Reuters reports that Saab/Spyker partner Vladimir Antonov has questioned whether Saab will hit its ambitious 80k unit global sales goal this year, saying

This means that the company could face capital problems

Thelocal.se provides a little more detail quoting Antonov as saying

I’m not involved in how the company is run so I don’t have access to the numbers. But according to earlier versions of the business plan, they have to sell 80,000 cars this year to stay with the plan. From my point of view, I think that’s a bit too optimistic.

If the goal isn’t reached it would be nice for Saab to have €50-70 million ($69-97 million) as a little something extra to lean on. We’re ready to provide that money if we’re allowed to do so by the [European Investment Bank].

Antonov went on to say that bringing in outside investors would be difficult and that if the EIB loan fell through, something he does not foresee, Saab could be bankrupt “in days.” Needless to say, Saab’s Chief Optimism Officer Victor Muller didn’t take kindly to Antonov’s remarks and is firing back in the press.

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One of the eternal battles of the car world has broken out in New Hampshire, where angry seniors have introduced a bill [HB 549] to remove that state’s requirement of annual driving tests for motorists over the age of 75. According to the New Hampshire Union Leader,

In 2008, 1,088 state residents 75 or older failed the road test. In 2009, the number rose to 1,405, and in 2010, there were 615 failures through October… New Hampshire and Illinois are the only two states that require license-renewal applicants 75 and older to take a vision test and a road test. Nine states require some form of vision test. Maine requires one at first renewal after age 40.

The AARP and angry seniors say the elderly do not actually cause more crashes than young people, and in  recent years, the New Hampshire accident statistics bear them out, as 16-25 year-olds were involved in around 10 percent of crashes there in 2008 and 2009, while the 66-75, 76-85 and 86+ cohorts each accounted for around 2-4%. But then, those statistics are based on years in which over a thousand seniors were denied the right to drive… without the law, it’s hard not to argue that those numbers could be higher. But seniors call testing “age discrimination” and say the tests often fail good drivers who become nervous and allow poor drivers to pass.

Given that your state likely doesn’t have a mandatory senior driving test law, would you support one? Is mandatory vision testing enough? What about mandatory video games? Or, should government stay away from age-based conditions on drivers licenses?

By slyly slipping an image of a classic Chrysler 300 into this ad, Lancia is subtly admitting the truth about its new Thema. And in light of this half-admission of the Lancia’s less-than-entirely-sophisticated Brampton, Ontario roots, perhaps the better Baudelaire line would have been the great stoner’s admonition to

beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.

If Baudelaire were alive today, does anyone doubt he would have added “marketing” to that list?

The first time VW showed a retro-inspired Van concept, they said they would build it but never did. Now, having shown a new, far smaller retro-inspired microvan [gallery here], VW says they will not only build the thing, but thanks to their modular MQB platform, they’ll be able to build variations of it for markets around the world. Though VW’s development honcho Ulrich Hackenberg insists the microvan won’t be built at VW’s new plant in Chattanooga, TN, he does tell Autocar that it will be sold in the US and

aimed at the XB produced by Toyota’s youth brand, Scion.

Which means it will be built in Mexico, alongside the New Beetle. And come to think of it, the New Bulli and New Beetle seem to have quite a bit in common: both trade heavily on heritage-inspired looks while having little (if anything) to do with their actual inspirations. Which means the Baby Boomers will love it.

General Motors has announced that Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell will be leaving the company on April 1, “having completed the largest public offering in history and stabilizing the company’s financial operations.” CEO Dan Akerson has denied that Liddell’s departure has anything to do with GM’s first-quarter financial performance or his relationship with the departing CFO, saying “we could finish each others sentences.” The former Microsoft man was brought into GM in January of last year, and helped guide the automaker through its IPO and eliminated its material weaknesses in internal financial controls, apparently the two tasks he needed to complete before riding off into the sunset.

