Not technically. Technically, commentator Nick Goddard's smart is the first official U.S. smart car, following on the heels of a number of gray market imports. Never mind. We're delighted that one of TTAC's best and brightest was first in line for Mercedes' four-wheeled accoutrement– I mean, city car. That can drive on the highway. In fact, during our podcast (below), nick2ny admitted that he'd taken his new smart up to 95mph on the highway. (Which is not too smart a thing to say to the media, but I'm sure he meant to say "if" somewhere in there, and change his sentence structure accordingly). Judging from our interview and the number of exclamation marks in Nick's original email, the man is over the moon with both the car and smart Prez David ("I don't share a first name with Farago") Schembri's personal service. But Nick said he'd come down to low Earth orbit long enough to answer any questions y'all might have about his box-fresh, first-out-of-the-box smart. And yes, I tried not to rain on his clown car parade. Doh!

The fifth gen Mustang's retro-inspired design was inspired; it was the miracle Ford needed to resurrect the spirit of the 'Stang. The fact that the formula was immediately– well, eventually– replicated by Chrysler (Charger, Challenger) and GM (Camaro) is just one measure of the new old-looking Mustang's success. Aesthetics aside, it's time for some fresh blood; '07 sales of the two-plus-two are (at best) stalled at 134,626, down 19.2 percent from '06. Going with the whole déjà vu all over again only better motif, I imagined the Mustang as the same as it is now, only more so. A 2010 Ford pony should remain a paean to Pony cars. I'm thinking dual air intakes next to the front lights, followed by the turn-signals; clean and simple lines underlining the muscles underneath (with Twin-Force V6 reality). Now, if Ford can find a way to add a few inches and make those back seats usable…

[For more Avarvarii photochopistry, click here.]

Website analysts compete.com have compiled a chart of '07's biggest winners and losers. The stats reveal that three automotive websites have the dubious distinction of sharing the title of biggest loser, site traffic-wise. Autobytel clocks-in at number eight, with website traffic falling 82 percent to 556,938 uniques per month (UPM). Motor Trend sits in fourteenth place; its visitorship cratered by 71 percent, to 902,684 UPM. Carsdirect's traffic fell down 69 percent to 3,396,388 UPM. Not surprisingly for a company competing with Google to provide site stats, compete ain't got nothin' to say about the losers. But its commentators are asking a whole lot of questions about the data's integrity. Meanwhile, Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed blog reckons the numbers may reflect a scary equation. "Fewer new cars purchased = less traffic required to car purchasing sites, right? Possibly, but there is no way that you'd see, say, a 5% drop in car purchasing turn into a 90% traffic drop." One might also conclude the drop simply reflects the quality of the sites involved, but I couldn't possibly comment. Oh, and TTAC has just crested 1.4m page views for the first time, racking up 477,783 uniques per month. Just in case you were wondering… [thanks to deanst for the tip]

Buried in a report on the plug-in hybrid electric hybrid (PHEV) spinstorm about to descend on the Washington, D.C. auto show, USA Today reports that the U.S. Energy Department will fork-out up to $30m for PHEV projects. Apparently, the money is headed for boffins bent on building cars that "deliver up to 40 miles of electric range without recharging." Companies dedicated to created plug-ins that are "cost-competitive by 2014 and ready for commercialization by 2016." So who gets the dough? GM, Toyota, small start-ups? USA Today ain't sayin'. But they do have a killer quote from Ford's chief engineer for plug-in and fuel-cell vehicles. "If we can't decide within five years whether we can do this, something is wrong," Greg Frenette pronounced. Question: when did/does that five-year time frame start?

While GM CEO Rick Wagoner is telling the world that his administration has created "stronger brands" [look for the GM Death Watch on Wagoner's "turnaround report" later today], his marketing maven has announced that The General's fourth Lambda-based crossover will go on sale this fall. While Mark LaNeve didn't announce a price or exact specification for the Chevrolet Traverse, the Freep reports that he set a sales target: 80k to 100k units per year. If Chevy has enough parts for the job, that goal is bound to eat into the Saturn Outlook and GMC Acadia's share of the crossover pie. Combined, the two brand's vehicles Lambda danced their way to to 107,513 sales in '07. If you add their sister-under-the-skin, the short-supply Buick Enclave, the total ratchets-up to 136,799. So LaNeve is hoping for total Lambda crossover sales of 216,799 to 236,799 units across four GM brands in a down market. At least– as those Saturn, GMC and Buick numbers only represent part-year sales. What are the odds?

