Click here to download the famous Elmer Johnson GM memo.

The Winnipeg, Canada, Police Service has been caught a second time underreporting the number of accidents at red light camera intersections in order to make the lucrative program appear effective. The Winnipeg City Auditor was first to note the police tactic in a 2006 audit report. This week, the Winnipeg Sun found the police are still using the same technique to protect a program which generated $14,086,804 CAD in revenue for 2008.

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A faint silver lining in the dark clouds brewing over Chrysler and GM dealers who have received “Dear John” letters: Volkswagen’s sales chief, Christian Klingler, said he will try to turn many into Volkswagen dealers, Automobilwoche [sub] reports. With a market share of 2.1 percent for VeeDub in the US, unbridled growth would be practically assured. Meanwhile at home, Klingler expects 2009 to become “the best new car sales year since 1999.” The cash4clunkers Abwrackprämie is bringing Germany record sales. Klingler and other analysts believe that 2009 will end with more that 3.5 million cars sold. Looking at the fact that nearly 1.6 million applications for Abwrackprämien money have been filed already, and that nearly half of the applicants never had bought a new car before, the number could reach 4 million.

From Automotive News [sub]:

[GM CEO Fritz] Henderson said there was no resolution yet on the [$20 million] pension for former CEO Rick Wagoner, who was ousted by the Obama administration which is overseeing GM’s Chapter 11 restructuring.

“That issue is still being reviewed by the board of directors and the compensation committee,” Henderson said. “I’m not involved in this.”

Henderson is a GM board member.

[Thanks to John Horner for the eagle eye and the resulting scan.]

Well, we still don’t have that list of doomed GM dealers. Senator Rockefeller’s office has failed to return eight phone calls asking for the information: the list he requested from GM CEO Fritz Henderson, who promised, under oath to provide. Meanwhile, here, finally, is the supporting documentation for GM’s dealer cull. The bankrupt automaker submitted the document [link here] to Friday’s Stupak hearing on dealer closing. Bottom line: GM’s dealer network reductions enable an estimated $415 million in “gross structural cost savings potential.” What is it with these guys? There are lots of good reasons to shrink GM’s dealer network. In the face of a total industry bailout that’s topped $100 billion, Henderson’s “rooftop” cost saving ain’t it.

For this week’s Your Shitty Economy Car of the Week (YSE), we present the Chevrolet Suburban. For years, Suburban was the only choice for families with four or five kids (or dogs) and a need for heavy towing. In recent times, the Suburban has seen some heavy competition. When GM doubled down on SUVs and created the GMT900 platform, they maintained the fuel hungry ‘burban’s class competitiveness. [Ed: Great landing, wrong airport.] Even with today’s economy and GM’s woes, a new Suburban doesn’t carry a huge discount: there’s $1,000 in rebate cash on the hood. A new base LS 4WD starts at $44,000. A flush customer can bling-out an L(u)TZ well into the $60,000 range. By comparison, this pictured one-year-old 4WD YSE truck clocks in at $24,987. Buyers looking for 2WD (or more miles) could spend less. The huge numbers of GMT900 trucks sold guarantees parts availability for years to come (hold the comments on GM’s bankruptcy). Before heading out to shop, toss in a copy of Dante’s Peak or Clear and Present Danger to watch some “like a rock” Suburbans tearing it up . . . .

We’ve been quite vocal in our opinion of “Car of the Year” awards such as those sold handed out every year by Motor Trend. Even worse are those picked by non-automotive rags, where a COTY announcement ranks right up there with their pronouncements of the years trendiest sunglasses or the best place for the killer mojitos Yet, for whatever reason, Esquire has decided the world needs yet another of these useless (to everyone but their advertising department) awards.

