Belvidere has been down since early Wednesday morning due to a broken gear in a press in stamping area. Trucks came and removed the dies and such to other Chrysler stamping facilities. There were a lot of trucks though. More than I would imagine would be needed for one press and its dies. Is it possible they are pulling out all stamping? Is it possible they may close the doors at the Belvidere facility? Nobody knew anything on Tuesday, yet the union seemed to know we would be off at that time without notifying the workforce. I can't get any info. I know they have bounced checks and aren't paying suppliers. They intend to cut one shift next Friday. Their supply of vehicles is much higher than that posted on your site. Chrysler bullshit. That's what it is most of the time.

Actually, UK scribe Steve Wakefield says nothing of the sort. In fact, his review of the new Bentley Brooklands doesn't offer much in the way of literary thrills. But if you're a student of serious horsepower, hand-stitched pampering and tightly focused branding, Wakefield's luxury car liturgy will be music to your ears. For those of you who can't get enough power, the £230k two-door is "powered by the most powerful V8 in the company’s history:" a twin-turbocharged 6.75-liter mill that stumps-up 530bhp @ 4000rpm and 1050Nm of torque at 3200rpm. (No mention of mpgs.) Good thing customers can opt for the largest brakes in the world: 420mm, cross-drilled, carbon/silicon carbide fronts with 356mm rears. And the factoids keep coming! The Brooklands makes the 50 to 70mph "overtaking dash" in just 2.4 seconds, tops-out at 184mph (or more), boasts "the largest rear seat area of any production coupé in the world" and handles well (you know; for a car that weighs more than southern Rhode Island). For some reason, Wakefield feels obliged to end his piece by touting the car's "infinitesimal impact" on global warming. He also advises Brooklands owners to middle finger salute the greens. "It’s a statement, an opportunity for the world’s richest to say, 'This is going to be my car. I’m going to enjoy every minute spent specifying it and driving it.'"  

You know that perfect storm that I keep predicting for Detroit? Keep in mind that the metaphorical meteorlogical phenomenom requires a confluence of jumbo-sized atmospheric disturbances. So, what have we got? Well, even if we restrict our forecast to Chrysler, we've got parts supply problems, too many products, too many bad products, too many dealers trying to sell bad products, not enough customers willing to buy bad products, lousy marketing, killer competition, a private equity firm with all the patience of a crack head, and a CEO whose M.O. is cut and run. Add to this looming prospect of GMAC going belly-up. Bloomberg [via Automotive News, sub] reports that Cerberus founder (and current Chrysler owner) Stephen Feinberg sent a letter to investors warning that GM's finance arm faces "substantial difficulty" if credit markets do not improve (what are the chances?). Last year, GMAC lost $1.6b in the first quarter, and $724m in the fourth. If GMAC's mortgage and car loan biz sucks to the point of collapse, Chrysler Financial isn't likely to be hale and hearty. At some point, Cerberus will have to switch into dump mode. They'll throw the automaker and their two financial units into Chapter 11. What would happen to GM, which owns 49 percent of GMAC and depends on the finance arm for cheap car loans? That's another story…

So, here we are. The interim agreement between Chrysler and bankrput parts supplier Plastech that kept mission critical car parts flowing is set to expire. Earlier today (Thursday), Chrysler asked a federal judge to let them remove tooling from the bankrupt parts suppliers' premises. If so, Chrysler says they could be up and running with new parts in less than a week. According to Automotive News [AN, sub], Plastech's Veep of Ops called bullshit. "I don't believe that," Donald Coates testified. "There's no way it could be done in 4 or 5 days." So what's the real deal? Matt DeMars, Plastech's president of interior and exterior business, pegged the necessary transition at 24 to 30 months. Coates testified that removing the tooling would mean "four or five assembly plants would be idled within five hours of a shortage… followed by material shortages at 11 or 12 plants within 72 hours, with all plants affected within a week." Richard Schmidt, Chrysler's senior manager of materials supply operations, said "vehicles could be assembled without some parts and wait on a factory lot until the parts are added. But that could create quality problems. Vehicles could be damaged by parts being added out of sequence. Customers also would face delays as their vehicles wait on lots to be completed." Customer delays? In Chrysler's dreams. Meanwhile, Chrysler's nightmare continues…

UPDATE: As we predicted, Judge Phillip Shefferly urged Chrysler and Plastech to extend their interim agreement. Next Tuesday, at 4pm EST, Judge Shefferly will rule on Chrysler's request to remove tooling from the bankrupt parts maker. 

So here I am, grimacing as I down the backwash of my umpteenth Diet Coke, trying to stay on top of the automotive news flowing through the blogosphere, knowing that I've got to edit Brock Yates column, upload Jonny's STI review and tweak Glenn's blogposts. Wondering when the Hell I'll write a GM Deathwatch. And it doesn't look like I'll EVER attend to all the e-housekeeping BS and clear either of my inboxes. All of which worries my OCD like one of those stupid pop songs. And yet, while I struggle with information overload, Manny Lopez, the heretofore unknown (at least to me) Automotive Editor of The Detroit News, decides to devote an entire column to the death of the muscle car. Hang on; didn't Scott Burgess columnize on that very same subject, what, three days ago? Although Lopze tips his editorial hat to Burgess, the suit says nothing new on the subject– and says it less well. My theory: the death of the muscle car has become something of a touchstone for Motown's macho men. If you want to be a real "car guy," you have to beat your breast about the trend away from hairy-chested V8 machines. Well screw that. As Jonny Lieberman demonstrates in this podcast, there's nothing wrong with loving both "fire breathing" rear wheel-drive iron and way cool fuel miserly city cars. The fact that two car reporters for the city's newspaper of record don't "get it" tells you a lot about that town's culture– and its future.  

