KBB is ever-so-sensible. Here’s their “top ten back to school cars:” 2010 Kia Soul, 2010 Mazda3, 2009 Ford Focus, 2007 Suzuki SX4, 2006 Honda Civic, 2005 Chevrolet Silverado. Wait! That’s only six! I’ve got to click from the press release to the website to get the last four? The suspense is killing me/you/no one . . . 2009 Nissan Cube, 2007 Suzuki SX4, 2005 Ford Escape, 2009 Honda Fit, 2005 Scion xB. So how did kbb pick their winners? They like them! Mind you, “Every new car listed on this year’s Back-to-School list features New Car Blue Book Values that start at under $18,000. Every used car identified has a Kelley Blue Book Suggested Retail Value of less than $12,000.” I guess they never heard of Beverly Hills 90210. Or college kids with a grand in the hand. So it’s time for YOU to pick TTAC’s top ten “back to school” cars, price no object, on either end of the spectrum. UPDATE: Wow! You guys are a serious-minded bunch. Here are some of your wilder choices and some of mine. Tell me what should stay and what should go (in its place), and why. Or not. Either way, thanks for the help.

As much as Californians would like to see jobs at NUMMI saved by their homegrown automaker Tesla, the deal isn’t going to happen. For fairly obvious reasons. “We need about 500,000 square feet for our plant,” Tesla’s Rachel Konrad tells Automotive News [sub]. “NUMMI is 5 million.” Thanks to Your Shitty Economy, the EV automaker has plenty of plants to choose from. “The auto industry isn’t the only segment of the California economy that has been struggling,” says Konrad. “We have a lot of mothballed plants to choose from. There are some aerospace and chip factories around here that have closed.” Tesla has just announced that it will build powertrains for its Model S sedan at the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, CA. Model S production is likely to take place somewhere in Southern California.

Kia’s latest Peter Schreyer-designed mini-MPV is being shown in production form at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Unfortunately named the Kia Venga, this five seater is like a more practical Kia Soul. Only instead of getting funky styling you get standard stop-start technology. This car will almost certainly build more momentum for Kia in Europe, where scrappage mania has made Kia one of the fastest-growing brands. And this model was designed and engineered exclusively for Europe. In short, Kia is doing in Europe what VW wants to do in the US. And unlike VW, the image-shifting products are already arriving. Look out.

While Automotive News [sub] trumpets the fact that “Cadillac Joins Lexus atop Study of Customer Satisfaction,” our experience with all manner of stat house slickery behooves us to dig a little deeper into the subject. [“league table” here.] While we eagerly await Mr. Karesh’s analytical evisceration, I’d like to share some relevant facts. First, although the “see there IS a perception gap” study is called the American Customer Satisfaction Index™, it hails from the University of Michigan. Second, it’s a racket. The academics behind the index charge companies a $35K “corporate subscription price.” If you don’t work in automotive, no problem! The ACSI covers 44 industries! Oh, and the US government. Third, methodology (as above) . . .

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I’d say we all could use some R&R after exhaustively documenting the Vega’s innumerable weaknesses and frailties. So how about we spend a little time communing with its polar opposite in almost every conceivable way possible (while still being a small wagon). I could have picked any of some thirty or forty Tercel wagons still hard at work on the streets of Eugene to shoot. But check out the impeccably-restored 140 year-old Carpenter Gothic house behind this one. The house and the Tercel are both owned by my nearby neighbor David Gusset, a renowned maker and repairer of fine violins, including my 1833 Valenzano. If anyone can appreciate a well made instrument built for the long haul, it would be him.

TTAC commentator talkstoanimals writes:

The recent TTAC flap over the Priapus’, er, Prius’ potentially failing HIDs got me to wondering if turning of my MKV GTI’s daytime running lights would lead to any meaningful gains in HID bulb longetivity. Historically, I only tend to keep cars for approximately 80k miles. I also like the fact that DRLs mean I never forget to turn on my headlights in the rain—a requirement in many states in my neck of the woods. However, I like this GTI so much that, the car gods willing, I may keep it longer than my other cars.

So is it worth it to shut the DRLs down and possibly keep the bulbs in action for a longer period of time? Or would the potential gain be so small that it fails to offset the potential for forgetting to light the Xenon fires in the rain? (I never had a problem remembering to turn on the lights before my cars came equiped with DRLs, but I’m not getting any younger and neither are my memory banks.) Lastly, how does one turn off the DRLs in a MK V GTI? My owner’s manual sheds no light (groan) on the subject.

