Well we all knew it was coming. Were auto sales going to be great in the month where Lehman Brothers went into C11, Merrill Lynch had to be bought out, the taxpayers rescued AIG, and the government started voting on $1.3 trillion in spending and bailouts? Uh, no. But that didn’t soften the blow. How could it? Sales are awful for all the manufacturers, even the bright spots are dim. What does it all mean? It means the end of the era. But hey, Lamborghini has a new concept car. That makes everything okay, doesn’t it?

For September, GM’s sales of trucks and SUVs were stranger than weird. As you’d expect, all of the GM full sized SUVs saw sales fall in the 50 percent range or more (Yukon down 49 percent; Tahoe down 52.2 percent, Escalade down 53 percent, Hummer H2 down 65.7 percent). And the small SUVs also died and rotted on the vine, like the Equinox (down 57.1 percent), the Hummer H3 (down 53 percent), the Cadillac SRX (down 48.8 percent), the Torrent (down 56.3 percent). But miraculously (fleetastically?) the Lambda family SUVs held on for dear life – the Acadia, Outlook, and Enclave – and managed to maintain or increase their sales compared with September 2007. The pickup trucks also shocked the heck out of the spreadsheet readers, with more or less consistent sales compared to last year’s September. The Silverado declined only a few percentage points, and sales of the GMC Sierra were actually up 1.6 percent. What gives? The pickup truck market already disintegrated over a year ago. What’s left is probably mostly people that actually need to buy pickups. While the housing construction market is nonexistent and businesses generally are hurting, pickup truck sales may have found their temporary equilibrium with gas prices. Oh, that and $5k and in additional rebates.

It really could have been a lot worse. Or, as GM puts it, “”GM outpace(d) major competitors this month… total September sales were down 16 percent compared to an industry decline anticipated to exceed 20 percent.” Yes, well, there’s this little matter of “Employee Discount” pricing inflating sales and eating into margins. And fleets. Let’s not forget the fleets. Anyway, while metal was moved, everyone took a hit for the team; all eight GM brands posted significant losses. Chevrolet was down 11.2 percent; Cadillac was down 39.1 percent; Buick dropped 20.5 percent; Pontiac fell 26 percent, Saturn skidded 10.8 percent, and Saab continued its erosion by 27 percent for the month. A handful of models made headway. The Chevrolet Malibu rose a staggering (and suspicious) 62 percent (fleets!). The Impala increased 17.1 percent. The Pontiac Vibe co-production (with Toyota) jumped some 90 percent, to 5703 units. AS for gas – elctric non-sequitors, “For the month, a total of 1,957 hybrid vehicles were delivered as GM hybrids continue to gain in popularity in the marketplace.” Remind me again how many billions GM spent on its two-mode hybrid system?

Not even giants are impervious to the economy, tight credit, and lack of buyers. Toyota watched as its once mighty sales dropped 32.3 percent overall, with the Toyota brand falling 28.9 percent and Lexus down 33.4 percent compared to September 2007 (the latter two numbers were reported as adjusted sales stats). The Camry and Corolla both took 24 to 25 percent plunges, falling by 11k and 8k units respectively. The Yaris was approximately consistent at 5,700 units sold compared to 5,900 last September. The fuel-sipping media darling Prius dropped some 13 percent to 10,873 sales this month. As for Lexus, everything was down by double digit percentage points. The cash-cow ES350 (that’s the fancy Camry) was down a whopping 37 percent; the pathetic SC430 moved a laughable 129 units. On the truck side, business was worse. The Tundra died on the lots, with sales falling 60 percent. The crucial RAV-4 was down 28 percent, and the Highlander dropped a similar 30 percent. The only real good news: the Sienna stayed oddly consistent at just under 10k units this month, and the Sequoia increased about 1k units (for a still tiny total of 2,030). All of the Scions were also down by significant margins.

