The mainstream media tends to fumble the metaphorical football on the symbolic goal line. With fewer than twenty-four hours left before General Motors files for Chapter 11, the MSM is set to go back, Jack, and do it again. Instead of excoriating GM’s management for not taking in more money than they spent, they’re parsing the American automaker’s bankruptcy as a “sign of the times.” Leading this electronic charge of the heat without light brigade: P. J. O’Rourke. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, O’Rourke paints GM’s dissolution as confirmation that America’s love affair with the automobile is, finally, dead. Rubbish.

Part 1 of 6. Definitely NSFW. You’ve been warned!

For more than ten years, every word a certain high executive of Volkswagen uttered in public was pure BS. I wrote his speeches. I wrote articles under his name. I even ghostwrote a book for him. I studied his mannerisms, his way of thinking and talking. He slowly but surely slipped into the role for which I wrote the script. He’s retired now but still a sought-after speaker on the conference circuit.

He liked to live and work on the edge, and I gladly walked him there. We had a strange symbiotic relationship. His trust in me bordered on the obscene. Even before major strategy announcements, his brief for the speech usually amounted to: “You know what to write.” He rarely did read the speech before giving it. He always delivered it with great aplomb and usually to thundering applause. I could put practically any word into his mouth. Power that had to be used wisely. Tell that to a usually reckless BS . . .

YSE (Your Shitty Economy) Car of the Week features the feature-packed Infiniti M35. When it sits new on the dealer lots trying to badge snob you away from the multitudes of BMWs and Audis roaming the crowded commuting lanes of our major cities, this M-car screams bargain at $50K. Option-out a 535i or an A6 with this much equipment and you’ll spend $10-15K more for a car with arguably less reliability, yet more soft-touchy plastics. Wait a few years (or not, for this one) and for not much more than a new Honda Civic Si, you can own one of the cleverest interiors (if strikingly weird) in the mid-size luxury class, as long as you can forgive the stray hard plastic panel.

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P. J. O’Rourke takes the decline of the American car personally. And not just because his family has sold Buicks for three generations. In his latest book Driving Like Crazy, O’Rourke sees the very story of our nation written in the crazy, chrome-clad arc of American automobilia. From “the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 Model T into the 1965 Shelby Cobra GT500 in a single human lifetime of speeding tickets” to the industry’s decades-long “sayonara,” O’Rourke reflects on where we’ve been and what we drove to get there. But he also knows that cars are about more important things than mere cultural and political commentary. They’re about fun. Fast fun. Busting axles in Baja fun. Pointing a big, noisy car at the horizon and burying the gas pedal fun. And what’s more American than that?

Previously, on Who Wants to Own an Automaker, I estimated the Motown meltdown has sucked more than $100 billion from the taxpayers’ purse. I forgot to mention the tax breaks that the Treasury Department will bestow upon “new” Chrysler and “new” GM. The Desert Sun reports that GM will benefit from Uncle Sam’s new rules for bailout recipients—’cause we don’t want a government-owned/controlled/supported enterprise to pay taxes to the government, now do we? “The notices have the full effect of a law, even though they aren’t reviewed or approved by Congress. They also apply to banks and other financial firms receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.” Remember “these are not ordinary times. The Treasury Department has, in effect, suspended long-standing tax rules for companies that receive bailout money, providing benefits not available to firms that don’t receive government help.” The Sun says GM could avoid some $12 billion in taxes. Wait; did you spot the loophole?

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It was a long night again. Not as long as the disastrous Wednesday/Thursday meeting. And it didn’t end in invectives. At 2:15 in the morning, Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück stepped outside Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices and reported: “I can tell you that a deal has been reached.” If you looked hard enough, you could see holy white smoke rising into Berlin’s night sky.

Was there ever any doubt, really? If there was, it’s gone now, as Bloomberg reports that the German government has decided to put its taxpayers’ money behind a Magna-owned Opel. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told reporters in Berlin that Germany will provide a $2.1 billion “bridge loan” (direct translation) to keep Opel alive. “A solution has been found to keep Opel in operation,” Steinbrueck said. “You can be sure that we didn’t take the decision lightly. All the federal and state representatives are aware that there are some risks.” And there I was thinking understatement was an English thing.