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The Freep reports

General Motors plans to add a second shift worth as many as 1,000 jobs to its Detroit-Hamtramck plant late this year, as the automaker prepares to ramp up production of its Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car.

Current plans have second-shift workers arriving for training late this year and starting production in earnest in early 2012,

Now, it makes sense that any “more assembly jobs are coming” story would play big in Detroit, but does this mean GM has its suppliers lined up for a second shift of Volt production? Can the market support the increased volumes GM has been talking about (25k instead of 10k this year, 60k+ instead of the planned 45k next year)? As it turns out, those questions haven’t actually been answered yet…

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When we first heard that the updated Jeep Compass would be “Trail Rated,” a number of commenters pointed out that the term “Trail Rated” is little more than a Jeep marketing phrase, and argued that the Compass had no business pretending to be a true off-roader. Well, according to this picture, which Michael Karesh found on Jeep’s website, the upgraded Compass will even go so far as to offer that talisman of off-road capability, a solid front axle. Unless, of course, this is actually a misplaced picture of a Wrangler, which it almost certainly is. Oh well…

Cheiracanthium inclusum is fast becoming the bête noir of the automotive world, first causing a recall of Mazda6s, and now raising concerns about Honda Accords. The LA Times reports:

Honda Motor Co. hasn’t announced a recall but has notified its dealers to be on the lookout for the spider. The company has issued what is known as a technical service bulletin telling Honda mechanics how to fix the problem.

“It was the same scenario and the same breed of spider. It would get in there and create a blockage that would create problems,” said Chris Martin, a Honda spokesman.

Honda doesn’t have a record of how many times it has spotted the problem but said it was big enough to put out the alert. Otherwise, mechanics could be spending many hours searching for the source of the problem, and that would run up the bill for Honda if the cars were still under warranty, or for the owners after the warranty expired.

The weirdest part: Honda spokesfolks say occurrences of spider web fuel line blockages are “pretty random” and not limited to any particular region. The spiders are climbing through non-airtight fuel tank doors and into the gas cap vent hole, where their webs can then clog up the fuel system. Also, the spiders are only attacking late model vehicles, namely 2008-09 Accords and 2009-10 Mazda6s. What nobody knows: why the spiders are suddenly moving into fuel lines, and which cars will be affected next. Are the Hondas and Mazdas the canaries in a horror-movie-scenario coal mine, heralding the crippling of America’s entire auto fleet at the mandibles of an implacable arachnid foe? Probably not, but a blogger can dream…

Why don’t more mass-market brands offer diesel engine options? After all, the evidence suggests that the passenger cars that offer diesel options enjoy a healthy take rate for oil-burner engines. So would a brand like Ford ever consider bringing diesels to its US offerings? According to the Blue Oval’s Product Boss Derrick Kuzak, the answer is absolutely not. And, according to Automotive News [sub] he’s got an interesting reason for nixing a US-market diesel option.

With rising petroleum prices, one European journalist asked if Ford planned to alter its powertrain strategy and sell cars with diesel engines in the United States. The journalist mentioned that some European automakers offer diesels in the United States.

Kuzak said Ford “could easily bring diesels to the U. S. market.”

Then he quickly added: U.S. “customers, I think, are pragmatic.”

Too pragmatic for improved efficiency? Huh?
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About two and a half years ago, Aston Martin started talking very seriously about bringing back its “four door, four seat” Lagonda brand, arguing that the move

would allow us to develop cars which can have a different character than a sportscar, and therefore offer a perfect synergy.

But, because Aston already had a four-door in the works, the Lagonda Concept turned out to be a bloated abortion of a luxury SUV-cum-Crossover. And having been met with resounding derision from fans as well as high gas prices and an economic downturn, Aston wisely hustled the Lagonda Concept out of sight and proceeded to embarrass itself by rebadging a Toyota. But now that the world economy is looking a little bit better and gas prices are headed up again, Aston Martin is back to touting Lagonda. And this time it seems the British sportscar firm is imagining a whole line of SUVs aimed at the most refined and tasteful buyers on the world luxury market.

