CAR Magazine reports that Rolls-Royce CEO Tom Purves thinks an EV Phantom is worth looking into. “Many of our customers do small mileages exclusively in the city,” says Purves. “For these customers, an electric Rolls-Royce would be ideal.” Where did Purves come up with this wacky scheme? From Rolls-Royce’s corporate overlords at BMW, of course. Specifically, Purves recently drove the German concern’s MINI E EV and was “bowled over by it,” describing it as “superb: quiet, fast and fantastic fun.” And Purves for one thinks an EV Roller would fit in just fine with the firm’s history and branding. “We stand for unmatched refinement and you can’t get a quieter and less intrusive engine than a well engineered electric motor. Truly, the loudest noise you would hear would be the tick of the clock,” he says, referencing the time-honored Rolls marketing {gimmick} message. “We also stand for strong and instant torque – and an electric motor delivers maximum torque instantly. The ‘waftability’ would be fantastic.” Besides, emissions standards might leave Rolls with little choice but to offer a zero-emissions option. But don’t cry for future Phantom owners, as the V12 option will always be available. In fact, Purves reckons many Phantom customers would buy both – an electric Rolls for urban use and petrol Rolls for longer journeys. And why wouldn’t they?

Former NADA president and prolific car dealer Ron Tonkin has gone public with a new plan to fix the mess we call Detroit. And you’ll never guess what it isn’t. You see, Tonkin believes that government loan programs written with Detroit in mind are just not enough of a non-bailout. The federal shore-up of domestic auto lenders? Also insufficient. Tonkin thinks the country needs a non-bailout that’s easy to understand and, most importantly, one that doesn’t cut the dealers out of the non-bailout loop. So he’s written a letter to the D2.8’s executives calling on them to lobby President Bush for a $2,500 consumer tax credit towards the purchase of any new GM, Ford or Chrysler product. “I don’t know what I expect to hear from them,” Tonkin tells KATU TV. “I just hope that it triggers a response of some sort. And I think that if they really sit down and think about it, maybe this is a key that will unlock some progress.” Our friends at KATU are quick to point out that as well as not being a bailout, Mr Tonkin’s proposal isn’t motivated by self interest. After all, “if you think this is Tonkin’s way of drumming up business for himself, think again.  Of his 18 dealerships, only two are domestic.” Read Tonkin’s credibility gulf after the jump.

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Bloomberg reports that Toyota has sold more cars in China than GM over the first nine months of this year. Sales at GM’s biggest Chinese venture, Shanghai GM, have been down two years in a row, while Toyota sales have grown at about triple the market average since opening a new Chinese Corolla plant last year. GM has long been the number two automaker in China, trailing only China pioneer VW/Audi for over a decade. (Quite an accomplishment when you consider war-born Chinese antipathy to all things Japanese.) The General’s ouster from the second highest sales spot couldn’t come at a worse time for GM. “China is very important to GM and losing share there makes life even more difficult,” said Daiwa Associate Holdings analyst Ricon Xia. “Japanese automakers know how to make cars for Chinese consumers and they have been expanding in China at a very steady pace.” Needless to say, passing GM in China means Toyota is that much closer to finishing the year as the top-selling automaker in the world, replacing GM after decades of dominance. With growth in the Chinese market slowing, GM will also have fewer opportunities to regain ground on Toyota, who opens yet another giant factory in Guangzhou province next year.

Reuters reports that the wait is over! GM has finally picked a water pump supplier for its plug-in electric – gas hybrid Hail Mary, the Chevy Volt. That’s right, Morrisville, N.C.-based Buehler Motor will supply 12-watt and 50-watt auxiliary water pumps necessary to circulate coolant through the Volt’s subsystems. Not that cooling is something to take lightly, as the Volt’s Lithium-Ion batteries will probably need some fairly extensive thermal management. (Laptop dancing anyone?) Despite publicly acknowledging that the batteries are the Volt’s most crucial component (duh), GM has still not decided on a battery supplier for its E-FLEX platform. The long-running competition between LG Chem and Conti-A123 for a lucrative battery supply contract is still ongoing, despite the intense pressure on GM to meet its 2010 rollout goal. So is GM testing both batteries in vehicle applications, or is it leaving reliability and performance in the hands of in-house development testing? It’s anybodys guess at this point, and every day 2010 gets just a little bit closer. For GM, and its competitors.

