Alright, that’s a little misleading. You can still pick up a regular V6 Mustang from Hertz. And I’d imagine you always will be able to. But they aren’t offering the Hertz Shelby Mustang GT-H anymore than Coke still sells Coke 2. Between their popularity, the upkeep, the abuse, and the limited production runs, it makes sense that Hertz couldn’t keep it in the stable forever. But the Corvette as their fun sports car replacement? While I’m a huge (HUGE) Corvette fan, it does seem strangely defeatist for Hertz – a Ford vassal – to be renting off Corvettes when Ford has trillions of Mustangs that would fill the role. Even if the Mustang GT can’t hold a candle to the Corvette from a performance standpoint, so what? It’s part of the Ford family. Meanwhile, I’m not complaining. I’ve got my 436 hp toy booked for Tuesday.

Speaking yesterday at an Automotive Press Association event, Chrysler Vice Chairman and President Jim Press revealed that Chrysler has “been approached by outside individuals who want to work with us to buy the asset and sustain Viper going forward.” Who are they outside individuals? Well that’s a secret, of course. But someone, hopefully, maybe, wants to buy the rights and equipment to make the Viper in the future. As a car fan, I think this is a nice development. No matter what happens to Chrysler, the legendary Viper would live on the way that the Seven or Cobra live on today. At this point, Chrysler is selling about 80 Vipers per month– which is probably more than a low volume hand-assembler could handle in production. But presumably the amount of interest would drop when you could no longer get a car with a dealership warranty (even though it would have been at a Dodge dealership, that’s something). From Chrysler’s business standpoint, why? What is the entire Viper program really worth? $100 million perhaps. That’s barely enough money to put up new wallpaper in the bathrooms at Chrysler’s headquarters. Meanwhile, when they eventually do sell the entire Dodge brand off, the Viper is an absolutely crucial asset to its image. But then, that wouldn’t fit the perfect profile of a Cerberus strip and flip. And by selling off little pieces of the company– like the Viper– that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

Because China’s five, huge showrooms just weren’t meeting the market’s demands, Rolls Royce has opened its sixth showroom in The People’s Republic. The new 4300 square foot palace resides in the relatively well-off region of Hangzhou, and should be large enough to shelter Rolls’ expansive, cough, lineup: the Phantom, long-wheelbase Phantom, Phantom Drophead Coupe and Phantom Coupe. In 2007, Rolls sold 1010 land yachts globally; 70 of which were in China, where they are are now impressing a populace that could no more afford an Anglo-German uber-sedan than you can pay off the U.S. debt with your Capitol One card. That said, there are over 6000 people in China worth more than $30m. Of course, there is something of a history of limos for the Chinese elite, where some members of the Cultural Revolution were more equal than others. Same as it ever was? Same as it ever was.

This past Sunday, while driving around the feudal kingdom that is Long Island, I spotted five Ferraris. They weren’t coming from a show – just rich people doing their rich people activities. With a huge concentration of wealth in the New York metro area, this shouldn’t come as a tremendous surprise. Yet despite growing up here, it still makes me shake my head and think “Nice day for a cruise. That dick.” But this particular Sunday was different, because one of the five Ferraris I saw was an Enzo. I always thought the Enzo was ugly, especially compared to its contemporary competitor, the Porsche Carrera GT (which I also saw on Sunday, I kid you not). But in person, it most definitely does have an aura. The license plate – “1 of 399” – tells you just how rare they are. That wasn’t 399 Enzos for a year; it was the whole production run. So I made a u-turn and pulled into the shopping center where the owner was eating lunch and likely thinking about buying Moldovia. And then you know what I did? I lined up with a herd of 13 year old boys and took pictures on my camera phone. The best of the pictures is included here. It’s awful. It’s bad for a camera phone. But as they say on the internet, “Pics or it didn’t happen.”

