Technically speaking, a spiff is an immediate payment to a sales person for a cha-ching. But you get the picture: GM is adding a one percent bonus for any of its dealers that [somehow] manages to shift certain ’09 models (i.e. not the new, still mythical Camaro). “The so-called marketing stimulus payments will be made six months after a vehicle is sold,” Bloomberg reports, upping the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s recent run of “unnamed sources” by one. “It will be computed from the base-model invoice price, said the people, who didn’t want to be identified because the plan hasn’t been made public.” The come-on is extremely important for GM’s cash flow, or lack thereof; the automaker books a vehicle as “sold” when it ships it to the dealer. So what are we talking here? “Dealers would receive hundreds of dollars per vehicle under the GM program. For instance, the payment would be $166 on a GMC Sierra pickup truck and $549 on a Hummer H2 SUT sport-utility vehicle, according to base-model invoice prices of $16,623 and $54,940, respectively, listed for the 2009 models on Edmunds.com, a provider of automotive information.” But not THE provider. And it’s all caps for HUMMER bub– and no sales. Hey waydaminute! Do they even make those things anymore? And if so, why?

Does anyone edit Jerry Flint’s columns? And yes that’s a trick question. If I were the editor in question, I would sit in awe of any curmudgeon brave enough to argue that GM deserves an extra long root in the federal taxpayers’ trough by admonishing readers that “we should remember Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem.” Ozymandias? That particular poem is about hubris and inevitably of death and decay. And yet our man Flint’s uses the work to suggest that U.S. taxpayers should bail out General Motors because we don’t want a great empire to, uh, decay and die. Here’s the deal: we owe them. “I have a long memory,” Flint opines, synapses firing like mad. “I remember World War II, when the president of GM– his name was William Knudsen– headed the successful effort to build our great war production machine. GM helped save America then.” That would be the same GM that aided and abetted the Nazi war machine. “I remember the great GM pay, pensions, health care and dividends that made life good for millions of Americans.” And the union corruption, intransigence and feather-bedding that made GM a sitting duck for transplant attack. But wait ’til you hear what Flint has to say about GM’s current management. You’re not going to want to miss this. Right after the break.

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“These are incredibly unusual times,” GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner said today at the 100th anniversary celebration of Harvard Business School in Boston. “All the sudden, somebody blows the whistle and credit stops flowing. It really requires you to say, `Let’s think about this business one more time.'” Oh, go on then…

If you harbored any doubts that Toyota is attacking the soft underbelly of its chief American rival, General Motors, this should eliminate them. Toyota Financial Services (TFS), one of only two AAA-rated auto credit companies, is launching the Toyota Rewards Visa®. Like GM’s card, ToMoCo’s Visa creates rewards points that can be redeemed when purchasing a vehicle from a Toyota delaership. Unlike GM’s card, ToMoCo’s plastic points are also redeemable towards service, parts and accessories. Card holders get five points for every $1 spent at Toyota dealerships, and a buck a point for everything else. There’s no limit to the amount of points a card holder can amass. Points are redeemed at one percent (e.g. $2500 worth of groceries equals $25 down at your Toyota dealer). There’s no annual fee, and a zero percent APR for the first six months. After that? Seems that depends on you. Well, your credit rating.

We’ve just received a copy an email sent by Ford’s Todd Lamb to dealers in his sales district. The missive from The Blue Oval Boy to FoMoCo’s Texas and Oklahoma dealers contains good news for beleaguered stores in the Lone Star and Sooner states. The automaker is reducing its wholesale floorplan rates by .5%. The move is in stark contrast to GMAC’s moves back in August, when the lender raised floorplan rates for GM stores by the same amount. At the same time, Ford’s decided NOT to raise their lending standards. “Unlike GMAC which announced that it will no longer finance customers with credit scores lower than 700, Ford Credit will maintain its’ [sic] consistent financing standards.” Will this offer Ford a competitive advantage? Probably not. But Lamb is nothing if not an optimist: “There’s plenty of reasons to be positive!” If you’ve got a second, we’d love a list, Todd. Full email after the jump.

