China wouldn't try anything like product dumping, would they? In a word, yes. Gasgoo reports the U.S. Commerce Department is imposing an anti-dumping duty on Chinese-made off-road tires. It seems Commerce determined that producers and exporters have been selling new tires at 10.98 to 210.48 percent below fair market value on this side of the Pacific. Now four tire manufacturers will have to pay an anti-dumping duty of 10.98 to 51.81 percent on a set of four tires. Twenty-three other off-road tire makers will have to pay an average 24.75 percent duty. They didn't say if Commerce would expand this to on-road tires, but if the manufacturers have been doing it for one type of tire, you can just about bet they've been doing it for the rest.

According to Bloomberg, last Thursday, GMAC loaned its Residential Capital (ResCap) mortgage unit $635m. ResCap needed the money to get a credit line to sell a financing business. On Friday, Standard & Poors lowered GMAC's and ResCap's credit ratings to medium "junk" status. Hang on; wasn't the whole point of separating GMAC from GM to get a better credit rating? Auto loans (GMAC's primary business) packaged as securities aren't affected by the downgrade; they're rated separately. But GMAC will now find it more difficult to get the warehouse funding it needs to accumulate those loans. Reuters quotes a Cerberus spokesman, who said tut-tut. Apparently, GMAC is "a resilient business platform with strong long-term growth prospects." Yes, well, anyone remember Aegis Mortgage?

On eBay, the old saw "a fool and his money are soon parted" rings true every day. The latest: Challenger mania. Proving that some people have more money than sense, a "Challenger 2008 SRT8 Tribute HAT Ballcap sold for $152.50. A 24" x 36" Challenger poster is going for $70 and the bidding on a brochure is starting at $100. A press kit from the Chicago Auto Show is up to $160. It's the actual cars where things get really freaky. There are several dealers trying to auction them starting in the mid $50k range. The craziest one, though, is the deal that closed out at $228,143.43. What made it so special? It's painted "legendary B5 Blue, honoring racing legend Richard Petty" (who, to the best of my knowledge, never drove a Challenger) and comes with a "custom #43 Richard Petty Designed Decal Package." 

The New York Times lists the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's 12 greenest vehicles sold in the U.S. Not surprisingly, it's dominated by foreign brands. In fact, the TTAC Ten Worst nominee Ford Focus is the only American nameplate on the list. The Honda Civic GX, which runs on compressed natural gas, sits in the top of the greenest tree. Only four hybrids sent out an aroma of undefined love: Prius, Civic Hybrid, Altima Hybrid and Camry Hybrid. Rounding out the list: smart fortwo, Yaris, Corolla, MINI Cooper, MINI Cooper Clubman, Civic and Fit. Imports also dominated the six "most environmentally damaging vehicles." Four of these were were oil burners: Touareg V-10 TDI (the worst of the worst), Mercedes GL 320 CDI, Grand Cherokee diesel and Mercedes R320 CDI. The Bugatti Veyron and Lambo Murciélago round out the dirty half-dozen. Neither GM's "Green Car of the Year" (Yukon Hybrid) nor the treehugger's four-wheeled enemy #1 (Hummer H2) showed-up at either extreme.

Barak Obama visited a GM plant in Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton visited a GM plant in Maryland. John McCain visited a Ford plant in Michigan. But who loves ya, Chrysler? Apparently nobody. The candidates have studiously ignored MoPar's plants. With Mike Huckabee barely hanging in there, maybe he should target them (you know, birds of a feather and all that). But then that leaves the Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes plants. They're full of American voters just like the UAW-owned plants. So why isn't anyone paying any attention to them? A word to the wise: if you're supposed to represent all the people, you need represent all the people. Just pandering to those voters represented by a union may get you some votes in the short run, but it'll be a bitch when all those grandiose promises you've made return to bite you in the ass. Just sayin'.