Hyundai is reporting that it too was burned in September. Sonata sales were the only area of increase, with a jump of some 31.7 percent, to a total of 8,629 for September. (The nasty little asterisk is that the Sonata is so heavily sold to fleet that Hyundai no longer breaks out the actual number of cars that end up in rental and big company parking lots.) The tiny, cheap, and fairly frugal Accent dipped from 3,120 last September to 3,014 this past month. Not entirely surprising– with financing in such short supply– shoppers for a $12k car are frequently not the most desirable loan candidates for panicking banks. The Elantra also fell off a cliff, dropping 48.6 percent from 7,164 last September to 3,681 now. Don’t even mention the SUVs, which might as well have been taken out back and shot. The Santa Fe plummeted from 7,496 to 4,676. The Tuscon also collapsed, dropping from 3,693 last September to a paltry 1,294 this month. If you take the new Genesis out of the equation, which wasn’t on sale last year and replaced no model, Hyundai would actually be down more like 28.5 percent. So much for buying cheap for keeps.

“This is the toughest economy we’ve seen in a long time.” This piercing glimpse into the obvious comes to us from Volkswagen of North America COO Mark Barnes. Despite sales of over 1,077 units of the Tiguan– which wasn’t on sale last year– every other VW flopped. As we’ve pointed out previously, those 1k Tiguan sales likely came out of the Rabbit’s hide. Rabbit sales fell 37.5 percent, a loss of some 700 sales, compared to September 2007. The Passat also crashed and burned, down 56.5 percent from 2,704 sales last September to a paltry 1,176 this September (a $24k base price and premium gas requirement probably aren’t helping). The Beetle and Beetle Convertible also cratered, falling from a combined 3,109 last September to 1,888 cars in September 2008. It’s not a pretty picture when the company that’s supposed to be selling fuel efficient, affordable European cars has a range merely somewhat efficient, rather expensive Mexican-made European branded cars. I blame staid styling (Rabbit, Jetta), the aforementioned silly prices, and an America-unfriendly engine lineup dominated by a five-cylinder tractor motor. Also, with the American recession in full swing, Volkswagen’s earned (or unjustified, depending on your view) reputation for building unreliable cars isn’t doing it any favors.

For the Paris Auto Show and 2009 model year, Volkswagen subsidiary Skoda has updated its Jetta-based Octavia sedan. The refreshed car gets new headlights and tail lights; engineering changes are unlikely, even though this generation was introduced in 2004. This means it continues to be much cooler than the Jetta, by being cheaper (though having tragically bad resale value), offering the same engines and transmissions, and coming only in 5-door hatch and wagon configurations. I have argued for a news-cycle-eternity that VW should be selling the Octavia in the US with a VW logo right on the grill. This won’t happen, first and foremost because Volkswagen hates freedom and liberty. But also because … I’m not sure why. Have a look at the refreshed Octavia, and here’s to hoping the next gen Jetta (probably out in about a year) looks better than the current Corolla wannabe.

While the official debut at the Paris Auto Show isn’t set to take place for a few days, yada yada yada, photos of the X1 are now available on the internet. I think it looks like a modern BMW crossover thingy, which means it looks awful (reference X3, X5, X6). It looks dangerously close to the out-of-date X3 in size, and the platform is some kind of 1-Series/3-Series crossbreed, meaning it can likely accept every engine those two cars offer. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the production X1 will look a lot like this. Worst part: the name reminds me of the awesome Bell X-1, the plane that broke the sound barrier.

The Citroen GT, new Lamborghini, BMW X1, and Ford Mustang have all been “featured” in a series of teaser photos and videos over at some “other” automotive websites. They show nothing. A wheel, part of a bumper, a section of a taillight. The goal is to get the car into the news and readers’ minds, and it’s successful from a PR standpoint at doing that. But it’s also successful at pissing me off. The teasers don’t really give an indication of what a car is going to look like, which leads me to find them completely useless. I’d blame the manufacturers, but since they all do it, that’s totally futile. Rest assured, however, that when all these cars make their proper and full debuts, we’ll have pictures for you – including many shots from the Paris auto show, which begins in just a few days, thanks to our European correspondent Martin Schwoerer.