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According to Steve Rattner, Chrysler was such a sick puppy in the immediate pre-bailout period that it would have only generated about $1b had it been liquidated in bankruptcy. Thanks to around $14b in government assistance, however, Chrysler is now worth a whopping $4.8b according to a Reuters analysis of its filings. But wait, you say, how does Chrysler have a valuation if it hasn’t yet launched an IPO?

Chrysler arrived at the valuation to set pay for its top executives, including Marchionne. Senior executives are paid partly through so-called deferred phantom shares, which will convert to shares in the company at a later date.

In June 2009, each share was worth $1.66, according to the filing. By the end of 2010, the value of each share was $7.95.

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Another day, another way to die in a car… and this time, the IIHS blames weak safety standards for semi-truck underride guards for this mangled Malibu [report PDF here]. The IIHS argues that

Under current certification standards, the trailer, underride guard, bolts, and welding don’t have to be tested as a whole system. That’s a big part of the problem. Some manufacturers do test guards on the trailer. We think all guards should be evaluated this way. At the least, all rear guards should be as strong as the best one we tested

But the best underride system they tested (a Wabash) still would have likely decapitated the Malibu driver in a 30% offset hit at 35 MPH. So even if government enact the stricter standards endorsed by the IIHS, you’ll still have to hit the rear of a semi truck fairly square-on in order to reap the benefits. But of the 2,200+ passenger car occupants who died in crashes with large trucks in 2009, we have no idea how many were square-on rear crashes like the one tested. And until the IIHS gets the government to regulate bumpers height, crash test-derived standards will always be less effective when they leave the lab and get into the messy real world of the American road.

When Chrysler Group first announced that it would be spinning off its Ram truck brand in order to allow the Dodge brand to “come out of the shadow of the trucks,” there was at least some logic to be found in the decision. After all, there used to be more to Dodge than truck-inspired styling and marketing, and concentrating “Ram-ness” into the trucks made a certain amount of sense. But then, Chrysler Group announced that Ram would be moving into the commercial vehicle business with a pair of European-style deliver vans, raising the question of how these distinctly un-Ram-like vans would fit in with the brand’s bro-magnon image. But now the Ram brand has a new problem: before it even challenges its fans with front-drive Euro-vans, it’s dropping a windowless Ram Cargo Van based on the Dodge Caravan. Because what separates a spun-off brand from its previous brand like shared product? Whatever Kool Aid they’re drinking over at the Ram Brand, my tank is just about full of it.

Tesla has made much of the fact that its next model, the Model S sports sedan, will be half the price of its $110k Roadster and be built in far greater volume… but it turns out that both of these goals are going to take just a little bit longer than Tesla thought. Though the Model S will be offered at a base price of $57,400 with a 160 mile range, that version won’t be built until after the firm produces its first 1,000 units. Those first thousand models of the 5,000 unit 2012 production run will be loaded “Signature Series” models that will cost at least $77,400 (the base price for all Model S versions with 300 miles of range). According to Tesla, versions with a 230 mile range will start at around $67,400.

And with 20k units of production planned for 2013, Tesla had better not run into any delays as it won’t build its firs “production intent” (known internally as “Beta”) models until late this year. That gives the firm only about 6 months to validate the production-intent version, tool up and build the thing for its mid-2012 launch. And with a first run of expensive, loaded models planned, customers will definitely expect the kinks to have been worked out. This is going to be interesting…

China’s FAW-Volkswagen joint venture is celebrating twenty years and two million units of the Volkswagen Jetta III, with a “2 million” special edition featuring “special paint and a more luxurious interior” according to thetycho.com. But will the Two Million Edition swath the aged Jetta with even more luxury than the Jetta Millionaire Edition?And when, if ever, will they stop making the old MkIII Jetta? Actually, considering that base versions of the brand new Jetta feature drum brakes, torsion bar rear suspension and ancient, underpowered engines, FAW-VW might just keep the original cranking out for a good while longer.