News [sub] gives us a way-point, reminding us that GM’s epic cash conflagration is getting worse, not better. 

In a conference call last week, CFO Ray Young said GM’s cash burn this year would be less than last year, which it put at $19.2 billion — but admitted the cash burn in 2009 would be “front-loaded.”

Translation: The short-term bleeding will continue. It will be hard in this quarter for GM to reduce its cash-burn much below the $5.2 billion consumed in the last three months of 2008. 

All this while GM inventory piles up, everywhere. The post-jump run-down is sobering stuff. One hopes.

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A call on Sunday to a lawyer’s office (mine) normally carries with it a tale of woe and unwanted police involvement. This time was different. A journalist neighbor called and asked if I wanted to drive the Nissan GT-R that had just been dropped in his driveway. The Skyline has been an unobtanium special for the last 15 or so years. I recall seeing one at International Rally New York, and even that battered right hand drive special attracted a crowd. So, with full knowledge of what was on offer, I ventured forth.

This morning’s Automotive News [sub] carries a highly critical report on Toyota’s reaction to the worldwide automotive meltdown. The bottom line: the Japanese automaker is too damn slow and overly cautious. “Toyota Motor Corp. is famed for its advance planning, obsessive attention to ‘what if’ scenarios and continuous improvement,” Hans Greimel writes. “Yet with the market collapsing, the world’s top automaker is stunned to a near standstill by an astonishing plunge from record profits to record losses in 12 short months.” That’s quite a statement, especially as it seems to be based on a single analyst’s analysis. Greimel trots out JPMorgan’s Takaki Nakanishi, who complains that there’s “nothing remotely innovative” in ToMoCo’s recent plans to cut $5.11 billion in fixed costs by the end of the year. What, no feng shui?

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Arizona’s top state-level prosecutor has challenged the most prominent county-level prosecutor’s interpretation of the state freeway speed camera statute. State Attorney General Terry Goddard issued a memorandum to the Department of Public Safety and to county prosecutors declaring his interpretation of the law would allow motorists to be locked behind bars based solely on a photograph generated by the fixed and mobile cameras operated by the Australian company Redflex Traffic Systems. Goddard took action in direct response to Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas who announced Monday that he would not bring criminal charges against anyone accused by a Redflex machine of driving more than twenty miles per hour over the speed limit.

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The mellonheads at Carnegie Mellon University have taken a long. loving look at the whole plug-in electric hybrid vehicle (PHEV) thing and reached a shocking conclusion: smaller is better. “Across the scenarios examined, the small capacity PHEV outperforms larger capacity PHEVs on cost regardless of the consumer’s discount rate, and the larger PHEV40 and PHEV60 are not cost effective in any scenario, although they provide GHG reductions for some drivers and the potential to shift air pollutant emissions away from population centers. The dominance of the small-capacity PHEV over larger-capacity PHEVs across the wide range of scenarios examined in this study suggests that government incentives designed to increase adoption of PHEVs may be best targeted toward adoption of small- capacity PHEVs by urban drivers who are able to charge frequently.” Golf carts! I mean, city cars! Not the, uh, Volt! Never mind. As the E85 debacle proves, politics trumps science every time. Until the free market has its say. If it’s allowed one.

I could write a book about Detroit’s decline. It’s a complex story of greed, arrogance, intransigence, incompetence, ignorance and more greed. Hopefully, a book reviewer wouldn’t boil it down to “Detroit built gas guzzlers when everyone wanted alternative energy cars.” That’s a misleading simplification that takes us to the wrong morality play: Motown as mustache twirling planet killer faces well-deserved comeuppance at the hands of kindler, gentler foreign car companies. In fact, Detroit built plenty of higher mileage vehicles (just not many good ones) and spent billions (many of them yours) exploring alt-power vehicles. Their product lineup conformed to all US fuel economy legislation (unlike several fine-paying foreign manufacturers). In terms of self-destruction: production efficiency, labor relations, reliability and branding are far more significant. But the big, stupid, insensitive greedy planet-killer meme is more politically effective. Just ask the president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel . . .

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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. This column will be filed from Berlin until further notice—if & when time allows.

Japan down again: Japan’s domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses fell 32.4 percent year-on-year in February, declining for the seventh straight month, the Nikkei [sub] writes. This is the sharpest fall since May 1974, when sales were hit by the first oil shock. Sales in February totaled 218,212 vehicles, down from 322,613 a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said. The figures don’t include sales of mini-cars or mini-trucks. Toyota’s sales dropped 32 percent to 98,808 units, with sales of the Lexus luxury car plunging 63 percent. Nissan fell 35.2 percent to 40,694 units, while Honda sold 30,101 vehicles, 21.1 percent fewer than last year.

India coming back to life: Most Indian auto makers led by market leader Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. reported a continued rise in monthly sales, driven mainly by discounts, says the Nikkei [sub]. Analysts said if the sales continue to rise beyond March it may indicate a recovery in Asia’s third-biggest automobile market. Maruti, a unit of Suzuki, sold 79,190 cars, up 24.1 percent from 63,822 a year earlier. Total car sales at the Indian unit of Hyundai Motor Co. in February rose to 38,254 units from 29,001 units a year earlier.
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The “contest” is now closed. A big, hearty thanks to all who put up with this process. We are now going to retreat to a secret location to choose the winner. It’s not going to be easy because we’ve received so many strong submissions . . .  Thanks to John de Pinho (FishTank) for the t-shirt mockup. Do I feel another contest coming on? Jeebus, help me.

[NB: the TTAC spam filter tends to trap long lists. All comments will be released ASAP.]

’74 Ford Pinto Station Wagon – Hand me down from one of my two older brothers, with over 60k on the clock. When it was later revealed that Pintos exploded upon rear impact, my immediate thought was “And…?” Anyone who drove one knew the car was a POS. Slow, gnarly to shift, horrible handling, non-functional HVAC, etc. My father, A Ford man at the time, bought the car for the same reason everyone else did: they were cheap.

Ford Pinto Station Wagon – Yup, same again. When “mine” died from heat exhaustion, Dad simply did the hand me down thing again. No. 1 son got a VW Golf, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. A lifelong insanity was revealed as I shod the Pinto with Pirelli P3s in an attempt to get it to handle. Oh, and put a Nagamichi cassette player in the glove box. Peter Frampton lives!

Mercedes 230E – Dad bought a 300 SEL 6.3 on European delivery and went mad for the brand (a madness that evaporated with breakdowns and bills). The 230 was another hand me down, this time from Mom. Solid. I mean stolid. Anything was better than the Pinto. Much better. Again with the tires. Killed the car when I was showing-off the Merc’s cornering prowess to friends- understeered straight into a curb, snapped the front axle like a toothpick.

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Sunday? Sunday! That’s the day The Detroit Free Press chose to tell the world that GM’s recent accounts contain a time bomb: the revelation that the company raided—sorry, “borrowed from”—its employee pension fund to buy out United Auto Workers employees and pay into their health care fund. Even though we’ve become used to gigantic numbers, the sums involved are staggering. “Details are emerging about how General Motors Corp.’s U.S. pension funds went from a $20-billion surplus at the end of 2007 to a $12.4-billion deficit 12 months later.” I make that a $32.4-billion swing. It’s also approximately $11.4 billion more than GM’s CFO estimated its pension deficit, as declared in The General’s December pre-bailout report.

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The logos keep coming . . .

Tell us which one(s) you do like but not the one(s) you don’t like. Thanks.

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