The Battle Creek Enquirer (where’s my cereal toy?) reports that The Lincoln Motor Car Foundation will be building a Lincoln-centric museum on the campus of the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. Naturally, Ford Motor Company will be kicking-in some dough for the project. With Lincoln all but dismantled at this point, a museum dedicated to such a storied marque makes a truckload of sense. Sort of like a pre-historic fly caught in amber, only nicer. And you can extract the design DNA without unleashing rampaging dinsoraurs. This new museum should provide car fans a terrific opportunity to check out some classic American Lincolns from the days when the only thing the brand worried about was Cadillac and the occasional Imperial. [Note to RF’s former press car provider John Lawlor: time to donate LBJ’s limo. Summer’s fine and the tax credit’s are easy.]

A member of the TTAC B&B wrote in to Robert this morning with some unhappy feelings. He feels that stars for cars are going out like free money in the recent months at The Truth About Cars. In this reader’s words:

I had no idea that writers’ star ratings are not edited.  Are writers given any instructions on how to rate?   In keeping with TTAC’s take no prisoners reputation, I would like to see some uniformity in the ratings where

Top 5% get 5 stars
Next 15% get 4 stars
Middle 60% get 3 stars
Next 15% get 2 stars
Bottom 5% get 1star

In other words, I want to see most cars get a 3-star rating and, as a corollary, a 4-star or 5-star rating to really mean something.  This would be really helpful to car shoppers.  Currently, however, your writers seem to be giving 4-star ratings out like hot cakes.

Well here’s your chance, B&B. Tell us if you think we are experiencing star inflation. Obviously, our usual rules about flaming the site are suspended. But keep it civil, or I’m going to bust out the whoopin’ stick.

In keeping with the horsepower numbers for the Hemi in the new Challenger, Dodge has announced that the Hemi in the Charger sedan will get an upgrade for 2009 as well. Rather than continuing to produce a puny 340 horsepower, the newly revised 5.7 liter Hemi will now crank out 368 horsepower. Take THAT, Pontiac G8 GT. In addition to the increase in ponies, the Charger R/T will also benefit from an additional 5 lb ft of torque, raising the total to 395 for 2009. The Hemi adds variable valve timing as well, meaning highway fuel economy gets a modest bump from 23 to 25 mpg (city remains the same at 15). You think this isn’t enough to save Chrysler? That they really need competitive small cars? That Chrysler is dead in the water? Well yeah, probably. But they only had enough money to either give the Charger R/T a little more power, or to buy Bob Nardelli a new toupee. Frankly, I think they made the right choice.

The oil economists and auto experts over at ESPN.com have decided to lay down the law about automobiles and ending the fuel import issues that plague the United States. In a post called “Hold Your Horsepower,” writer Gregg Easterbrook begins a multifaceted festival of wrong that continues for several excruciating paragraphs. His thesis: cars should have less horsepower; if they did, we’d use less gasoline. He goes on to, in a manner vaguely resembling accuracy, describe how today’s cars are “overpowered” by their comparison to vehicles from twenty and thirty years ago. While we’d all concur that a 268 horsepower Toyota Camry just sounds silly, Mr. Easterbrook’s “solution” is comparable to a 12 year-old mapping out a trip to Mars with a box of Crayolas. Just cutting horsepower isn’t the answer to anything. Cars had less power in the 1970s because of emissions laws and insurance. The went on to be functional with less horsepower because Federal safety requirements like airbags and side airbags and antilock brakes and electronic stability control and rigorous NHTSA and IIHS testing just weren’t part of the gameplan. At the heart of Easterbrook’s article there is undoubtedly a kernel of truth, which is that many American-market cars have far more horsepower than we need. But that’s a qualitative perspective, not quantitative. Look at the best selling cars in America in August: among the top ten, there were four trucks. The other six are cars, and their sales numbers are almost exclusively made up of four cylinder engines with less than 180 horespower.  If you click over to the article, see how many statistical/data errors you can spot. Easterbrook should stick to sports. And I promise not to talk about the Maple Leafs; only cars.

