The last time we checked-in with jameslist.com, they were pimping a no-miles-to-speak-of XJ220 that was up for auction. I didn’t play coy on the subject; I slated the XJ220 as a slap-in-the-face of Jag’s history, and one of the most difficult and dangerous automobiles to drive on a public road. Period. Several of our Best and Brightest leaped (leaped I tell you) to the big cat’s defense. It’s as sexy as Kate Beckinsale writhing on a kitchen counter-top in front of aluminum pots of steaming water (as if).  And Jeremy Clarkson says the XJ’s faster than a Pagani Zonda (in a straight line)! So, from that “debate” to this: the BMW 5-Series GT. If you ask me—and I’m fully aware you haven’t—james has grown a set of stones. While BMW doesn’t play at the top tier, their boutique brand Rolls Royce sure does. And the company has a nasty history of vindictiveness against truth-telling journos. So well done that man, ’cause the GT is fugly. AND the rear seats don’t fold flat. Take it away James. Please.

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Now that former Susan Docherty has been elevated to the nationalized automaker’s top marketing slot, the ever-churlish independent press (guilty as charged) has focused on the fact that the former Buick-Pontiac-GMC marketing chief is a GM lifer—in a company with a sworn dedication to change its cancerous culture. Only hours after hinting that he’d consider a non-GM exec for marketing jefe, fellow GM lifer and current CEO Fritz Henderson gave Docherty the nod and said this about that: “Whoever replaced LaNeve needed to come from inside GM because the dealership network and sales role is complicated and would be difficult for an outsider to learn.” Hubris meets the Peter Principle on the taxpayer’s dime. Nice. So . . . what’s this, then, from the GM press release announcing Docherty’s ascension? “GM will look outside to fill the Buick-GMC general manager position. ‘This will infuse new ideas and an outside perspective into our marketing efforts,’ Henderson said.” So what’s good enough for Buick-GMC isn’t good enough for the corporate mothership? Never mind singing from the same page; GM’s management is so out of tune it makes caterwauling cats seem like the The Philippine Madrigal Singers, only nowhere near as exotic.

True story: New Chrysler’s Italian boss has promised America’s taxpayer/owners that the former bankrupt will release its “five-year plan” on November fourth. Setting aside the laughable idea that Chrysler has enough money to survive ’til 2011 (never mind 2014), one wonders whether the CEO of a multi-billion dollar automotive conglomerate could be that ignorant of history, or that good at post-modern irony. Lest we (or he) forget, the Soviet Union’s Gosudarstvennyi Komitet po Planirovaniyu (GOSPLAN) pretty much coined the phrase “five-year plan” when they tried to force the state-controlled Russian economy to do . . . whatever they told it to do. And how did that turn out? “Altogether, there were 13 five-year plans,” the Wikipedia hive mind reports. “The first one was accepted in 1928, for the five year period from 1929 to 1933, and completed one year early. The last, thirteenth Five-Year Plan was for the period from 1991 to 1995 and was not completed, as the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.” Not to put too fine a point on it, the USSR’s five-year plans were a monumental failure; an effort at social control that resulted in misery (e.g. starvation, forced migrations) for millions of people. Marchionne’s use of the term is about as bad as it gets without evoking Godwin’s Law. Still, can’t wait!

CBC News reports that Canada’s federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson brought some glad tidings to a recent meeting of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) chief executive Andrew Murie, Nicholson promised to consider legalizing random breath tests for Canadian motorists. Surprisingly (at least to me), this is not news. “In June, a House of Commons parliamentary committee recommended changing the legislation to allow for random testing, arguing it is an effective deterrent. The change would also bring Canada in line with a number of other countries in Europe and countries like Australia, which have adopted similar measures.” Hey, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear right? I mean, if a police state saves ONE CHILD, it’s worth it. And MADD reckons it could save HUNDREDS of poor innocent children from the murderous hands of drunk drivers. “Murie said [random breath tests] biggest selling point is that it improves road safety, with drunk driving fatalities dropping 36 per cent in Australia after legislation was introduced, and 23 per cent in Ireland when it made the change.”

