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Unnamed sources tell the New York Times that the Treasury has agreed “in principle” to protect UAW pensions and retiree health care when Chrysler files for C11 “as soon as next week.” Protect with what? Fifty percent new Chrysler stock and 50 percent new Chrysler profits. Or, uh, more Treasury money. Fiat, say the sources, will “complete its alliance” with (i.e., pick the carcass of) Chrysler during bankruptcy. The only loose thread for the sources who “were not authorized to discuss the case,” is the bondholder brigade which recently turned down the Treasury’s haircut offer. Which leads one to believe that this revelation comes from someone negotiating opposite Chrysler’s bondholders (the Treasury) as a none-to-subtle bargaining gambit. Jump, or we file.

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Britain’s new budget, recently presented by Minister of The Exchequer Alistair Darling, contains a vehicle scrappage incentive that makes Old Blighty the final major European economy to jump on the alleged “green stimulus” bandwagon. 13 other European nations, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland have introduced similar measures, which provide government incentives to new car buyers who scrap an older vehicle. But will Britain’s new program (which offers up to $2,900 in incentives) have the same salutary effects on new car sales as France (March sales up 8 percent) and Germany’s (March new registrations up 40 percent)? Closer to home, how will the solidified Euro-consensus on scrappage schemes affect the chances of a similar program in the US? Although the schemes have already been hailed as the saviour of European new car-sales, such plans don’t always translate well across different markets. Under a critical lense, issues with the latest British plan indicate a number of problems in bringing such a program stateside.

Now, is that a 30-mile range with the iPod plugged in?

Automotive News [AN, sub] reports that GM won’t even try to make a $1b debt payment due on June 1st. The non-move virtually guarantees that the firm will enter bankruptcy protection. GM CFO Ray Young says the General is “hoping” for a successful debt-for-equity exchange with its bondholders. If that effort somehow fails (as every other GM debt-for-equity swap has so far), Young says GM will enter bankruptcy protection to reduce its unsecured debt load. My, we’ve come a long way from the Voldemort days, no? Meanwhile, AN also reveals that an Italian union official claims the Fiat-Chrysler deal is “90 percent complete.” In fact (or theory), it could be signed as soon as this afternoon—an assertion that Fiat has flatly denied.

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“Just in time for Earth Day,” trumpets Chrysler Blog, “Chrysler showed off four all-electric Town & Country minivan concept vehicles to the U.S. Postal Service, with the hope that mail delivery service across the country could soon be cleaner and quieter.” Digging a little deeper, Automotive News [sub] reports that Chryco “plans” to provide a fleet of 250 EV T&Cs to the postal service, with testing to begin later this year in Michigan, NYC and North Carolina. The A123 Systems-powered EV minivans, previously seen only in Chrysler’s ENVI vaporware lineups, are reported to have a range of 40–50 miles. Just like Chevy’s Volt! With about as much chance of making it into production. Never mind; Pr waits for no man.

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The EPA is currently soliciting comment on a proposed waiver to allow 15 percent ethanol blends (E15), and despite enduring a year of hard knocks, the ethanol lobby is making a desperate stand to reverse its declining fortunes. Peruse already-submitted comments, and you’ll notice that Growth Energy (the new K-Street tip of the ethanol spear) dominates the list with a host of spurious “supporting materials.” The group’s main argument (PDF) is fine-tuned for the jobs-crazed economic-political climate, centering around the assertion that “according to one estimate, allowing blending of E15 has the potential to create at least 135,000 jobs.” Which sounds great as long as you don’t look at the “hidden” cost of increasing blending credit receipts. Needless to say, Growth Energy isn’t asking anyone to go there, having helpfully created some talking points to help make commenting easier. We suggest commenting on the proposed waiver as well, but rather than dutifully regurgitating GE’s talking points why don’t you go through our E85 archive first. Or check out a few recent news stories after the jump which illustrate our unrelenting skepticism of so called intermediate ethanol blends.

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The remnants of the British automotive industry offer a wealth of important lessons for America’s declining industry, having made the hero-to-zero leap a few decades ago. And though British Leyland would certainly constitute the major lesson from the fall of the British Automotive Empire, the overemphasis on “heritage” among survivors of the BL experiment offers teachable moments of its own. During and after the sunset on Britain’s auto heyday, investments and advantages in technology, performance and reliability were ceded to the Japanese and German firms, as the backwards-looking British industry got lost in its own history. “Charm” and “Britishness” became the raisons d’brand for Jaguar, Rover, Landie and Rolls/Bentley in the 70s, 80s and 90s, leading to a creative funk only recently be shaken off by the brands’ new guides. Case in point: Jag’s XJ.