CEO Bob Nardelli tells CNBC [via MSNBC] that “a steep decline in U.S. auto sales has created an environment for industry consolidation.” And just like that, out comes the “S” word. “It certainly creates an environment for consolidation where you can get synergies of productivity that will allow you to be more competitive, not only here in the U.S. market, but on a global basis,” Nardelli opined. And though ChryCo execs won’t talk about the GM deal, they’re more than happy to suggest mergers for others in the biz– a sure-fire sign that more bad news is coming. Chrysler’s President Jim Press tells Bloomberg that “there is too much capacity in the supplier community, there are too many dealers, there is too much manufacturing capacity. We think alliances are good things for the industry.” Keep it nice and vague these things sound good. Get back to the specifics of a GM-Chrysler hookup, and Press’s logic leaves the building. “In our view, it is unlikely that the combined entity would be able to maintain 11 distinct brands and roughly 30 percent market share,” says Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache. Though Chrysler’s cash is the big prize for GM, much of that reported $11b pile would be eaten-up by consolidation costs. But that would be, you know, later.

Like us, Autocar has been paying close attention to the development of Toyota and Subaru’s forthcoming rear wheel-drive (RWD) coupe. The Brit pub says Subie’s working on the engine (two liter boxer) and chassis, while Toyota gets the interior right. And once again, this is not an Impreza replacement we’re talking about. Autocar quotes a Subaru rep as saying “this will be a smaller, lighter car with more niche appeal.” And the “smaller, lighter” ethos means there will not be turbocharged WRX or STI versions of the coupe– part of its rationale is passing Europe’s new, tougher emissions laws. Meanwhile, 7Tune has some rendered speculation on the looks of the wee beastie, while raising some concerns about the development process. Besides noting that Toyota is looking to answer its styling critics with the new design, 7Tune reports that “members of Toyota’s development team have admitted that the suspension from the Legacy is ‘weak and terrible’ but have endeavored to make some changes that will produce more sports car-like handling.” Still, the new coupe should provide plenty of opportunities for the tuning and aftermarket crowd, while also offering a light, fast, efficient coupe for the mass market. Still sounds good to us. You know; in theory.

Thanks to the global economy’s stomach-churning loop-the-loop, demand– and prices– for auto-related commodities like steel and oil are dropping. For the moment anyway. Automotive News [sub] reports that the downturn in commodity prices couldn’t come at a better time for profits-challenged automakers, who will finalize supplier contracts this December. By locking in a lower price now, automakers will put the onus on suppliers to renegotiate if commodity prices go back up over the next year. Hear that? It’s GM VP for purchasing and supply chain Bo Andersson rubbing his hands and cackling maniacally. Andersson plans “a different mix of contracts with steel makers in a bid to get lower prices for 2009,” despite supplier concerns that the cost of raw materials such as coke and iron ore have not fallen as rapidly as the price of finished steel. Bottom line?

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From the moment it announced it gray-matter-celebrating name, it was pretty obvious that Toyota was developing its iQ city with one eye fixed firmly on the Smart playbook. So it comes as no surprise to hear that ToMoCo will leverage its “small-but-premium” city car platform with a small roadster version, set to debut at the next Tokyo auto show. Auto Motor und Sport hired veteran Swiss illustrator Mark Stehrenberger to speculate on the iQ Spider’s styling, coming up with a design they say follows in the footsteps of the Suzuki Cappucino and Daihatsu {Cuore} Copen. With only 1.0 and 1.3 liter gas and diesel engines on offer, don’t expect the iQ Spider to offer much more performance than the Smart Roadster or the previously-mentioned Kei-class ragtops. The standard iQ’s generous safety equipment should be found in the Spider as well, which will boast ESP, ABS and more airbags than a Senate quorum. There’s no saying when the Spider should arrive on the market (likely sold as a Scion), but it will be interesting to see if this fares better than the ill-fated Smart Roadster.