If you're a member of the TV rat pack or a crowd control officer with the Los Angeles police, we suggest you gear-up and head over to Conserv Fuel on San Vicente Blvd in Brentwood on February 26. For just two hours, from noon to 2pm, GM is subsidizing E85 to the tune of 85 cents per gallon (geddit?). GM's press release says they want to "help raise awareness about the first station in Los Angeles to offer E85 ethanol, and to encourage drivers of FlexFuel vehicles to use this cleaner, renewable fuel instead of gasoline." Of course it has nothing to do with the fact they just sank a bunch of bucks into an ethanol producer. Even with the decreased power and poorer mileage of E85, 85 cents per gallon makes it an attractive alternative (hence the incipient flared tempers). But how many of the bargain hunters will be back when it's back to to the station's normal $3 per gallon? That's when you'll see– well, could see if the media was bothered– what the average driver really thinks about E85.

Although Canada is the highest-cost location in North America in which to build a car, Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union president Buzz Hargrove maintains he'll allow no concessions on salary or benefits in the contract negotiations this year. "We're not going to try to buy jobs by being the cheapest workers in the world," he told CAW workers meeting in Toronto. The Globe and Mail says Harvgrove and his hired economist, Jim Stanford, both deny the concessions given by the UAW last fall are equivalent to a $25/hour labor cost reduction. The fact that the exchange rate has driven Canadian wages and benefits to the equivalent of $80/hour in the U.S. is irrelevant to Stanford. He claims the higher productivity in their plants more than makes up for the cost difference between the average CAW and UAW worker. We'll see how long this posturing lasts once the negotiations start. At that point, it will most likely turn into a bidding war between the CAW and the UAW for the "right" to build new and existing product.

The last thing GM needs right now is a $2.25b bill to go splat on the mat. But if rumors are accurate, The General will spend yet more money on its bankrupt former parts maker Delphi. While examining various scenarios for Delphi to come-up up with the $4.5b in needs to exit Chapter 11, the Financial Times hypothesizes "the exit funding would consist of a USD 2.275bn first lien loan, while GM would assume a USD 2.25bn junior facility." GM would have to pay their chunk to take the remaining debt down to a size that current debt holders JPMorgan and Citibank could sell. They'll have to move fast, though. The current funding agreements will all be history by the end of April, and Delphi will be back to square one. Unless…  nah… GM wouldn't be stupid enough to try to pay all the debt, would they?Could they?

GM seems to think their first attempt at countering greenwashing accusations was successful. So now they're readying their Web 1.99 GMNext website for round two. Who's up? Well, you may recall that GM stopped selling everything it owns to buy into an ethanol start-up called Coskata. (Car Czar Bob Lutz:  "They put a bunch of bacteria in there that basically just eat and poop, eat and poop.") Tomorrow at 1pm EST, Coskata's CMO will participate in a GM "green chat." Wes Bolsen is expected to discuss Coskata's subservience to partnership with GM and how their ethanol-pooping bacteria will someday, eventually, turn garbage into an endless supply of low-cost, pollution-free fuel. While we expect Bolsen will be a lot more forthcoming than GM's chief of American sales ops, Brent Dewar, what's the bet a GM minder will be breathing down Bolsen's neck? Anyway, the session is open to the public. We expect loitering members of TTAC's Best and Brightest to test the limits of free speech, and report back on our follow-up post.

GM's humongous hybrid SUV's have garnered a lot of attention and copped a few awards, thanks to what is admittedly a pretty slick drivetrain (and even slicker PR campaign). What GM isn't publicizing is that it isn't "their" drivetrain; it was developed jointly with BMW and DaimlerChrysler. When the divorce became final, Daimler and Chrysler got joint custody, so now four different manufacturers get to share the wealth. The Detroit Free Press has a list of all the models where you can expect to see them use the magic tranny that makes it all work. While improving truck mileage is a good thing, cars are conspicuously absent from this list. So if you don't want to buy a truck but want more than GM's semi-hybrid passenger cars, you'll still have to look towards the Brands of the Rising Sun. It makes one wonder if they're avoiding that market because the system won't work in anything smaller than an SUV, and/or they won't want the inevitable comparison with class-leader Toyota Prius.