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Fiat, the great Italian hope for the American auto industry, has a lot of expectations to live up to right now. Not only are the Torino boyz tackling the miasma of despair that was the Chrysler corporation, but Automotive News [sub] reports that Fiat could “form an alliance with General Motors’ core operations in Europe and Latin America.” Italian-American Leyland, anyone? Fuhgeddaboutit. According to anonymous sources, talks with GM are in the “early phases,” which means that nobody has suggested that an allied Chrysler, Fiat, Opel/Vauxhall and GM Latin America might be too much concentrated fail for one corporation to handle. And Fiat’s got the usual unnamed competition for Opel to contend with. “More than six people have expressed interest, serious people,” says GM CEO Fritz Henderson of his firm’s unwanted Opel/Vauxhall operations. Why so serious? Did previous offers come from folks wearing giant shoes, tiny hats and rubber noses? More importantly, if one of these “more than six serious people” comes from Fiat, might it not be time for a reality check on that firm’s transformative power?

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And the bigwigs spent ten years building brand equity with cheap, basic transportation. And lo, the Japanese automakers headed upmarket, ceding entry level business to the Koreans. And the Seoul sales train smiled for it was good. And then came the Genesis, and Hyundai’s new day morphed in the minds of its creators from budget luxo-fighter to an opportunity for sub-brand confusion and ADD.

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A few weeks of vacation from the blogosphere’s non-stop news cycle can leave a blogger feeling a bit behind the times. Two weeks is an eternity in internet time, but stepping away from the barrage of news, spin, hype and hysteria is good for the sense of perspective. Especially if the down time is spent exploring countries on the local typical family vehicle, complete with two wheels, four speeds and about 100ccs of thundering power. Beyond the sheer novelty of seeing entire families commuting on a moped (“Daddy, Nguyen isn’t staying on his side of the pillion seat”), travel in the developing world shows how insulated America is from the transportation realities of the rest of the world. If the $1,000 entry to the world of moped ownership is a major (if attainable) hurdle for workaday Vietnamese, even sub-$10k vehicles face what a GM sales release might call “a challenging sales environment.” Try to explain the “green premium” for hybrids and plug-in vehicles to an auto-aspirational third-worlder, and watch as the idea of paying more for less room and power draws only puzzled bemusement. Hair shirts, it appears, are strictly a fad for the western and wealthy. Case in point: the world’s first plug-in hybrid, the Chinese BYD F3DM.

Because any day in Hanoi without a traffic fatality is a good one. Just outside of Hanoi’s Daewoo Hotel (the hotel of choice for both international conferences and visiting despots) is this large, prominently displayed billboard. In addition to the running count of traffic accidents and fatalities, levels of key pollutants are represented by animated faces with corresponding levels of positive emotions. Carbon levels, for example, got a big smiley while Sulfur Dioxide levels elicited a more ambivalent emotional animation. Good thing the principle wasn’t applied to the traffic fatality count.

In his first piece for TTAC, our former celeb contributor Brock Yates noted that “until the underlying economics of private transportation changes . . . economies will be saddled with the private automobile, whether they like it or not.” Here in Hanoi, that truism holds up . . . only you’d need to replace “private automobile” with “Honda Wave.” Though four-wheeled transportation is clearly picking up pace here (more to come on the quirk and diversity of said transport to come), the Vietnamese could no more imagine Hanoi without a crush of sub-200cc scoots than an American could imagine commuting on a camel. What’s a developing (or overdeveloped, for that matter) economy to do?

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Shock! Scandal! Horror! Ousted General Motors Chairman/CEO Rick Wagoner will remain on GM’s payroll for the remainder of 2009 and will be paid his full salary for doing no work, reports the DetN. Out of your tax dollars, no less! So how much will Wagoner earn while not working for GM this year? Oh, right, one American dollar. And because not all of Wagoner’s pension is bankruptcy-proof, keeping him on the salary until December 31, 2009 actually improves the chances he’ll take another big hit to his compensation. Wagoner will receive $68,900 in annual pension payments whether GM goes bankrupt or not, but five additional annual pension payments of $4,523,400 could be wiped out if Chapter 11 occurs before Wagoner takes his first payment at the end of this year. In short, the arc of justice may be long, but it bends towards surrealism. In the form of GM’s $1 per year executive jobs bank. And just to make the whole situation even more bizarre, the DetN notes that Wagoner “cannot work for another automaker without GM’s written permission.” Because I’m sure he’s got the headhunters beating down his door.

Seriously, who can tell anymore? Is there a sad robot somewhere that is programmed to lavish praise on used Sebrings? Surely, in this economy, Tacoma Dodge could find a human being desperate enough for cash to talk up a nice silver ’bring for the camera. Then again, even the robot sounds like it deals with a lot of professional self-loathing. Moving on, GMAC doesn’t really want to spend $5B of its $6B bailout on “subprime auto lending,” does it? That’s got to be a joke, right? And is Carl Levin for real when he tells the DetN that the mere discussion of Chapter 11 for Chrysler and GM is “self-defeating”? Or is the Senator from Michigan in posession of a sharper sense of humor than he is typically given credit for? Now I’m seeing that Automotive News [sub] is running a headline that reads “Wagoner Gets Pension, But That Is All.” Because he somehow deserved more than $20 million? What a bunch of kidders. Yikes! What’s gotten into people? Did the CAW just really tell GM to go NSFW itself? Is Obama’s new Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers’ actually comfortable with openly telling Michigan that he will be a devoted stimulus wetnurse to that great state? Humor just doesn’t need this kind of competition from reality.