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What’s with Ford and these quality studies? Not for the the first time, Ford has commissioned its own study on relative vehicle quality– you know, initial vehicle quality– and come out on top. Ish. You know; a “statistical dead heat.” Or, to be more or less precise, “With a combined average of 1,284 things-gone-wrong (TGW) per 1,000 vehicles during the first three months of ownership, Ford’s domestic brands improved 8 percent versus last year. This performance is statistically equivalent to the 1,250 TGW level of Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus/Scion.” Of course, you have to read all the way to the end, and Google a bit, to see that this PR exercise is Ford-subsidized. “The 2008 model-year GQRS survey, conducted for Ford by RDA Group of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., solicits feedback on vehicle trouble and customer satisfaction from owners of all major makes and models after three months in service.” [JD Powers’ Initial Quality Survey results here.] Anyway, it’s all for one, and One Ford for all: “This is One Ford at its best,” claims Bennie Fowler, Ford group vice president, Global Quality. “It’s taken thousands of people continuously working together with laser-like focus every day to boost vehicle quality for our customers to [just about] the top of the pack.”

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says that the federal government should double the amount of money allocated to the Department of Energy’s Detroit-friendly low-interest “retooling” loans. For those of you keeping track of our federal deficit, that would be $50b. But that’s not all! “Barack Obama’s top economic adviser said Monday an Obama administration would consider steps to rescue a failing domestic carmaker,” The Detroit News reports (without a single huzzah). “‘We should keep all options on the table’ to help the battered industry, Obama aide Jason Furman said. When asked twice if that meant Obama would prevent Ford, GM or Chrysler from going under, Furman would not commit to a specific strategy, repeating that ‘nothing would be off the table.'” Now how much would you pay? But wait! There’s more!

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You may remember project D: Chrysler’s plan to build something better than the world’s worst car for the mid-size segment. As it continues its campaign to replace the definition of the word gullible in Webster’s dictionary, Autobloggreen breathlessly reports that the fruit of Project D might be an electric vehicle! Tracing the story back to Automotive News [sub], it’s clear that this entirely theoretical car or cars might also run on unicorn farts. “Chrysler LLC will decide by late winter whether to partner with another automaker on its global mid-sized car platform, known as Project D, says CEO Bob Nardelli. Chrysler must decide whether to engineer the platform in-house and build vehicles at its own factories or work with another carmaker. The company has indicated it would prefer a partner. Chrysler said it has to decide ‘in three, four, five months,’ Nardelli said last week in an interview at Chrysler headquarters in suburban Detroit. ‘We have costed out the in-house version, and we’re still working with two or three platform providers.'” What’s the rush? Chrysler will be tango uniform long before any rubber can meet the rental car parking lot. Oh right, the alt power bit…

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The autoblogosphere’s self-styled Autoextremist normally posts every Wednesday. So you know things are OOC when Peter DeLorenzo feels compelled to unleash his weekly rant on a Monday. A good thing too; Sweet Pete knocks one out of the park. “Let me get this straight right off the bat,” DeLorenzo writes late in the fifth inning. “The reality of a merger between GM and Chrysler would be an unmitigated disaster of incalculable proportion, one that would decimate both companies… When you have one company that has too many models, too many divisions and too many dealers, how could you possibly think that combining that company with another company that has too many models, too many divisions and too many dealers would be a good idea?” Beats me. Having dispensed with that little piece of business, DeLorenzo is ready to predict ChryCo’s T.O.D. “With Cerberus being ‘done’ with Chrysler, the fate of the auto company based in Auburn Hills has been set. Within six months, Chrysler will be taken over or ‘parted out.’ Either way, Chrysler will cease to exist as we know it by next spring, if not sooner.” From there, it’s GM’s turn…