It was only a matter of time until someone had something negative to say about the ever-expanding fleet of hybrid taxis in New York City. While I’m not in the hybrid car fan camp generally, they make perfect sense for a place like Manhattan. Driving takes place nearly exclusively short of 30 mph (except for costly interboro trips), meaning the electric motor really gets a workout. They’re quieter, and considering the traffic density in Manhattan, the reduced emissions actually are appreciated. Not to mention, hybrids need high intensity field testing. What better than 24-hour a day abuse? Well, not everybody agrees with me. C. Bruce Gambardella, P.E., an engineer that claims to be nothing short of a world renowned expert in the field of taxi cabs, thinks the hybrids totally suck (paraphrasing). Mr. Gambardella’s report was funded by a lobbyist organization called the Metropolitcan Taxicab Board of Trade. We’ll give you one guess who they represent – the taxi owners. The report claims that the modifications required for hybrid taxis make them inherently unsafe. Among the charges: plexiglass partitions between the drivers and passengers will interfere with side airbag systems (how often do those go off when everybody drives under 20 mph?), that hybrids are unsafe as taxis because they aren’t built for heavy duty driving (Manhattan potholes apparently better the Rubicon), and because hybrids are horrible, terrible vehicles. Also, Gambardella reports, hybrids are for grandmothers and liberals. Taxicabs need to be robust Panther platform cars that get 11 miles per gallon. Oh, and the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade filed a lawsuit yesterday against the City of New York, fighting the requirement that all cabs switch over to hybrids in the next several years.

Among other topics in today’s podcast, Jonny and I discuss the Audi A3. He and I both agree, we’re seeing them all over the place. But if you’re not deep in Audi country, you almost definitely are not. With sales of 646 nationwide for July of 2008 (the A8 only sold 205 in July, and I see those everywhere too), we’re not exactly talking about a volume vehicle. In fact, while Pontiac is moving 1500-2000 G8s per month, I rarely if ever see those on the road; maybe five of them in total since the car’s launch. But Audi’s expensive little hatchback? Ubiquitous here in the NY metro area, especially on the island of Manhattan itself. And why not? I often remark that NYC is the most European-style city in terms of its layout and density. Buyers in Manhattan want small cars, they want prestigious logos on the front grill, and they want the occasional dose of practicality. It must be one of the only places in America where the Mini Cooper convertible appears to outsell the Toyota Camry. But whatever the reasons, I’d contend that Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York comprise a vehicular bubble that’s the exception, not the rule, even for big cities in the U.S.

Audi has released the pricing for the 2009 A3, which I’m comfortable saying is one of the most under-appreciated cars in the U.S. Or one of the most overpriced. Audi’s set pricing at $26,920 for the front-wheel-drive, six-speed manual model equipped with the 2.0T. The top of the line 3.2-liter Quattro variant comes in at $36,975. For the first time for American A3 buyers, the 2.0T is available with Quattro AWD– the first genuinely good reason I’ve heard to buy an Audi A3 rather than a VW GTI. Well, that and the better interior, more prestigious logo, and so on. The A3 2.0T Quattro with S-Tronic (that’s DSG in VW-speak) will weigh-in at $28,400. Leather seats become standard on all A3s. Audi is not offering a Quattro version of the A3 with a manual transmission, meaning many of you will likely say “deal breaker.” But it’s not because Audi hates you. Audi PR manager Christian Bokich tells me:

You might remember Henrik Fisker as the man whose SoCal coachbuilding company was trying to rebody BMW 6-Series and Mercedes SLs for ungodly price premiums (they sold about 15 total). Or perhaps you’ll think of Fisker Automotive, a would-be electric car company, which was sued by Tesla back in April. Today, Fisker Automotive has announced that they have raised $65 million in venture capital funds for the development of their Karma electric performance sedan. While some more “standard” Silicon Valley investors had been on board with the Karma project, the final investor that put the fundraising over the top is the Qatar Investment Authority, the investment arm of Qatar’s government, with $60 billion in assets. According to the same press release, initial deliveries of the Karma sedan are expected to begin in the 4th quarter of 2009, with eventual sales of 15,000 a year. Uh, whatever you say fellas.

