This morning, octogenarian investor Kirk Kerkorian bid $8.50 per share for 20m shares of Ford. his offering was 13 percent above FoMoCo's closing share price on Friday. While the total is only a fraction of Ford's $16b market cap, it does create a lot of speculation about his intentions. Tracinda stated they "believe that Ford management under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally will continue to show significant improvements in its results going forward." Just a few minutes ago, we received this statement from Ford: 

The following statement is attributable to Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford and Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally:

Dearborn, Mich., April 28 -"We welcome confidence in Ford and the progress we are making on our transformation plan. Any investor can purchase Ford shares, which are sold on the open market. The Ford team remains focused on executing our plan to transform Ford into a lean global enterprise delivering profitable growth for all."

After Kerkorian's attempt to take over GM and his bid to buy Chrysler both failed, is The Lion of Las Vegas trying once again to buy a car company. Or is he just making a shrewd investment? With GM struggling to keep its plants open, with Chrysler on the ropes (rumors of bill-paying problems), perhaps Captain Kirk is anticipating the TTAC foretold dead cat bounce. As always, watch this space.

BusinessWeek's David Kiley didn't take kindly to Holman Jenkins' "pretty tedious editorial" against the gas – electric plug-in Chevrolet Volt. To smack down Jenkins piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Kiley hails the Volt as "a new lens through which the U.S. and world will view" GM. He defends GM's late-to-the-game [theoretical] game changer "because [GM] rightly saw that gas-electric hybrids were an inelegant engineering solution for higher fuel economy." (No comment on GM's eventual hybrid opt-in). Kool-Aid quaffed, Kiley turns on Honda. He lambastes the Japanese automaker for producing "the awkward looking Insight to answer the Prius, as well as the Ridgeline pickup and the Element." Huh? Mr. Kiley needs to get a grip; there are plenty of ways to defend the Volt and/or kneecap his critics. But, like GM, he needs to raise his game, quick.

Mazda announced today the new Mazda6 will go on sale this summer. As with the Accord, the U.S. version will be market-specific. In PR-speak Mazda's new whip was "designed and engineered for the needs, wants and desires of the North American customer." The American variant's base engine will be a new 2.5-liter four-banger with an available 3.7-liter V6. Both engines offer a six-speed manual. Automatics have either five gears or six depending on whether the engine has four cylinders or six. There will be three trim levels: Sport, Touring or Grand Touring. Prices for each are yet to be announced, but we're assured all three will come with "Zoom-Zoom" "in large doses." How quantifiable is that?

Chrysler flackmeister Stuart Schorr didn't take kindly to Ford analyst George Pipa's comments about the decline and fall of the U.S. minivan market. On Chrysler's Firehouse.biz media blog, Schorr took on "the myth that shoppers are moving away from minivans." The numbers show last year's overall minivan sales (800k units industry-wide) were 18 percent lower than the previous year's. Yet Schorr still boasts that Chrysler's "retail [emphasis added] minivan sales are flat through the first quarter this year." Wait a minute. Isn't the goal supposed to be increased retail sales? Anyway, Schorr explains that the flatlined sales are part of "the overall 9 percent drop in industry sales" and "the reduction of our lineup to two models." Besides, "we cut our minivan fleet sales by 46 percent" (which has nothing to do with retail sales). The fact remains: minivan sales are down. Way down. And, if current trends continue, staying down. In fact, they're falling, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of vehicles sold. In case you were wondering.

Ford's CEO Alan Mulally might disagree with whoever said "you can't cut your way to profitability." After cutting jobs, cutting salaries, cutting supply complexity and cutting entire divisions, Ford reported a first quarter net profit of $100m. That's a lot better than first quarter last year, when they turned in a deficit of $282m. But wait… The Wall Street Journal reports that FoMoCo earned (pretax) $257m in South America, $739m in Europe and $1m in Asia and Africa. Ford Credit added another $36m to the company's coffers. However, North America — the one region where they made the most cuts– showed a pretax loss of $45m. Just like their RenCen friends, the Blue Oval's North American operation is being kept afloat by their overseas operations. Maybe instead of cutting so much, Ford needs to look at what the other regions are doing right (hint: it begins with "p", ends with "t" and rhymes with "brod muckt"). Meanwhile, expect a glowing second quarter report in July when the cash from the sale of Land Rover and Jaguar hits the books. 