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Ford has roughly $18 billion in the bank. The company’s CEO has slowed The Blue Oval’s cash burn to about a billion a month. If you take away $10 billion—the amount of float needed to keep the lights on—Crazy Henry’s mob has eight months to stop the arterial spray of red ink before contemplating C11 (or a “proper” bailout). Volvo’s sale looks like it will give them another month (about a billion). Although Ford tapped the credit markets for $1.6 billion in May, another offer may not be greeted with open arms. So let’s call Ford’s drop-deadline a year, maybe 18 months. Oh, did I mention a $5.9 billion dollar Department of Energy “retooling loan?” That’s worth another six months on our timeline. But that’s different. “Ford is the only one of the Big Three U.S. automakers that hasn’t taken government bailout money or declared bankruptcy,” NPR declares, disingenuously. “Ford is still losing $1 billion per month, but it has money in the bank and hopes to be making money by the year 2011.” The media meme in a nutshell. In an interview with publicly-funded radio, Ford’s CEO connected the dots between perceived purity and customer conquest, and hinted that yes, they did stick their noses in the taxpayer trough.

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An unaccountable transportation body in North Central Texas on Thursday awarded $3,615,214 in taxpayer money to a foreign corporation for its failure to produce a winning toll road project bid. The Regional Transportation Council (RTC) of the North Texas Council of Governments approved the payment to Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, a Spanish company, as a “stipend for unsuccessful bidders” and for costs associated with applications the company made for loans that would have been backed by federal taxpayers.

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While driving the Buick LaCrosse, I asked Line Director Jeanne Merchant a question: what could she tell me about reliability that would persuade me, a satisfied Toyota owner, to jump ship? Merchant gave a pretty good answer, but I was busy trying not to run over traffic cones. In a subsequent phone interview, Merchant said reliability starts early in the process. From design to component testing, from durability tests to audits and feedback, from computer modeling to real world testing, they make sure every part of the car and all its systems are built right and performing to specification. And they take it very, very seriously. “The LaCrosse is very personal to me,” Merchant said. “I’ve worked with it for years. Everybody else involved feels the same way. And the same goes for the other product lines.” Process and passion. Is it enough?

Charities have been some of the loudest opponents of the Government CARS stimulus, voicing fears that it would cause car donations to plummet. “It varies by market, but there’s been an 11 to 12 percent drop compared with last year,” Volunteers of America VP (vehicle donations) Jim Hartman tells Reuters. “We started seeing it right away in July.” VOA and The Military Order of the Purple Heart each typically receive 40,000 to 50,000 vehicle donations a year. Purple Heart estimates its C4C losses at $105 million over 24 months. Hartman tells Reuters that a bill is pending in congress to increase vehicle donation tax credit caps to $2,500 from the current $500 limit.

Ahem . . . Automotive News [sub] reports that VW is seeking a new ad agency, after four years with Crispin Porter & Bogusky. “Our goal of rapidly increasing our volume in a mature market requires the Volkswagen brand to evolve into a more relevant mainstream choice,” explains VW VP Marketing Tim Ellis.

The Volkswagen brand needs to inspire our base of enthusiasts as well as reach out and captivate those in mainstream America. Therefore, we are re-evaluating all areas of our business and after careful considerations have decided to take the necessary steps to ensure we have the right agency partner in place.

After all, VW is kind enough to dumb down its product line (cough) for America’s benighted mainstream. The problem must be the ads!

From the “how had that not happened yet” file [via AutoTelegraaf] comes word that Cadillac has finally euthanized its latter-day Cimarron, the Europe-only BLS. The Saab 9-3/Opel Vectra brand engineering victim sold just 7,365 units since its 2005 introduction. Was it worth it? “Think of the profit,” was the watchword for BLS backers. “Think of the brand,” is the obvious retort. Especially because Cadillac’s only real appeal in Europe is a variety of willful iconoclasm akin to . . . driving a Saab in the United States. And look what happened with GM’s similar effort there.

I have no idea how Chrysler is going to survive. In fact, I assume the feds saved ChryCo from the grim reaper knowing full well the dying domestic didn’t have a hope in hell of recovering, just to help out their pals at Cerberus, I mean, save the US economy from total collapse. Or something. Anyway, Fiat ended-up paying bupkis for some pretty juicy assets. Jeep much? Chrysler also has some modern production facilities, including a plant in Toluca, Mexico. Today’s story in the Wall Street Journal, “revealing” Fiatsler’s plans to build the Fiat 500 down South is something of a non-story. Our pals over at Inside Line called that one way back in January. But it’s worth repeating: An American Fiat 500 is a non-starter. We reckon a hecho en Mexico 500 will be built by Mexicans for Mexicans. Or, as Edmunds puts it . . .

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