Now that the deed is done, now that your elected representatives have funded the Department of Energy’s low-interest auto industry loan program, The New York Times is closing the barn door behind $25b worth of bolted horse. “There are other, perhaps more pressing demands on the public purse than merely helping out General Motors, Ford and Chrysler: guaranteeing all Americans access to affordable health care, improving the nation’s schools, mending the country’s threadbare social safety net to help unemployed workers. The list could go on.” More relevantly, the Grey Lady views Detroit’s designs on the cash with considerable consternation. “Moreover, while the money is ostensibly meant to further the cause of fuel efficiency, we fear Detroit’s automakers will be tempted to put it to other uses. The Department of Energy, which is in charge of writing detailed criteria for car companies to get the loans, should include a provision for strict oversight of the program to ensure that the money is not diverted to other purposes.” Seconded. But the Times does itself no favors when it characterizes The Big 2.8 as “the gas-guzzling trio from Michigan.” And while their “plea” for a little transplant teat-sucking makes perfect sense (at least in their world), it’s not likely to fall on receptive ears in Dearborn (‘natch) or Main Street. To wit: “If it ever tries to expand the program — as some members of Congress have suggested — a good target would be some of those Japanese-owned automakers in the United States that actually have a record of successfully investing in fuel-efficient cars.” Again, how about we give end users a tax credit and let the free market sort this shit out?

I don’t suppose I have to devote much time to blogging the fact that U.S. luxury car dealers are taking it on the chin. Our Inside Baseball readers will already know that Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Acura and Infiniti are all busy losing sales (although they may want to look at the numbers in this USA Today report, charting the brands’ decline since March ’07). And “regular” people are already so freaked-out about the economic downturn that they don’t want to hear yet more evidence that the U.S. economy is going to Hell in a sub-prime-shaped hand-basket. But there’s a telling detail here– especially for anyone who’s ever wondered what happens at a car dealer’s Monday sales meeting. “Falling housing values have affected wealthy customers most in Florida and California, Johnson [president of Customer Growth Partners] says. Car dealers in those states are feeling it, but they still look for a turnaround. ‘People are a little cautious right now,’ says Tim Smith, who runs the family-owned Bob Smith BMW in Calabasas, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. Sales dipped recently, but new models are coming by year’s end, ‘And we’re on everyone’s shopping list.'” Would it be churlish to say “not mine”?

The National Automobile Dealership Association (NADA) predicts that some 700 of 21,461 U.S. car dealers are going tits up this year. And you know what? It’s still not enough carnage for domestic automakers, whose bloated dealer networks are a major millstone around their neck. (Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler started the year with around 4k stores vs. Toyota’s 1220 dealers.) Soaring floorplan costs– the interest charged by banks to fund a dealer’s inventory– have Darwined what The Big 2.8 learned not to do when GM paid a heavy price for terminating Oldsmobile. Automotive News [sub] reports that GMAC Financial Services, Ford Credit and Chrysler Financial are the major culprits; they’ve all raised their interest rates by roughly half a percentage point in a market where inventory just kinda sits there. But here’s the real story: “Some lenders are refusing to floorplan unprofitable dealerships, to the point of recalling their loans… Bank of America supplied two of [LA chain owner Mike] Kahn’s dealerships with $60 million in floorplanning, capital loans and mortgages. Last winter, Kahn says, the bank did not want to renew the loans and raised his floorplan interest rate through the roof. ‘I never felt so betrayed… You sign this agreement and they raise your rate. Or you don’t sign and they put you out of business.'” And now, file this one under “be careful what you wish for: “Last week, key lawmakers said the Federal Reserve also has authority under ‘extraordinary circumstances’ to make special loans for dealers’ inventory costs.”

Be still my beating heart. Autoblog’s Sam Abuelsamid is about to live blog (nearasdammit) Audi’s Mileage Marathon. Yes, he’ll be in one of 23 diesel-powered Audis that will “roll out from Manhattan’s Tavern on the Green on a trans-continental trek to demonstrate diesel efficiency.” While I respect anyone with the patience and anal retentivity needed to hypermile for at least three days– in the same sense that I respect anyone who can conjugate Latin verbs– I predict this won’t go well. And I don’t mean “won’t go well” as in something exciting will happen. More like how can a hypermiler do his or her stuff with 22 other vehicles surrounding them? Not to mention the quandry of achieving high mileage when your 23-strong fleet must accomodate over 200 journalists. And what of Justin’s suspicion that the TDIs don’t really count, as they’re Euro-spec ringers? Anyway, who cares? As we’ve reported here ad infinitum, the diesel engine thing is on the wane in Europe, and hamstrung stateside by fuel prices and an oil burning engine price premium. The most important question here: will Audi be flying Sam and his mpg-seeking cohorts back to the East Coast in coach, business or first? And how much fuel will that burn?