[Justin Berkowitz is MIA. No doubt he will surface eventually.] 

"So many vehicles are being snatched from owners who stop making payments that some repo operators and auto auctioneers say lots are overflowing." This from USA Today; another sign that the U.S. automotive market is headed for the buffers, Big Style. Thomas Webb, chief economist Atlanta-based Manheim auctions, says that repos will rise 10 percent this year– for the second straight year– to 1.6m vehicles. As TTAC warned at the time (and subsequently), Webb says "overly generous" auto loans in the past couple of years are driving-up defaults, leading to a surge in repossessions. Last month, Wells Fargo wrote off $1b in auto loans, compared with $857m in '06. The new figure represents 3.5 percent of its portfolio; the bank says it expects a higher write-off rate this year. As repos increase, they flood the market with used cars, lowering residuals, trapping more and more customers in "backwards" loans. Burned banks (and credit companies tied to automakers) also raise their rates, making it harder for carmakers to move the metal. One part of a perfect storm? 

Frank Williams is a retired USAF Lt. Colonel. William C. Montgomery is a credit card executive. PJ McCombs is a third grade teacher. Justin Berkowitz is studying for the bar. Donal Fagan is an architect. Glenn Swanson is an information technology specialist for a school in Connecticut. Michael Posner and Casey W. Raskob are attorneys. Samir Syed is a chartered accountant. Megan Benoit is a computer security specialist. Jay Shoemaker runs Francis Ford Coppola's food and beverage businesses. Sajeev Mehta is a project manager for a software company. Alex Dykes is an IT administrator. Matthew Neundorf is an operations manager for Fraco Products. Paul Neidermeyer is a landlord. Martin Schwoerer is a business/regulatory consultant. Brock Yates is a legend. Stephan Wilkinson is an EMT. I'm tired. And Jonny Lieberman is welcome back to his spiritual home. 

File this one under "no good deed goes unpunished." Boston.com reports that Ford donated four piston assembly patents to The National Institute for Strategic Technology Acquisition and Commercialization (NISTAC), took a $27m tax deduction, licensed the technology back from NISTAC, terminated the agreement, and then continued using the patents paying nobody nothing. One potential issue: does NISTAC own the patents? It claims it's the "replacement" organization for Mid-American Commercial Corp, which received the original dontation. As you might imagine, all this philanthropy went down before Ford hocked its future to stay in business. Ford made the piston patent donation back in 2000– and 44 more besides, on seven separate occasions, to institutions including the University of Michigan and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. 

In case you were thinking Chrysler's supply chain was relatively robust– aside from last week's spat with Plastech that shut four factories and caused slow-downs at four more– The Chicago Tribune reports that Chrysler's now idling its Belvidere assembly plant for at least the first shift Wednesday, due to an "unexpected parts shortage." Chrysler spokesmouth Roger Benvenuti told the Trib that the latest disruption– which halts production of the Jeep Compass and Patriot and the Dodge Caliber– was not Plastech-related. He also revealed the astonishing fact that production will resume when parts became available. Meanwhile, no matter how you slice it, this doesn't look good for Chrysler. Either they screwed-up their logistics or they have another Plastech-type dispute rumbling away somewhere in the background. Watch this space…

Brand purists that we are, the tagline for the Njection automotive website leaves us nervous about their commercial future: "Speed Traps, Car Forum, Automotive Pictures….Anything else?" Then again, it's taken TTAC six years to get to 20k visitors per day; so what do we know? This much is for sure: there are plenty of speedtraps in this world of ours. Njection's readers have tapped into Microsoft's live maps and plotted tens of thousands of them, around the globe. Think local, speed global? "Over 50-thousand speed traps have been contributed to the site since its Thanksgiving public launch," says Shannon Atkinson, President of NJection.com, in the press release announcing the feature. "This response reflects the feelings of motorist[s] around the world." Terror? Anger? Suspicion? Shannon doesn't say. But he does trot-out the old argument that speeding doesn't kill people; sipping a latte while cell phoning your baby sitter and changing lanes at a red light camera-equipped intersection does. Anyway, Njection promises to make their map GPS device compatible, which could provide the site with a nice tidy profit (provided police or other do-gooders don't upload "fake" speedtraps). Bastards.

