TTAC’s call for Chrysler to reveal what the hell it plans on doing with U.S. taxpayers’ $10 billion “investment” has been answered. According to Automotive News [sub], a plan for Chrysler’s product line-up is “emerging” ahead of the official reveal in . . . November. That said, calling so-called plan “vague” would like be calling Hillary Clinton’s tome “It Takes a Village” slightly left-leaning and insufficiently attributed. Anyway, here ya go: “A Chrysler brand with more luxury than Cadillac. A Dodge brand known for driving dynamics. A Jeep lineup that is — well, Jeep. And vehicles to cover every market segment so that wildly fluctuating fuel prices won’t destroy sales.” Sounds crazy and it’ll never work.

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Scanning the autoblogosphere, I did a figurative double-take on Autoblog’s headline: 2010 Detroit Auto Show main floor is full, recession officially OVER. Since when does Autoblog do irony? Since never, apparently. Here’s the genesis . . .  After a disastrous 2009, where major manufacturers pulled out of the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) like a recently divorced billionaire riding bareback, the event’s organizers are fighting for their employer’s survival. Like any marketeer steeped in the ways of Motown, they’re going on all-out with their primary weapon: lies. I mean, baseless hype. Kool-Aid anyone? First to drink: the Detroit Free Press. “‘Every space on the main floor is full,’ a marked departure from the gaps that dotted Cobo’s display space this year because of the disappearance of brands including Nissan, Infiniti, Mitsubishi and Suzuki, show chairman Doug Fox said in an interview at the Frankfurt auto show. Fox declined to name any brands that could return because negotiations are ongoing. One leading possibility might be Porsche. The German sports car specialist abandoned the NAIAS for the Los Angeles auto show a few years ago but has been disappointed that its events in L.A. generate less global news media coverage than it received from Detroit.” That doesn’t sound smell like victory in the morning to me. A full main floor—at what price? How many carmakers? In fact, I smell something else. Not Autoblog though.

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So, Roger Penske is going to buy Saturn from GM. “Is going to” being the operative words. With the US automotive market sinking to record lows, musical chairing towards a long-overdue “contraction,” one wonder if Mr. Penske is playing the “waiting is winning” game. The New York Times article on  Penske’s Saturn plans doesn’t pierce the veil surrounding the devilish details. But we re-learn the fact that Saturn is working towards that glorious day when it no longer sells badge-engineered Opels. “’We’re going to have GM to start with in this business, and then we’re going to move on to another manufacturer in the future,’ he said in his call with analysts.” Which raises the obvious question: whom? “Speculation in the industry has centered on the French carmaker Renault, which has ties to both Nissan in Japan and Samsung in South Korea, and several Chinese auto companies as possible partners for Mr. Penske in the venture. But would Saturn loyalists consider a Chinese-made car a Saturn?” Renault, no. But it’s still an excellent question. The answering of which depends upon The Big One: what IS a Saturn?

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Silicon Valley believes itself different from Detroit. From anywhere, really, In fact, they’re masters of the friggin’ universe! Detroit? Detroit’s automakers must die! Will die! Are dying. Die Detroit, die! Long live . . . Tesla?

“I do not believe that the U.S. auto business can be competitive,” said Ray Lane, a managing partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, told Automotive News [sub] “I don’t see any of these new car companies based in Detroit.”

Re-write press releases much? More than you might think.

A River Runs Through: Imagine an SUV that is able to blaze from zero to sixty in 5.9 seconds, then jump off the highway into the valley and across the river, and be back on the street in time for dinner. Give it a clean wash and the aforementioned story would have seemed like a small white lie. This is what a supercharged V8 is able to accomplish in the Range Rover Sport, a sophisticated 4×4 that runs like a sports car. Available with both new engines, I fancy the S/C model by far.

Actually, I think this conversion—brought to us by the good people at Ricedexotics.com— took some real balls. The Veylet or Bentron is an automotive middle finger to all those people who view automotive heritage as anything worth noting, protecting or projecting. The question here is . . . who? Nouveau riche, of course. But after that, what? They like the Veyron’s nose but can’t afford the real thing, so figured why not stick it on something “exotic”? And then there’s the question of copyright infringement. VW (Bugatti) and BMW (Bentley) must have scouts roaming the Far East looking for branded knocks offs, so why haven’t they— oh wait. Never mind.

The bile triggered by news of my departure (last day November 12) brought back old memories of rancorous accusations of anti-American bias. At the beginning of the GM Death Watch, I had to delete several hundred obscene, hate-filled comments and ban dozens of persistent posters of TTAC Must Die TOO comments. Now, after the fact of Chrysler’s and GM’s bankruptcy, there’s a revisionist theme arising. “Anyone” could have predicted Detroit’s dissolution (many did long before TTAC, of course). And, believe it or not, yeah, well everything’s OK now. New GM is kicking ass. Leaving aside that delusion, I wonder: when was the last moment GM could have turned things around? I reckon it was the day that Bob Lutz and Rick Wagoner decided to spend GM money refreshing their GMT SUVs. IF GM had spent that cash improving their passenger cars AND cutting brands (they could have afforded to do so at the time) AND then got rid of Lutz and Wagoner for an outsider like Mulally, they MAY have dodged the bullet. As I told Stuart Varney, if my grandmother had wheels I’d be a trolley car. Still, what’s your take? When was the last time old GM could have turned it around?