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Brook from team-bhp.com sent us this heads-up re: the “other” burgeoning automobile market: India. “Here’s a list of the Top 20 selling cars in India. Ford doesn’t have one car in the top twenty. Chevy has one, thanks to a rebadged Daewoo called the Spark. Suzuki (Maruti) and Hyundai are the clear leaders. Tata could have done better if only the unfortunately named Indica Vista wasn’t so conservative. Most people confuse it with the older first generation Indica. Tata Nano volumes will pick up, but Jag and Landie’s owners barely make any money selling the car itself. Honda’s hawking overpriced (and poorly equipped) cars with terrible after sales service as ‘bonus,’ and Hyundai are stealing their lunch.” So now you know.

Today’s This morning’s GM WTF moment comes to us from CNN’s Assignment Detroit. It’s a damning report on GM’s post-bankruptcy travails, penned by veteran auto industry scribe Chris Isodore. You may remember Chris as the reporter to whom I recently gave shit about not giving a shit about GM’s refusal to release a secret list of closed dealers. Which TTAC’s number cruncher eventually created. Which all but the Orlando Sentinel ignored. Anyway, props to Isodore for doing a little barrel fish shooting, unearthing yet more disquieting factoids about your friendly neighborhood nationalized automaker. For example, “GM will now have to pay Saturn dealers between $100,000 and $1 million each to wind down, which will cost the company more than $100 million . . . GM spokesman John McDonald said that the company never counted on avoiding payments to dealers through a Saturn sale. So the collapse of the Saturn deal is not a setback.” Wait; what about the GM mothership’s lost volume/market share? Hope and change baby!

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Though I’m not as old as Bob Lutz (who rivals Mermaid Man for out-and-out age-related dottiness), I’m ancient enough to remember when Night Rider first put the pixels in pistonhead. I also recall an era when social commentators got their knickers in a twist about videogame violence. In terms of driving sims, they seemed to find the idea of running people over somehow anti-social. Personally, I saw nothing wrong with it—save the homicidal motorists’ tendency to imitate Beavis and Butthead when doing the deed. But I wonder what’s happened to the really violent stuff. Oh sure, you can find the odd gem— like this flash game called Blood Car. But the Carmeggedon franchise is dead; in 2005, the fourth installment was canceled without explanation. That’s the same year 60 Minutes reported on an alleged link between Grand Theft Auto and an actual cop killing—producing yawns for all concerned (save the cop’s family and the defense lawyers). So, for those of us out of the loop, what’s the current state of play when it comes to electronic automotive mayhem? [Warning: video NSFE… not safe for epileptics]

A member of our TTAC faithful brought this Car and Driver BM photoshop scandal to our attention in a comment posted under a recent Ask the Best and Brightest. I let it go unremarked at the time. But now that Autoblog has picked-up the Car and Driver cudgel and beat the mag over the head with it, the story has officially mainstreamed (not to verbize or anything). Whatever credibility and good will the Alterman regime has generated at Car and Driver just disappeared in a puff of imaginary tire smoke. Imagine blaming the writer for browbeating the art department into faking a drag race to mislead the reader. And then calling deceived readers idiots. As someone who grew-up devouring Car and Driver, this is the final straw. Enjoy the slide boys. There’s no coming back.

John Phillips became so attached to the BMW X6M that it – appropriately enough – triggered many irrational responses. One of these was his insistence that we photoshop the BMW beating the clearly superior Chevy Nova. Any attempt to dissuade him – by telling him, for instance, that only an idiot would believe a BMW SUV could beat a purpose-built drag car – just resulted in heated calls to the suicide hotline and even more foaming at the mouth than usual.

As Colonel George Taylor would say, they’ve finally done it. Chrysler, the formerly bankrupt, federally-financed, Italian-owned carmaker has created a fourth automotive brand: Ram. As the company can’t come out and say they’re hiving-off Ram trucks to simplify Chrysler’s inevitable Chapter 7 fire sale, CEO Sergio Marchionne’s birth announcement blamed Dodge for the move (of all things). “This reorganization will allow us to protect and develop the unique nature of the product offerings within the Dodge Brand.” Yeah, ’cause all those Dodge Rams were muddying-up Dodge’s otherwise pristine image, used to such great effect with the Caliber and Avenger. To continue Dodge’s evolution towards filling Pontiac’s performance remit (I shit you not), Sergio’s appointed Ralph Gilles as the old brand’s new head, which will, presumably, no longer be that of a male sheep. As Gilles is the Canadian designer who unleashed the gangsta-riffic Chrysler 300, here’s hoping for an official name change to “The Dodge Boyz.” Meanwhile, The Detroit News [sub] is ROTFL about Sergio’s intentions to take Chrysler upmarket. Apparently, it’s going to be a “tough sell.”