What do you do if you're an automaker that's teetering on the brink of disaster, that's so hard up it's offering its entire workforce bribes to quit, that's selling off everything but the gold-plated toilets in the executive suite just to keep afloat? Well, if you're Ford, you give everyone a bonus! The Detroit Free Press reports that FoMoCo is preparing to give bonuses to all its execs, salaried workers and the people who really do the work. Officially Ford says "no final decisions have been made," but they're just waiting on approval from the Board of Directors to make it so. The justification for giving bonuses even though they finished last year deep in the red? Ford "only" lost $2.7b in 2007 compared to the previous year's $12.6b hit. In other words, they sucked, but not as bad as they did before. There's no word on whether the bonuses will come before or after the workforce buyouts.

Tesla sent out a press release yesterday bragging that they'd raised $40m in "bridge financing" that was "co-led by Valor Equity Partners and [Tesla chairman] Elon Musk." They're really going to have to stretch that $40m; Tesla plans to use it "for the continued development of a 4 door, five passenger sports sedan planned for introduction in 2010, the establishment of company-owned sales and service infrastructure, and the continued production of the Tesla Roadster, a stylish, high-performance, zero emissions car." The use of the singular in describing the Roadster is appropriate, given they've only produced one Roadster, despite describing the company as "a manufacturer of high-performance production electric cars" in the opening paragraph. So let's see… that's $40m down and only $210m to go.

Is Cerberus about to Strip 'n Flip GMAC? According to Bloomberg, the floundering finance company will announce that they're closing 75 percent of their regional auto-lending centers in the U.S. and Canada. That means 12 of the 16 GMAC's U.S. centers and three of four Canadian GMAC centers will bite the dust. In a letter to be delivered to GM dealers, GMAC VP Barbara Stokel said the move was part of an effort "to make structural cost reductions to restore our competitive position." The remaining offices will be in Dallas, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Chicago and Toronto. You can't help but notice the conspicuous absence of an office location on the west coast. Is this an indication of how little business GM dealers are doing in that area? Or does it mean the Dallas office is so good it can handle the entire western half of the country? My money's on a little of both.

Scion sales finished 2007 24.8 percent below 2006. Last month, the once and future Gen Y brand dipped 12.6 percent. According to Brandweek, Toyota's sending three-person teams (including two "muscle men") into "hipster neighborhoods" in ten U.S. cities to promote the Scion xB RS 5.0. As the car only comes in Gold Rush Mica, they'll be making the scene in campaign-branded armored cars, handing out Scion-branded skullcaps in boxes made to look like gold bars, with cards that have the URL for a Scion microsite (and the pass code to access it). Whether this unorthodox approach will improve sales is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, analysts reckon Scion's facing external competition from the Fit and MINI, and internal threat from the Toyota Yaris. Looking a bit closer at Scion's overall sales figures, it seems Scion's promoting the wrong model. Even though the xB's sales were off last year, they appear to be recovering this year with a 17.2 percent jump in January. The tC, however, was down 19.3 percent last year, down a further 33.2 percent below last January's totals. Perhaps Scion should pay some real muscle men to prowl cubicles and offer secretaries shoulder rubs and a link to a tC-intensive webpage. 

"Talking in circles" must be an executive training course at GM. You'll find a perfect example at GMNext, where GM's chief of American sales operations, defends GM against charges of greenwashing. To that end, Brent Dewar held an on-line question and answer session– make that an "evade the question" session– with no less than 50 online journos (TTAC's invitation got lost in the email). Even the condensed version is dizzying. When asked when we'd be seeing E85 available across the country, Dewar launched into a tale of his six year stint in Brazil– without answering the question. One participant asked Dewar point-blank about GM exploiting the E85 loophole in the CAFE standards. His response? "As I just mentioned it is a huge opportunity now. The problem is we are often American centric. This is not a CAFE loophole, but a solution. We did this in Brazil. Cafe in south america means coffee…" The complete transcript is on line, if obsfucation is your cup of cafe tea.