This morning, Bloomberg took a look at Renault’s epic implosion in the past year. Financially, the big French carmaker saw its stock nosedive 55% in the past twelve months. Sales are down, and Renault’s European market share has fallen from 9.7% in 2005 to 7.7% so far this year. And Renault’s traditional strong market segments (i.e. mini-minivans) have been taking a beating from other companies, including French rivals Peugeot and Citroen. To make matters worse, VW is about to come out with a new Golf three weeks before Renault releases its new Megane, and the Golf gets better fuel economy than the Megane across the board. Nissan – of which Renault owns 44% – is at huge risk in the US economy (goodbye Murano, Pathfinder, Xterra, Armada, QX56, FX35, and Quest sales). Oh, and Renault’s big hope for making their estimates for the year is a €160 million royalty payment from Russian manufacturer AvtoVaz for licensing the design of the supercheap Dacia Logan. And speaking of which, Renault is facing declining sales for the Dacia Logan as the global economy gets crappier and people in places like Eastern Europe and Latin America have less money to spend on a new car. With all this in mind, Ghosn – once considered Nissan’s savior – may have to step down from the CEO position at Nissan as a bargain with irate shareholders so that he can keep his Renault job. And you thought things were bad for Chrysler.

I don’t have anything else to say. Lieberman thinks the Hyundai Sonata (decent car, really) handles better than the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S. I think Lieberman has been hitting the wine early in anticipation of the Jewish holidays. There are, however, some cars with great enthusiast reputations that some of us are just not on board with. Lieberman doesn’t like the MINI. I don’t get the fuss over the 1-Series, Nissan 350Z, or even the Nissan GT-R. P.J. McCombs just doesn’t love the Lexus IS-F. Jay Shoemaker doesn’t dig the Maserati GT. And so on. It just goes to show, there’s nothing truly objective about cars. Even the truth. Especially the truth.

George Clooney, the celebrity noted for breaking into Casinos, bringing a little compassion to Fred Friendly, breaking out of prison, double-killing vampires, and being a pretty lousy Batman is expanding his resume. This time, he’s doing an ad for the Japanese domestic market Honda Odyssey (completely different from the American version) over in Milan. And that’s a global world for you: American actor, Italian film set, car that’ll be sold only in Asia.

Maserati has a new version of the Gran Turismo called the “Corse.” (Check it out at AutoFiends). It’s stripped out, no sound insulation, racetrack ready. Lieberman tells me it’s like a Porsche GT3 RS or an Aston Martin V8 Vantage N24. I initially thought that these cars were pretty silly. When you’re talking about that level of money, you don’t need the car to be street legal. Sure you could drive it home from the racetrack, but would you want to? I saw the episode of Top Gear when James May drives one and sweats his walnuts off. These cars are just brutal; so I figured you would stick it in a trailer and haul it home behind your Escalade. Sure, I have plenty of friends that take their personal cars to and from autocross. But that’s a different story. But I have realized the benefit for manufacturers selling cars like these. First, they are profit machines because customers pay more and get less. But more importantly, they let buyers feel closer to the racecars and the brand’s supposed sports car credentials. Think of it as buying a set of kitchen knives because Gordon Ramsey uses the same ones at home. It’s all about what your car is capable of (I mean, I don’t usually drive 155 in the U.S.). And in this case, the special racing-spec version of already expensive cars are just what the millionaire toy collecter ordered.

TTAC tested a private car August 15.
Lieberman tested a press car September 19.

The name “Lagonda” is one of those car brands you hear tossed around in historical context like the proverbial football. But I was the bad athlete in elementary school, and so no one threw me the football. Apparently Aston Martin, which owns the name, is going to start cranking out cars with the Lagonda badge again. Until recently, I had no real idea what a Lagonda was, is, or is supposed to be. So first thing’s first: prewar Lagondas. From the company’s first car in 1907 until World War II, Lagonda made the kinds of cars you sort of imagine when you think “sports car” and “prewar.” Some models were better than others, some had 1.1 liter 4-cylinder engines, others had 4.5 liter inline sixes, and even some had 4.5 liter V12s with a 5000 rpm “redline.” Many of these cars were even designed by W.O. Bentley, the founder of Bentley Motors, who was pushed out of his namesake company. And during that prewar era, Lagonda was (arguably, to history geeks) a real competitor to Bentley and Rolls-Royce. After World War II, the British car industry started to implode, everybody was merging, and Aston Martin bought Lagonda. And then Aston more or less croaked the Lagonda brand. They produced some of their prewar cars into the 1950s, and also did the original “Rapide” – which essentially looked like a four door Aston DB4. Very cool, but only 50-some cars were ever made. And then Lagonda became the badge for the crazy four door Aston Martin sedans from the 1970s and 1980s that we’ve all seen. And now you know.