Jen Dunnaway, editor of the CarDomain blog writes this week:

“Yesterday in New On The Net, I poked a little fun at TTAC’s whiny diapers, and considering the gentleness of my goading, the results were nothing short of hilarious. Better yet, in the midst of the ensuing brouhaha, TTAC finally got some dealer to take pity on them and hand over the Challenger test car they’d been dreaming of! No need to thank us, guys, just enjoy that car.”

While “gentle goading” seems to be a self-identified strong suit for Ms. Dunnaway, reading is not. Our original story was not whining that a dealer wouldn’t give us a Challenger SRT8 to test drive: it was news that Dodge dealers are probably screwing themselves out of sales by denying actual shoppers a test drive of any Challenger, down to the lowly V6 model. So Ms. Dunnaway was 0 for 1. No big deal, surely she’d get it right on the second try, right? Erm, no. Sajeev drove a friend’s Challenger SRT8 for his review, not a dealership car. Oops, 0 for 2. As it happens, no dealer “took pity” on the fact that TTAC, because our insistence on integrity, is barred from access to Chrysler’s press fleet. Fortunately, Jen needs no pity to drive the Challenger – only a free plane ticket to One Lap of America in South Carolina, and a free hotel stay, free food, and then free time on the racetrack in a new Challenger (with free race gas) and some Dodge engineers. And all she had to do was say that the 4140 lb car “stuck to the track like it was on rails.”

We’ve got to love Bob Lutz and his unabashed capacity to be wrong. In today’s Automotive News, he reports that “The Saturn Astra costs too much for U.S. customers, and sales and profitability of the small hatchback are suffering.” There is no question that sales have been anemic (between 1500 and 2000 cars per month) and that profitability for the Astra was always questionable at best. Or worse. Lutz went on to tell AN that “the profit is no longer there.” None of this has been in contention. But what is blindingly daft is GM’s explanation: the Astra costs too much for American consumers, at $16,495. Before we break out the slide rules and figure that the Civic starts in the mid $15,000s and the Mazda3 sedan starts just a hair under $15,000, keep in mind the comparable levels of equipment we’re talking about here. The Astra comes standard with loads of kit that you’d have to pay thousands more for in options. Many people don’t look at that when they are trying to buy the cheapest new car they can. But many people do want options on their Mazda3, or Corolla or Civic. And for those people, the Astra is not too expensive. The culprit from this writer’s mental CSI lab? First, zero advertising for the Astra. It’s not a legacy nameplate (i.e. Corolla or Civic) so they can’t just expect people to know it’s out there. Second, the mileage is a few pegs off from the class leaders: compare a 24/30 Astra to a 25/36 Civic. I don’t care, but lots of other people do. Third and finally, the Astra is hatchback only. I love hatchbacks. You might love hatchbacks. But Nissan was smart enough to realize that Americans are only warming up to hatchbacks; that’s why the ass-ugly Versa sedan outsells the more pleasant Versa hatch. Bottom line: the Astra (a truly decent car) is headed to the enthusiast’s scrap heap. There it can join other high-potential, half-executed Lutz ideas like the Merkur xr4ti, Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky, Pontiac GTO, and Pontiac G8. At least they’re all cheap to buy used.

Scion is still pushing the individualist, customized youth brand schtick. The melodramatic ad above– which one can only hope is meant in a tongue-in-cheeck tone– once again flogs the tuner car image and notion of a Scion owners’ community. There’s no question that Scion’s lineup has some character– even if the linch-pin xB was diluted beyond recognition last year. But pursuit of the Fast and the Furious set is so five years ago. A company with clever small cars, small engines, decent MPGs, practical hatchbacks, and low no-haggle MSRPs should be selling itself as just that. Or, to quote former Scion exec and current Lexus exec Brian Bolain, “If we could relaunch Scion, I wouldn’t ever have called it a youth brand, because it’s a kiss of death.” So why didn’t the ad department get the memo?