Well, it looks like the American version of cash-for-clunkers is going to get past Capitol Hill, and I find myself conflicted. On the one hand, I’m getting a little sick and extra wary of more money going to prop up auto sales (I figure there is going to have to be a real reckoning before things can get better, and I’m leaning toward letting it happen). On the other hand, considering what it is (actual law-to-be and not an academic case study) this is about as good a clear-the-clunkers bill as we’re going to get. The New York Times Freakonomics blogger Steven Levitt looked at this one on Friday (I went over Germany’s version in February). Just about everything he says is true, but there is one point he missed (and was nice enough to call attention to) that throws the whole argument in opposition out of whack. We’ll get there, but first, what’s right about it?

The Truth About Cars wasn’t founded for the discussion of partisan politics. Thanks to the Motown Meltdown bailout buffet, it just turned out that way. While the intersection of automobiles and ideology has become both inevitable and unavoidable, the discussions centering on political ideology have recently spun OOC. In certain threads, we’re seeing the same endless rounds of right/left blunderbuss action. Even worse, it’s become nasty. As I was away from my desk for 35 seconds yesterday, I missed the onset of the flame wars and, thus, failed to extinguish them. By the time a couple of our Best and Brightest sent a heads-up email, more than a couple of commentators were burning down the house. This morning, I’m in retroactive delete and warn mode. TTAC’s flaming rule is simple: no flaming the website, its authors or fellow commentators. The corollary is this: please keep it as car-related as possible. If you can’t work your way back to the words “and that’s why I’m a Porsche/Corvette/Nissan/Ferrari guy,” you’ve probably gone too far.

An Arizona state Senate committee voted 4-2 on Tuesday to continue, for now, the practice of allowing police to pull over and fine motorists who use certain types of license plate frames. State Senators Jay Tibshraeny (R-Chandler) and Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) had unsuccessfully introduced legislation to gut a state law that took effect in January. “A person shall maintain each license plate so it is clearly legible and so that the name of this state at the top of the license plate is not obscured,” Arizona Code Section 28-2354 states. Although the distinctive colors and cactus designs of Arizona’s basic plates are readily identifiable to the human eye, visibility of the state name is important for the optical character recognition software used by photo enforcement companies.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on the Obama Administration’s order of 17,205 “fuel-efficient” vehicles using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

We know that we can create jobs and save taxpayer dollars while protecting our planet, and with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we are. The news that General Services Administration is one step closer to buying new, fuel efficient vehicles is good for our economy, good for our workers, and good for our environment. Because this will increase the fuel efficiency of the federal fleet, it’s also good for the American taxpayer.

Ah, but how fuel efficient are they? And what percentage of the new vehicles are American-made (a.k.a. UAW-assembled) cars? As you know, TTAC is determined to pry this information from the federal government. Our surprise ally: Speaker Pelosi’s office. They’ve promised to identify the models for us on Monday. We shall see . . .

Hi Robert – Per your mention of Sen. Corker, I just wanted to clarify that GM ASKED for a meeting with Sen. Corker and other Tennessee officials this week to discuss Spring Hill. They also asked our state to submit a proposal for the new sub-compact plant they plan to put in Michigan, Wisconsin or Tennessee.

 

Thanks,

 

Laura Lefler

Press Secretary

U.S. Senator Bob Corker

Though the Mustang and Camaro will forever be linked in the public imagination as “ponycars”, the truth is that only twice in history has the Camaro been explicitly aimed at the Mustang. The first time, of course, was at its introduction; the Mustang had caught the General napping and the first-gen Camaro was a simple “me-too” response to that success, as craven in its copying as the Russian faux-Concorde that would debut two years later.

If we’ve learned anything from animated cats over the last several decades, it’s that opposites can attract (and that music video directors get all the good drugs). But if there are serious doubts among analysts about the Fiat-Chrysler hookup, imagine what they’re saying about the Saab-Koenigsegg deal. After all, the buying firm sells one-of-a-kind cars for a cool million dollars a pop while the purchased firm can’t sell reworked GM offerings at zero-percent interest. Is there something rotten in the state of Sweden?

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