The Detroit News reports that Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) has stated that he believes the federal government should play shadchan for an ailing Chrysler.”If they need support to make some kind of merger between Chrysler and another auto company, we need to do that,” said Levin at a Detroit Economic Club debate. Levin is “heavily favored to win his sixth term over Hoogendyk, who has little money and low name recognition,” pundificates the DetNews. So was Senator Levin aware that the Chrysler-GM merger would likely mean the end of some 40k American jobs? According to The DetN reporter, “Levin said afterward that he worried that a potential merger could result in job losses, but said it would be preferable to seeing one of the Big 3 domestic automakers going out of business.” Meanwhile Levin’s “staunch conservative” opponent state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk has the temerity to suggest that “What government has done to the auto industry in this state is broken both legs and perhaps one of its arms and now that they’re lying in a ditch, offered them a glass of water.” His prescription? “Government should cut their corporate taxes — which do not apply to money-losing companies such as the domestic carmakers — and set “right-to-work” laws that would weaken unions.” In all likelyhood neither these measures nor Senator Levin’s production of The Bachelor: Detroit will save the 40k jobs that appear threatened by Chrysler’s dire straights. But if Levin gets his way, the Sultans of Sebring are going to need (and get) plenty of time in makeup before Chrysler’s ready for the proverbial hottub. Guess who gets that bill?

While Buick has helped GM become one of the top-selling firms in China, Chrysler is struggling to sell its own brand of Americana in the Middle Kingdom. Automotive News [sub] paints a dreary picture of Chrysler’s China operations, describing dealerships in glamorous Shanghai with “a sun-faded advertisement for the 300C peeling off the glass,”  and a “rain-streaked shop sign above the main entrance (on which) the colors inside the Chrysler logo have washed out completely.” And between quotes from dealers bemoaning “not so good” recent sales numbers and the lack of Chinese production, AN finds plenty of blame to go around. Though Chrysler had an early inside line on the Chinese market thanks to its Beijing Jeep venture in the early 80s, the Daimler hookup proved disastrous to ChryCo’s Chinese ambitions. “Under DaimlerChrysler, Chrysler was only ever seen as the U.S. unit of a global company,” a Chrysler employee tells AN. “When it came to expansion into China, Chrysler’s needs took a back seat.” As a result, Chryslser sold only 8,207 300Cs, Sebrings and Caravans in China in the first six months of this year. Over the same period, General Motors China sold 261,443 cars and Ford Motor China sold 89,117.

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Car And Driver is bucking its Detroit-loving rep by running a blog post by Steve Siler that is just a little bit critical of Chevy’s Volt EREV. “With the splashy reveal safely behind us, we’ve taken several opportunities to look more critically at the Volt, studying the design, crawling around inside, and interviewing—make that interrogating—many of those responsible for making it a reality, including Bob Lutz, vice president of global product development, and Jon Lauckner, vice president of global project management. They all promise a game-changer certainly for GM, and over time, possibly the world,” writes Siler. “Still,” run-on sentences aside, Siler reckons that “a reality check is in order.” Siler bemoans the clutchless shift from concept styling to production model, saying “Bye-Bye, Gangsta-Mini. Hello, Sensible Sedan.” “Frankly, we think (the production model) comes across pretty awful in pictures, but we can attest that it appears well proportioned and convincingly cool in person: the details indeed carry the day,” says Siler. The post goes on to call the Volt’s iPod-ripoff interior “a little gimmicky,” and savages the Volt for not offering enough interior room for a dog. No word though on the Volt’s likely astronomical price-tag or government-subsidized production. Still, even the most mild criticism of the Volt is worth noting when it comes from a publication that’s as Detroit-friendly as C/D.

With GM’s resale values and stock price hovering at record lows, two Texas dealers have come up with one hell of a sales gimmick. Buy a GM vehicle at Frank Kent Motor Co. in Fort Worth, Texas by the end of the month and the owners will give you 50 shares in General Motors. The scheme is advertised as a celebration of GM’s 100th anniversary, but when asked by Automotive News [sub], Frank Kent Motors owners admit that the promotion was actually inspired by the depths to which GM stock had sunk. And while “50 shares of General Motors” sounds better than “$327” (based on GM’s $6.54/share price at the time of writing), the dealers see the stock as (get this) a hedge against depreciation. “Typically when a customer buys a car and they go to trade it in in two or three years, it has depreciated,” Frank Ken Motors owner Will Churchill said. “Hopefully in two or three years (the stock) will probably be worth more.” Or, as we are fond of saying around here, not. There are very few scenarios for GM’s next several years that involve good news for its stock holders, and quite a few that could see your “incentive” stock wiped out to zero. And then all you have is a massively depreciated Aveo (or whatever). And twice the buyers remorse.