Jeremy Clarkson’s review for the Sunday Times reverses his usual formula. Normally, Jezza’s prose travels from the general to the specific, often reaching its rhetorical destination so late in the process that the car bit seems like afterbirth. I mean, an afterthought. The curmudgeon’s criticism of the Chrysler Sebring is, of course, pith-compliant. And entirely deserved. But as Top Gear’s alpha heads for home, he launches into yet another attack on the U.S. “Because America is a new country, the people who live there have no sense of history. And if you have no concept of ‘the past’, it is extremely difficult to grapple with the idea of ‘the future’. If you think a bar established in 1956 is ‘old’ then you will not understand the idea of next week. So why bother building for it? We see this short-termism in everything from the average American house, which falls over whenever the wind gets up, to the way chief executives are treated… And this brings me on to the war in Iraq. They went in there, knowing that pretty quickly they could depose Saddam Hussein. But nobody in power stopped for a moment to think about what might happen next. And there you have it. The insurgency problem in Baghdad and the wonky gearlever on the Chrysler Sebring. They are both caused by exactly the same thing.” Sort of like the British Empire and the island nation’s domestic car brands.

Obviously, TTAC has no problem with car manufacturers targeting gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, transsexuals or herbisexuals for any given brand or model. But we do expect carmakers to do so with a modicum of common sense. Pitching the new Chevy Traverse at gay men is like suggesting that Barack Obama should show up at his rallies in a Maybach Exelero. Hang on. Cool! OK, it’s like suggesting that soccer Moms should buy a Pontiac Solstice. Actually, they should– just to get away from the kids for a few hours. And keep Alzheimer’s at bay by trying to erect the Solstice’s top. Is that sexist? Damn! Alright, try it this way. GM’s marketing mavens should know that the Chevy Traverse is to the Mazda Miata what Chuck E. Cheese is to Fire Island. Or something like that.

I remember wheeling into a parking lot and slotting next to a Porsche Carrera 4 in my Porsche Carrera 4. “What do you think of the car?” I asked. “It makes me a hero,” the owner replied. True dat. A driver of no particular skill can corner a C4 (or Turbo) at speeds normally reserved for people for whom the words “it seems a bit skittish on the edge” are not synonmous with “Holy shit, I am NEVER doing THAT again!” And then I bought a Boxster S. While the Boxster is not as fast as a Carrera (by any real world metric), it’s more fun at the kind of speeds that still endanger your license, but don’t require an actual jail stay. But I didn’t buy a Boxster for many years– until Porsche finally put the 3.4 amidships. It may be more fun driving a slow car fast than a fast car slow, but if you can drive a fast car that’s fun to drive slowly, well, isn’t that the ideal? In other words, which of these beauties would you prefer, assuming you’d use them on both road and track? And what’s you general rule in this regard?

2008 911 GT2 VS 1973 911 RS

An eagle-eyed TTAC commentator unearthed this little gem from AutoWeek of April ’07. Like Mr. Chen, I think it’s sufficiently germane (House Bunny!) to last month’s Flex sales that it deserves resurrection. “The pivotal moment in the Flex’s development came, Ford design chief J Mays said, when he and his North American lieutenant, Peter Horbury, convinced the rest of the organization that rear sliding doors cost too much. Even though the Fairlane concept that inspired the Flex had suicide doors, the production vehicle was being planned with rear sliders. ‘When we took the sliding doors off, suddenly there was money in the product program freed up magically to put higher-grade materials, fantastic-quality leather, 8-inch DVD drop-down screen in the back, optional refrigerator, glass roof,’ Mays said. “Suddenly money was falling from the heavens because we didn’t have those damn sliding doors on it anymore.” So, Ford says it sold 1,959 Flexes in September, 7552 year-to-date. (Early sales stats were pinned on a slow roll-out.) Meanwhile, Ford’s “other crossovers” have tanked. The Ford Edge slipped 43 percent for the month, while the Taurus X was down 63 percent. Should the Flex have been a minivan? Or… not bothered in the first place, and promoted the Hell out of the X instead?