Around? Talk about precision engineering . . . Official press release:

Detroit, Mich: (NYSE: GM) – General Motors President and CEO Fritz Henderson will host a press conference on Monday, June 1. The conference will be around mid-day at the GM Building, 767 Fifth Avenue, in New York. We expect to provide a final time, satellite feed, conference call number, and other details in a subsequent Media Advisory early Monday morning.

Bloomberg reports that the US Treasury has decided to bless post-C11 Fiat-controlled Chrysler with a $6.6 billion dowry. And just for S&G, the feds will write a check to pre-C11 GM for an “extra” $360.6 million, earmarked for its presidentially guaranteed warranty program. (That’s thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for some reason.) “The assistance brings to $19.76 billion the total that Detroit-based GM has received so far,” Bloomies tallies. Oh, and “new” Chrysler is also set to scarf an additional $350 million under a loss-sharing deal with GMAC LLC. Rounding it up a bit . . .

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On the A4 Autobahn near Friedewald, Germany. The police is on the ass of an obscure vehicle: Banged-up, holes in the bodywork, huge rivets everywhere. Highly suspicious in a country that doesn’t have HOV-2 lanes: A puppet sits in the right hand seat. Germany’s finest pull him over. Highly embarrassing: They caught themselves a prototype of a yet to be launched BMW. Supposedly a 535d. Even more embarrassing: There is a video of the whole affair, brought to you by BILD Zeitung. Knowing that the test driver will be punished at the factory, the police let him go.

The New York Times:

For taxpayers to be made whole, the new mini-G.M. would have to produce earnings sufficient to support an enterprise value of at least $95 billion, the sum of a $69 billion market cap and its $26 billion of debt and preferred stock under the restructuring plan. Using market valuation multiples of five times that means New G.M. must generate operating cash flow somewhere in the order of $19 billion annually.

That would require both increasing annual sales to some $150 billion, almost 50 percent more than the entire company, shorn of its various financial and international businesses, is expected to generate this year, and matching the whopping 14 percent operating cash flow margin that Toyota achieved in its best year ever. It requires a vast leap of faith to believe that can happen.

And going, it seems. As many as 450 dealerships with franchise agreements coming due in the next 17 months will be dropped by GM, according to Automotive News [sub]. GM’s Mark LaNeve insists that “less than half” of the 450 number is more accurate, but admits that cuts will be announced when GM files for bankruptcy on Monday. “These are dealers who have very specific issues,” LaNeve tells AN. GM will be using “very similar” criteria for these cuts as the last round, when 1,124 dealers went to the big closeout sale in the sky.

Holy global overcapacity, Batman! Trading Markets reports that the world’s largest automaker is cutting Japanese production in half and overseas production by 43 percent, as it struggles to touch bottom. Toyota and its Hino and Daihatsu subsidiaries will produce 433,979 units gobally in April, down 46 percent from April 2008. Exports from Japan have been hit especially hard, dropping 70 percent (year-on-year) in April. According to the WSJ, all of the Japanese majors are dramatically decreasing domestic production on falling sales. Even without bankruptcy filings, it seems everyone in the gobal car game is facing some form of reorganization. Like Renault/Nissan’s new attempt to find another $2 billion in “synergy” savings. Try looking under the couch cushions, guys.

Malcolm “Call Me Malcolm” Bricklin and I had our little chin wag this morning. As expected, the serial entrepreneur dominated the initial conversation. Less predictably, Bricklin began by bludgeoning me with Google-sourced biographical data. “I know about the Subaru [flying vagina] thing,” Bricklin pronounced. “You’ve got balls. I assume you’re not just saying all this stuff to be controversial.” After admitting his own insanity, Bricklin started recounting the entire history of the Yugo. His no-word-allowed-in-edgewise tale included the Cadillac Allante’s inhibiting effect on X1/9 production and Henry Kissinger’s contribution to the car that launched a thousand jokes. At some point, I interrupted Bricklin to ask about his latest venture: hydrogen. Turns out I got it wrong. Bricklin isn’t proposing a societal switch to hydrogen fuel. He’s got one of those 100mpg carburetor things. Only his creates “hydrogen-on-demand.”