I agree with GM Car Czar on a number of points. First, we both believe that CAFE regs are like forcing middle-aged American men to wear plaid pants and high-heeled shoes. (Or something like that.) I'm also down with Maximum Bob on global warming. Well, sort of. While I don't consider the idea "a crock of shit," I favor a wait-and-see approach. Keep adding millions of vehicles to the planet's surface. If the Earth is significantly warmer in a hundred thousand years or so, point taken. What's that you say? By then it will be too late? Yes, and by then I'll be dead. There's another point of intersection between myself and Maximum Bob: we're both selfish bastards. Mr. Lutz' exhortation to struggling GM dealers to "suck it up" clearly reveals he couldn't care less about the fate of the cry-babies attempting to sell his employer's products and thereby put money in his pocket. Why should he? Maximum Bob's already got lots of GM money in the bank and lots more on the way. Not to coin a phrase, fuck 'em if they can't sell my cars. By the same token, I couldn't care less about my writers' opinions. Oh wait, I do. I guess there's a difference between being outspoken and being the hole though which excrement flows into a ceramic receptacle. 

The mainstream media may have forgotten that last week's Plastech parts embargo threatened to throw Chrysler into Chapter 11, and that the agreement saving the automaker from that fate expires this Friday. But we haven't. And neither has Crain's Detroit Business. According to the paper, a U.S. bankruptcy judge is set to hear arguments to [ultimately] determine who owns the tooling that makes the parts that Chrysler needs to survive. Chrysler says mine, mine, mine. "The automaker alleges that its right to the tools was gained through two prior bailout agreements. In those agreements Chrysler gave the supplier $6.9 million and sped payment of an additional $10.7 million." Plastech says bankruptcy obviates those claims. To wit: pulling the tooling from Plastech plants would hamstring their ability to secure life-sustaining, long-term financing. The most probable outcome is an extension of the interim agreement, but you never know. Meanwhile, here's a factoid that might explain Plastech's hang-tough strategy: the parts maker, owned by Vietnamese immigrant Julie Brown, is the largest minority owned company in the North American automotive supply chain.

When the President of Toyota's NA Ops tells his dealers that the good times "are temporarily on hiatus," you know the U.S. new car market is in BIG trouble. The AP [via the International Herald Tribune] paints a bleak picture: "Jim Lentz told the American International Automobile Dealers Association annual meeting that even strong Toyota dealers are reporting customer traffic down as much as 60 percent this year." Like his opposite numbers in Detroit, Lentz also believes– or at least says he believes– that the U.S. new car market will recover towards the fourth financial quarter, finishing the year at some 16m units. He also predicted that Toyota sales will rise regardless, continuing to buck the declining market. (Toyota sales rose three percent last year, despite a 2.5 percent decline in U.S. new car sales.) Thinking longer term, as Toyota tends to do, Lentz predicted good times ahead. "It is possible for the auto industry to hit 18 million sales annually sometime later in the next decade." 

Given the enormous and ongoing discrepancy between GM's execs' statements and on-the-ground reality you'd think the media would understand that nothing, nothing GM says should be taken at face value. Nope. Automotive News [AN, sub] kicks-off with the PR pleasing headline, "As Malibu soars, Impala sinks amid GM cuts to rental fleets." Showing some semblance of journalistic integrity, AN lists the Impala-related damage and ties the model's downturn to the up-tick in sales of its logical competitor. "While January sales of the new Chevrolet Malibu mid-sized sedan rose 57.9 percent from January 2007, sales of the larger Impala fell 30.6 percent… The Impala had been a hot seller. It finished 2007 up 7.3 percent to 311,128 units." Chevrolet Spinmeister Terry Rhadigan provides the usual tut-tut, pish-posh, no worries Mate: "We're still doing the methodical reduction in daily rental, and that is reflected in that Impala number. Huge progress is being made. You'll see some decline in numbers, and don't be alarmed. It's all part of our strategy." Oh really? So, Terry, what exactly are those Impala fleet numbers? "Rhadigan would not give the Impala's retail and fleet sales totals." Clearly, Woodward and Bernstein don't have nothin' on AN. Anyway, Chevy store own John LaSorsa ends the piece by backing-up the suits. "The Malibu has such style it's pulling in an import customer." Well, that's one…

Detroit News scribe Scott Burgess offers a piercing glimpse into the obvious: the muscle car is dead. Burgess reckons "no one could have predicted the dramatic change in consumer tastes, high fuel prices and eco-politics when designers started penning those car's revivals." OK, well, anyway, Burgess isn't quite ready to pronounce the muscle car's TOD. "The Go-Fast gene in men and women will never disappear," he concludes. Frighteningly enough, Burgess' rant includes wistful quotes from GM players who talk about the move away from high horsepower vehicles as if the thought just occurred to them, with a similar lack of closure. "There's going to be a lot of internal pressure to move engineering resources to these other products," opines Tadge Juechter, GM's vehicle chief engineer for the Chevrolet Corvette and Cadillac XLR. "That's going to really impact future muscle cars." Going to be? Going to? "The concept of the muscle car will probably evolve into a really fun-to-drive, stylish vehicle," predicts Troy Clarke, GM's president of North America. "As opposed to something that just breathes fire and has more cubic inches than the next guy." Probably? Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that the industry shills knows as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) have high horsepower vehicles in their premium hoiking sights. Enjoy your Challenger while you can Scott.

[Interview with Scott Burgess about muscle cars below.]