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The logic of fixing the effects of over-liberal lending with a $700b “loan” from U.S. taxpayers– which includes enough boondogglage to keep the snack food industry in pork rinds for a thousand years– escapes me. But one thing is for sure: Motown’s magnates viewed the bailout bill important enough to mount a massive muscle flexing campaign to assure its passage. We’ve already published GM CEO Rick Wagoner’s pre-vote SOS to dealers. The Detroit News now reveals that ChryCo CEO Bob Nardelli called all MI’s reps and provided his employees with a toll-free 800 number to do the same. And just as the $25b Department of Energy low-interest auto industry loans, this is not a done deal. “While the department made no promises, [Representative] Knollenberg got a letter Friday from the Treasury Department. It confirmed that ‘automobile loans can be purchased in circumstances where the secretary and chairman of the Federal Reserve conclude that doing so would be necessary to promote financial market stability,’ wrote Kevin Fromer, assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the Treasury Department, in a letter obtained by The Detroit News.'” The DetN reveals the stakes. “Nearly 4 in 10 auto buyers have been unable to get financing for new vehicles, because of tougher requirements from lenders. A survey released this week said 64 percent of new car buyers had been approved for loans through Sept. 20 this year, down from 83 percent during the same period last year” And this is a bad thing because? Oh right, bad paper is good for business.

I am not a paranoid survivalist libertarian who constantly checks the horizon for black helicopters. (I only scan the skies for a few days after posting a General Motors Death Watch.) But, as a former U.K. resident alien, I’ve been following the erosion of civil rights and the concomitant rise of police power in Britain ever since the first speed cameras appeared in The Land of Hope and Glory. Between then and now, the right to remain silent has been abridged and the UK has become the world’s most surveilled nation. And now the gazettelive.co.uk reports that “Specialist Cleveland Police officers took part in a ground-breaking blitz against criminals using the region’s road networks. Officers from Teesside joined colleagues from six other UK forces and more than 20 other European countries [Italics added] to take part in Operation Orbit.” Six? Or seven? “A ring of steel was provided by seven police forces at locations on the ring-roads of York, mainly the A64 and the A1237,” revealed Sergeant Jason Wathes, leaders of the Cleveland Police Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) interception team. And the justification? “Sgt Wathes said the initial objective was to target thieves, drug-runners and those carrying weapons. But motorists driving without tax, insurance or otherwise disqualified were also stopped. ‘We know who the criminals are, but we can’t always secure prosecutions. But we can apply traffic legislation to target the criminals and disrupt them from using the roads.'” Oh, that’s alright then.

Stephan Wilkinson reckons I should leave Washington Post car critic Warren Brown alone. While I respect the former Car and Driver editor and occasional TTAC contributor’s opinions on what constitutes a suitable target for our editorial ire, Brown’s ode to the Jetta TDI deserves special attention. Not because it’s another example of the nominal critic’s abject inability to maul a P.O.S. (e.g. Chevy Aveo) or his ongoing support for spending your tax dollars on Motown’s incompetence. No, this example of Brown’s writing is notable for its 17th century rhetorical style and sexual subtext. “An undergraduate theology professor once advised me to avoid expressing love for inanimate objects. His argument was that non-living things, including those with motors and engines, lack souls. Things without souls are incapable of loving or being loved, he said. I finished his course with a B-, mostly because I consumed inordinate amounts of time in papers and classroom discussions trying to prove him wrong. That professor is long gone from the halls of Xavier University of Louisiana, as am I. But with your forbearance, dear reader, I wish to continue the argument. Consider the turbo-diesel-powered, 2009 Volkswagen Jetta sedan. I hereby stipulate that it is an inanimate object in the generic sense of the term, normally incapable of movement or direction without human input, worthless without fuel or battery. Yet, I submit to you that it is quite capable of engendering human affection akin to love.” Oy vey.

So there I was, browsing a Bloomberg (three terms or bust!) story about automakers fessing-up to the fact that electric vehicles must take a back seat to “normal” fuel-efficient small cars– which is a pretty good piece of Parisian bloggage in and of itself– when BANG! I run smack dab into a quote from the highest paid auto exec on planet Earth: Porsche SE Chief Wendelin Wiedeking. “Do you believe people will actually switch to smaller cars?” Wendy asked, in the midst of discussing Porsche’s yet-to-unveiled fuel-sucking four-door. Uh, yes? Nein! “This car fits into these times,” Wiedeking insisted. “You should go on a journey in a small car with your four-person family. What will happen is you will have had enough when you get to the border after a couple of kilometers.” Hmmm. Why is Wendy dreaming of heading for the border? Of course, by “people” Wendy means the same sort of customer GM Car Czar Bob Lutz referred to when confronted by the fuel-suckage of the then-new GMT900 SUVs (i.e. rich people don’t care about the price of gas). Meanwhile, back in the world of mass motoring, GM Europe Prez dismissed the impact of his company’s Hail Mary plug-in hybrid Volt: “The ordinary guy has to be able to afford these technologies, and the technology in the beginning will be quite expensive.” Toyota, for some reason, gets the last word. “The Japanese company’s executive vice president for strategy, Mitsuo Kinoshita, was more blunt about a world without low-emission technologies that supplant gasoline. In that scenario, ‘There is no future for automobiles.'”