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These guys can’t win from losing. I mean, first GM seeks to evade responsibility for its cratered bsuiness by claiming that “no one” could have forseen the sudden spike in gas prices (or, God forbid, planned for that contingency after, what, two previous oil price shocks). And now GM Car Czar “Maximum Bob” Lutz is telling the LA Times that low gas prices threaten its plug-in electric – gas hybrid Volt-shaped Hail Mary. “We may hate high fuel prices, but they’ve been driving us in the right direction when it comes to fuel economy,” General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told the Times. “The company’s leading cheerleader for its $500-million program to develop an electric car” said “If we suddenly went to $1 or $1.50 a gallon, that would be really bad.” Don’t get me wrong. Lutz is right. As he was when he called federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards a “crock of shit.” No wait; that was global warming. Anyway, the thing of it is, stop bitching Bob. As someone who’s followed Lutz’s career at GM– listening to every excuse for his employer’s dismal performance short of “the sun was in my eyes”– I would like to officially go on record saying that GM needs to builds vehicles, not sound bites. That is all.

What’s beyond irony? Farce? Whatever it is, the fact that Chevrolet decided to underwrite Christian Slater’s new NBC series entitled “My Own Worst Enemy” is it. The show’s “bumpers” featured the Chevrolet Traverse and the Chevrolet Camaro in split screen head-on action, supposedly reflecting the electronically-induced multiple-personality disorder suffered by the show’s main character. Or is that characters? Although I was busy surfing the net at several points during the show– checking to see if Autoblog was live blogging (“we know it’s Albright having intercourse with Spivey’s wife cause he strikes her on the buttocks”)– I don’t think the Traverse was ever shown in motion. I guess NBC suits decided that Spivey couldn’t be THAT much of a Mr. Mom. That said, the Traverse did survive a nearby bomb blast without a scratch. But where was the dismembered limb on the windshield routine? The silver Camaro was ready for its close-up when Spivey got bored and took Albright’s whip (don’t ask) for a little late hoonage..

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While we await Andrew Dederer’s (or similar) translation, we are assured that Nissan has released this higher quality official version of their record-setting Nurburgring run to refute Porsche’s claims that their Japanese rivals were cheating. GTRblog.com says that “Nissan go on to say that the GT-R used in the official laptime was actually at a disadvantage due to up to 50 kilograms of testing equipment along for the ride. Offering Porsche some driver training lessons if they want to give it another try.”

Regular readers of this site will know that America’s domestic automakers and their captive finance units are not on speaking terms with the truth. The estrangement continues with news that GMAC (a GM – Chrysler co-production) is tightening-up its lending practices. GMAC spins the announcement as some kind of reflection on their sense of fiduciary responsibility: “GMAC Financial Services today implemented a more conservative purchase policy for consumer auto financing in the U.S. as a result of the lack of stability in the global capital and credit markets. The changes include limiting purchases to contracts with a credit score of 700 or above. Additionally, the company will restrict contracts with higher advance rates and longer terms.” As Automotive News [sub] points out, this is hardly an onerous “limitation.” “For the first seven months of 2008, prime customers with scores exceeding 700 represented 74.3 percent of the U.S. auto loan market.” But the real story is the story behind the story.

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Well, not lied, exactly. More like flip-flopped. In my last podcast epistle, I said TTAC wouldn’t make you jump on blog posts because that would be better for us (page views) than you (convenience). And it’s all about you (TTAC readers), not us (anti-social writers who have to make a living somehow). And then Justin and I began to discover something interesting. While other automotive websites use the click through to bore this shit out of readers with press releases (Autoblog), or as a money shot come-on-you-know-you-want-to (Jalopnik), we found we could do more creatively using two bites than one. In other words, we can provide the main news and then give you some background info and/or additional de-spinnage. Headline. Then color. Of course, that’s not true in every case. So we’re restricting ourselves to those occasions where it, uh, is. If this is pissing you off, give it a few days for us to get settled-in. And meanwhile, we know we have some tweakage left for the new design. The programmers are, unlike some of us, taking the day off. Imagine that.