In years past, Ford resolutely refused to report earnings for the individual brands in its Premium Auto Group (PAG) (Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston, Volvo and, for ten minutes, Lincoln). And for good reason. The brainchild of former BMW suit and bon vivant Wolfgang Reitzle, PAG has been a financial sinkhole since day one. Now that Jag and Landie's gone to Tata Motors and Aston's been flogged to an unholy alliance of a Texan and the Kuwaitis, PAG consists of… Volvo. And today, for the first time ever, FoMoCo's broken out earnings in the Volvo unit. And the news ain't good. Yahoo!Finance reports that a year ago, Volvo posted a $94m profit in the first quarter. This year, they had a first quarter pretax loss of $151m. So why, when Volvo was making money, didn't they brag about it? And why, now that it's losing money, do they disclose the fact? It's just one more indication that Ford is building a case to justify putting Volvo on the auction block a la Jag and Land Rover. Adjö Volvo.

Poetically enough, The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins wants to know if "GM is a genius or a dolt for developing the Volt." Why would a company that's lost $4.3b in North America the last three years throw billions into developing a car they know will lose money? Jenkins notes that when gas prices dropped after the original federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regs, the standards devolved into "an elaborate scheme engineered by Washington and the UAW to keep auto workers busy manufacturing small cars in the U.S. at a loss, subsidized by the profits of big pickups and SUVs." Jenkins reckons GM– "America's biggest near-dead car company"– plans a similar tactic with the new standards. "[I]t's hard to see why a reformed GM would bother building such a car now unless it's planning to throw its lobbying clout behind a final set of CAFE rules designed to disadvantage its rivals." Then they'll "bribe consumers to drive Volts off the lot" because it'll let them "build and sell other cars bigger and more powerful than the cars its rivals can afford to build under the CAFE rules." And it's all because "GM intends to beat Toyota at its own game of selling bogus green symbolism to Washington and Hollywood." Let's hear it for the home team! 

GM will resume production of Lucernes and DTS' at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant on April 28, ending a four-week shutdown. They had closed the plant because of a parts shortage caused by the American Axle strike. GM won't say where the axles are coming from; the Detroit News quotes "sources familiar with production" as saying only they're buying parts "from another supplier." At the time of the closure, GM had a 111-day supply of Lucernes and a 57-day supply of DTS. Now that they've gone a month without any new product entering the pipeline, their inventory should be a bit more in line with sales. Let's see how long it takes "other suppliers" to come up with the parts to restart other plants affected by the AA strike as their  inventory levels come down into a reasonable range.

It looks like GM's labor pains are just starting. The Detroit News reports that strike threats are coming in from sites around the country. While The General is busy dealing with a strike at their Delta Township, MI plant, they also have to defuse threatened walkouts at plants in Parma, OH; Mansfield, OH; Grand Rapids, MI; Kansas City, KS; Flint MI and Arlington, TX. And that's on top of dealing with parts shortages caused by strikes at suppliers American Axle and Alliance Interiors. Even though UAW prez Ron Gettelfinger says he supports the strike actions, he seems to have forgotten the fact that the actions are a backlash caused by the contracts his minions acquiesced to negotiated last September (and strong-armed the members into ratifying). At the time we wondered how workers could agree to the contracts; it seems that they've "woken up" to the reality. Once the Locals settle their differences with GM, you have to wonder if they'll have the same issues with the Ford and Chrysler, and if they'll go after the UAW's leadership for putting them in this situation in the first place.

The DOT wants to raise CAFE standards even higher. To meet the new standards, automakers will have to downsize and lighten everything they offer. However, their expertise (and profit) is in large trucks/SUVs. Whatever will they do? Well, there's always China. The Associated Press reports China's nouveau riche auto buyers think size does count. They're going for gas guzzlers like large SUVs and luxobarges; they're the fastest-growing market segments in the People's Republic. And the automakers know it. The star of the GM display at the Beijing Auto Show is the Escalade, which they'll introduce to the Chinese market next year. Mercedes says China is the second-largest market for the S-class (the U.S. is the largest), R-class sales are up 110 percent in the first quarter and the M-, G- and GL-class sales are up 100 percent. Remind me again why we're raising our mileage standards to cut fuel consumption here? Oh yeah. We're giving up our gas guzzlers so the most polluted country in the world will have plenty government-subsidized fuel for theirs. Got it.