Automotive News [sub] brings glad tidings for auto execs drunk on Clunkers: “September’s light-vehicle sales rate will fall to 8.8 million units, consumer auto site Edmunds.com said. That would be the lowest rate in nearly 28 years, tying the worst demand on record.” Well, I did predict an 8m seasonally-adjusted annual sales (SAAR) rate. But did they listen? Noooooo. “They” had to spend $3 billion of taxpayers’ money on a cash infusion that did nothing—zip—to improve the industry’s long term well being. Or even longer. In fact, what’s the bet that the news (which hits for real on October 1) will trigger MORE federal spending on the ailing American automakers? You ain’t seen nothing yet. “Many people regard February as the darkest month of the recession, but even then the SAAR was higher, at 9.1 million units,” Edmunds.com senior statistician Zhenwei Zhou said in a statement. Expect to hear more apocalyptic pronouncements at an MSM outlet near you soon.

Well, that’s it. The end of an era. After founding this website with zero viewers and zero page views, after nurturing it for ten years, my time at TTAC is winding down. Thanks to my wife Sam, who told me to press “send “on a post on pistonheads.com that left more than a few bridges smoldering in my wake. I thank her for understanding the sacrifices needed to do this work. Thanks to TTAC’s Best and Brightest, for making the site possible. Without your insights and appreciation, nothing. Thanks to TTAC’s managing editors—Frank Williams, Justin Berkowitz and Edward Niedermeyer—for understanding and realizing TTAC’s mission. And thanks to TTAC’s writers for their selfless dedication to the site; their passion, wit and wisdom. I shall miss you all.

I’ve often wondered why Ford hasn’t played-up the fact that it never suckled on Uncle Sam’s teat. Oh wait; what’s this? “Ford gets $5.9 billion loan from Department of Energy“? Well, that doesn’t count, right? It’s not a bailout, right? Anyway, discretion is the better part of valor, they say. The day may come when Ford needs to exercise the line of federal credit they established around the time of Bailout V1. I guess it makes sense to let the media trumpet the “fact” that FoMoCo isn’t a ward of the state and leave it at that. So it was a complete surprise to see Ford slap down GM today, in a Detroit News article about the rush to put cars on lots post-Cash for Clunkers. “We knew that our inventories would be drawn down, so we planned increases. We factored that into our production schedule,” said George Pipas, head of sales analysis at the Dearborn automaker. “GM may have been more conservative. They’re now doing what we did a month ago.” Ouch! Could this be the start of some serious cross-town bitch-slapping? Probably not. Still, we can dream . . .

Apparently so. Automotive News [sub] reports that “Fiat Group manufacturing guru Stefan Ketter inspected Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit this morning as part of a series of North American plant visits to improve Chrysler quality and efficiency, UAW officials said today.” So why is this news? Other than the fact that maybe Ketter hasn’t been to ChryCo plants before now? I mean, you’d kinda hope that Fiat’s main manufacturing man would have checked-out ALL Chrysler plants prior to U.S. taxpayers handing the Italians over ten billion dollars and the keys to the bankrupt automaker’s, uh, fortune. Anyway, boy what a guru! “[UAW Local 1700 President Bill] Parker said he was optimistic after Ketter’s four-hour visit today that the Sterling Heights plant would stay open beyond the current Sebring production run through December 2010.” Is Ketter a hypnotist? If he is, he’s a damn good one.

A brand is a promise to the consumer. It’s the umbrella under which all products must shelter. All the people responsible for a brand must ensure that it meets that promise. The Toyota Prius is a promise of reliable transportation that achieve high-mileage with low emissions. So it’s no wonder that Toyota has decided to stretch the brand to other vehicles. Oh, wait, the Prius isn’t a brand. It’s a model within a brand, which contains other examples of reliable transportation that achieves high-mileage with low emissions. Is that confusing? Well if it isn’t now, it soon will be. “The Highlander hybrid and Camry hybrid do OK, but calling it ‘Synergy Drive’ never resonated with consumers,” veteran Toyota dealer Earl Stewart told Automotive News [sub]. “But they can make hay on the Prius name. It’s a magic name. If somebody says ‘I drive a Prius,’ everybody knows what he means.” But for how long? The truth about a brand is that its products must fulfill the brand’s promise, or the brand dies. Confusing that brand diminishes it and alienates the people who gave birth to it in the first place. Maybe not straight away, but eventually. And forever.

Here’s an excerpt from the CARS.GOV website, spotted by one our eagle-eyed readers:

Do I get any money for my trade in vehicle in addition to the CARS credit?

YES. The law requires your trade-in vehicle be destroyed. The dealer must disclose to you the scrap value of your vehicle. The dealer is entitled to keep up to $50 of the scrap value for administrative fees. You are entitled to negotiate about who keeps the remaining scrap value. For example, you may use that money toward the price of your new car separate from the CARS credit.

How many customers received this federally-mandate disclosure from their dealer? Not many, I’d wager. TTAC writer and used car guru Steve Lang reckons the average clunker was worth between $300 and $350 in scrap. So let’s call it $250 per car. Multiply that by the estimated 700,000 crushed clunkers and you’re looking at some $175,000,000 that may have been left on the table. Oops! Our tipster reckons that money should have gone back to taxpayers, anyway. I reckon he’s right.

One of our Best and Brightest over in South Korea got the inside line on the new Hyundai Sonata. Here’s what he knows so far . . .

The car was officially released today [Hyundai press release HERE] in front of about 200 invited guests (I was NOT one of them). The car has been available for pre-sales for about 2 weeks and has, according to the salesperson I spoke to, sold over 20,000 units. For comparison, in August, the ‘old’ Sonata sold about 7,000 units. That number was probably down a little as people were no doubt waiting for the new model. In July, the ‘old’ Sonata sold about 9,000 units. So the new model has ‘pre-sold’ more than the last two months of sales of the old car. (These sales numbers of the ‘old’ model are official numbers from the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association).

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