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I have no idea why Mark LaNeve still works for General Motors. The former Cadillac man was serving Kool-Aid on the bridge when CEO Rick Wagoner was Richard Nixon channeling Captain Queeg. When Old GM sank into bankruptcy, LaNeve (and Bob Lutz and Fritz Henderson and the whole damn crew) should have gone down with the ship. Instead, they transferred to another boat and headed straight for the same iceberg. No surprise there: hitting icebergs is who they are and what they do. I’m not saying that LaNeve’s recent remarks about culling GM stores [via Automotive News] reveal that he’s wrong to trim the automaker’s bloated dealer network. I’m saying that LaNeve is going about it the wrong way. Here’s my thinking . . .

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TTAC commentator JollyJerry posits the following:

I’m looking for some recommendations and insight on highway cruisers that would coddle me and my girlfriend on a long multi-state road trip. I’m a tall lanky guy at 6′ 4″, so the Scion xB has been a perfect car for me so far. It’s definitely the wrong car to take for a long trip because it hurts my back, and I can’t stand the engine, wind, and road noise after a few hours. Here’s a list of cars I’ve been researching just to give an idea of what I’ve been looking at on TTAC and other sites: Ford Crown Victory / Mercury Grand Marquis / Marauder Toyota Avalon Chevy Impala / Monte Carlo Chevy Caprice Lexus LS Chrysler 300M Pontiac Bonneville Hyundai XG350. The ideal car would be cheap (<5k), reliable for at least a few months, incredibly comfortable on our bums and backs, and dead quiet. For this car, I wouldn’t care about looks or handling if I could get the above list. Good mileage would be a nice to have too because we’ll cover a lot of miles. Last generation domestic full-size sedans seem to do well on price and comfort. I’m more afraid of the Buicks and Cadillacs because of repair costs. Cost is also a big factor for most of the European sedans. What do you all think? Is there a car I’m missing that would be great for traveling all over the country and then selling?

I have no doubt the guys at Sharkwerks know their onions when it comes to engine modifications. But here we have yet another video where the soundtrack underneath is as inappropriate as an intern dancing buck naked on a boardroom table at Black Rock. Not only does the keyboard player deploy a pseudo-strings sound originally sampled by Robert Arthur Moog in the late sixties (true story), the performance asks the bizarre question “what’s wistful about a Porche 997 GT3RS with a highly modified 3.9L engine producing 500hp?” Answer: nothing. The Best and the Brightest know that the last thing a powerful engine needs is a backing track that makes the artistes at royaltyfreemusic.com seem like Gustav Mahler. Click ahead to 7:00. For fifty-five blissful seconds, we hear all we need to hear. All we want to hear. Note to car video producers: step WAY from the synth. Your true destiny lies in San Fernando Valley, where porn producers treat generic audio wallpaper with all the respect it deserves.

Our friends over at jameslist.com sent us a heads-up re: today’s collector car auction at Coy’s of Kensington, in Ascot (famous enabler of post-modern millinery). “Bargains isn’t [sic] Coys’ game, but if you are a collector in search of fine automobiles, or happen to be on the hunt for a Jaguar XJ200 with less than 200 miles on the odometer, then Coys is for you.” Now that’s what I call a niche market. Forget the how-low-can-you-go odo. Aside from styling, Jag’s early-90s foray into the supercar market was an abject failure, rendering the vehicle “collectible” only in the Edsel sense of the word. The headline issue: a late-in-the-game change from the original engine spec (a 500hp 6.2-liter V12) to a 3.2-liter six V6. V6? Forced induction? The new engine had about as much to do with Jaguar heritage as a Wolo Bad Boy Compact Airhorn. And sounded worse (if slightly quieter). Not . . . to mention . . . TURBO LAG! Hard to believe, but that wasn’t the worst of it . . .

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