After the Chevy Volt makes its U.S. debut, GM plans to sell the  gas – electric hybrid worldwide. GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz has already announced Australian Volt sales will begin "one or two years" after the car's U.S. launch. GM also has their corporate eye on the "very important" European market. But just as the rest of the U.S. will have to wait for California to get their Volts, the rest of the world will have to wait for China. Rick Wagoner says his employer's targeting The People's Republic as the Volt's second market– with one big "if." According to Reuters, GM is "lobbying China's government to provide subsidies for the development and sale" of alternative powerplants. Wagner wants China to provide tax credits and (while they're at it) develop a hydrogen refueling infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles. Of course, much of GM's credibility in such matters (and everything else) depends on a successful Volt launch in 2010, which Rabid Rick admitted is running "down to the wire." God forbid they should release a not-ready-for-prime-time vehicle just to make the deadline…

With the notable exception of Dan Neil's work at the LA Times, the vast majority of newspaper car reviews are written to fill the spaces between automotive advertisements while sucking-up to the dealers and manufacturers who provide the ad revenue. When I caught sight of Tom Keane's take on the new Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid in the San Francisco Chronicle, I decided to see if the paper that fired TTAC's founder for his infamous Subaru Tribeca B9 "flying vagina" review had any teeth left in its automotive editorial coverage. In a word, no.

GM Canada is going on the offensive re: its contract negotiations with the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union this September. They've released a "background paper" claiming the total cost (wages, pensions, benefits, etc.) for one hour's work in Canada runs the automaker $77.75. Instead of comparing those wages to other industries in Canada or "core" U.S. GM workers' ($70/hour), the paper uses the U.S. transplants for comparison ($47.50/hour). Report on Business quotes GM Canada spokesman Stew Low: "The status quo just won't do." CAW president Buzz Hargrove responded with righteous indignation. "I've told Rick Wagoner, I've told the head people at Ford and Chrysler – all of them – that there's absolutely no way in hell [we'll agree to reductions in wages, health care benefits or pensions]." The CAW says it's willing to "look at" the amount of paid time off they get. GM claims CAW employees get 155 more hours per year off and 16 minutes break time a day than… the transplants. Fair enough?

Yesterday, managers at GM's Delta Township plant (Buick Enclave, Saturn Outlook, GMC Acadia) sent workers home after a strike at Alliance Industries left them carpetless. Workers were told to report back to work this morning in case the parts were there. This morning, carpets were the least of GM's problems. The Detroit Free Press reports that UAW workers at Delta Township walked out on strike over the terms in their local contract. They had threatened to strike over the definition of "core" vs. a "non-core" job under the UAW-negotiated two-tier wage scale. It's too early to know what effect the walk-out will have or how long it'll last, but between this and the strikes against American Axle and Alliance Industry, the UAW is taking a big bite out of GM's business. While The General probably welcomed the shutdowns at first– it gave them a chance to clear out a backlog of trucks– they're starting to feel the pressure. Can they afford to dig into their diminishing cash hoard relieve it? Can they afford not to?

In a comment on Tesla Birth Watch 43, Tesla flackmeister Daryl Siry addressed some of the questions about Tesla's tranny problems. "The Xtrac transmission never had reliability issues. It has proven rock solid over the years and for that reason we are using an Xtrac box for our interim transmission. The reason we moved away from that design was that we had originally tried to design the gearbox to have clutchless shifting and to accomplish the shifts entirely through motor control but this proved difficult on our end due in part to the time it takes to spin down a heavy rotor that is rotating very quickly." Gotcha. So what precipitated the Magna lawsuit? "We’ve established the fact that the units delivered were not working well so that led to a disagreement between the parties as to what was owed on the contract. These types of disagreements sometimes end up in court." Siry also mentioned that he'll be in Monaco next week, showing production car number four before it's shipped to the states and placed in the loving arms of its more-than-patient owner. This led us to wonder: if car number four will be ready to show off next week, what happened to Tesla Roadsters two and three? Have they been delivered yet? If not, where are they in the pipeline? And how long before they'll be on the streets? Over to you, Daryl…