No major surprises here, as ChryCo’s AWD option box is ticked on fewer than five percent of Caliber purchases and even less often on Avengbrings. “For the Avenger, the take rate was 1.5% for 2008, and for the Sebring it was at 0.7%.” Chrysler spokesman Jiyan Cadiz tells Ward’sAuto. “So obviously the bottom line is people want fuel economy, and the AWD modules are not profitable for us. That’s something we can get rid of as we’re consolidating products and finding what’s profitable.” And while we wish Chrysler the best of luck in their hunt for “what’s profitable,” AWD supplier BorgWarner has a case of sour grapes for Chrysler. “What we’re seeing in terms of market forecasting is that (AWD) in the B-, C- and D-segments is growing globally,” say BorgWarner’s product business director, Chris Cook, who calls Chrysler’s move an “aberration.” And Cook blames Chrysler’s Jim Press, lately of ToMoCo. “Press comes from Toyota (Motor Corp.), where they don’t have AWD on a lot of vehicles (in those segments),” Cook says. “So (the decision) was philosophical.” Or rational. Anyone who wants an AWD Caliber can always spring for a Jeep Compass, and AWD has always been an under-advertised afterthought on the Sebring and Avenger. In fact, Press’s Toyota roots don’t make him “anti-AWD.” Toyota’s partial ownership of Subaru proves that a dedicated AWD-peddling niche brand (hello, Jeep) allows the mainstream brand to focus on efficiency and affordability. And with CAFE bumps looming, offering AWD on every model “because you can” makes less and less sense every day.

When we reported that Tesla was laying off employees at its Michigan engineering center, we thought that was as bad as it got. Well, it seems that the Elon Musk era at Tesla is starting on a worse note than anyone thought possible. Jalopnik reports that employees at Tesla’s Rochester, MI development center did not find out about the layoffs until reading Musk’s blog post saying Rochester would be shut down. Worse still, 90 percent of employees there were simply let go, while the remaining ten percent “have to make their way to the San Jose headquarters with no moving costs covered, no increase in salary and no help getting rid of their old homes,” according to Jalopnik. Not that selling a house in Detroit and relocating to affordable San Jose isn’t a snap. Especially when your boss gives you all of zero warning, and you learn of your firing thanks to the following three sentences: “There will also be some headcount reduction due to consolidation of operations. In anticipation of moving vehicle engineering to our new HQ in San Jose, we are ramping down and will close our Rochester Hills office near Detroit. Good communication, tightly knit engineering and a common company culture are of paramount importance as Tesla grows.” Good communication. Common company culture. Right.

Reports on the future of Ford’s stake in Mazda are bubbling-up at a furious rate. And it appears that Mazda wants Ford gone in the interests of stability as much as Ford wants out in the interests of cash. Bloomberg reports that Ford will keep some portion of of its $1.33b holding in Mazda, but desperately needs to free-up some cash and free itself from a stock position that has dropped 50 percent this year. The problems start with finding a buyer though, and Automotive News [sub] reports that Ford has asked supplier giant Denso to buy in. Weirdly though, the Nikkei report cited by AN says Denso would only buy about one percent of Mazda, leaving about 32 percent in Ford’s hands. A larger chunk of that Ford stake could end up being controlled by a keiretsu, a network of Japanese corporations that own stakes in one another. Sumitomo Corp. and Itochu Corp could be joined by Denso and others, in a cooperative effort similar to that which bought Mitsubishi after Daimler backed out of its controlling stake in that firm. Whomever ends up buying Mazda could end up with something of a steal though. A weak stock price belies Mazda’s solid product pipeline, and with all-new 6 and 3 models replacing long-soldiering outgoing models, a turnaround could be in the offing. Too bad Ford doesn’t have the security to gut it out a bit longer.