Fair disclosure: we stole that headline from Engadget. And boy, are we late to this story. electrifyingtimes.com reveals that the conflagration of a single "neighborhood electric vehicle" in Key West– albeit one that immolated model Veronica Webb's dog Hercules and destroyed her house– and it's pig pile on the EV, media-wise. Everyone from the New York Post's Page Six ("Hell-Car burns model's home") to El Rushbo (GM stooge that he is) have covered the story. And the majority are spinning the GEM's fiery end as reflective of inherent danger and/or a possible trend. The reverse spinmeister for the vehicle's maker, Chrysler's GEMCar, claimed that the fire was an isolated incident– as far as they know. "We have gone through our files looking for any other reports of fires relating either to use or charging of GEMs, and haven't found anything," Max Gates revealed. "We don't have anything in our records to indicate there's ever been a previous incident like this." Can you imagine the coverage if a Tesla Roadster or Chevy Volt ever appeared suffered a similar fate? [thanks to starlightmica for the tip]

Is it OK for a motorist to simply buy environmental absolution? The concept is certainly in keeping with traditional Western philosophy: you sin, you pay. Even a lousy student of history knows that powerful organizations have been creating, reinforcing and exploiting that equation for their own selfish ends for the last ten thousand years or so. (The Catholic Church's history of selling "penance reduction" for cash springs to mind.) And if you take the idea of paying for your sins to its logical conclusion, you end up in that kinky "I was a crack 'ho before I was born again" [applause] place, where you start believing that you gotta really sin before you can really repent. Don't you feel guilty driving that Lincoln Navigator? Hell no. I'm saving a rain forest! Call me a Rhode Islander, but I distrust anyone who brokers that kind of crazy ass deal, never mind the deal itself. Literally. Never mind it. The truth of it is, any car owner who thinks that they can buy "forgiveness" for polluting the planet (if they believe that they are) is simply trying to avoid the totality of their personal responsibility. 

One of my favorite TV ads of all time was for Q-Tips. This scruffy looking guy in a plaid bathrobe walks up to the camera and asks "Don't you hate everybody telling you how to clean things?" Bang! I'm his. Yeah! I DO hate it, all those stupid ads about cleaning stuff! I'm OCD enough without hundreds of graphic lessons in how to annihilate [previously unimagined] germs. And then the guys says "Well I'm going to show you how to clean your ears." And bang! I'm his again. OK, show me how to clean my ears! Well, this is a bit like that. Don't you hate all those morning-after Detroit Auto Show roundups? Well Jonny Lieberman's going to tell you like it was. And here's a bit of goss: it seems Loverman will once again bless us with his literary talents. Hearing the news is like a tsunami having breakfast with a sinkhole. Or something like that.

Yesterday, we took a "Whose Fault Is It Anyway?" look at consumers who used carmaker's easy credit to buy (in the ironic sense of that word) vehicles they couldn't afford. Today, the San Antonio Business Journal reports that The Alamo City guv'mint has teamed-up with Ford "to make it easier for more working individuals and families to buy a new or used car." Here's the deal: low income buyers save up $1000. FoMoCo and San Antonio's Department of Community Initiatives match the buyer's grand with two more, creating a $3k down-payment towards a new or used vehicle from one of eight participating Ford or Mercury (!) dealers. To qualify for the "down payment assistance program" the buyer's income must not exceed 300 percent of the federal poverty level (that's $61,950 for a family of four). Applicants must also be a San Antonio resident, an insurable driver, not have declared bankruptcy within the last seven years and be "current" with all creditors. (Driver's license?) Oh, and they have to qualify for financing. Welcome to America! 

Perhaps I should explain why I gave GM Car Czar Bob Lutz his nickname "Maximum Bob." Nah. Why bother? TTAC's archives are suffused with the demented ramblings, patently absurd pronouncements, wildly inaccurate analysis and stupefying statements of GM's resident bodacious braggadocio. He really is God's gift to TTAC. We [also] thank GM CEO Rick Wagoner for appreciating his own true nature as a Harvard-trained beancounter; a realization that led him to place the entire global product line of the artist once known as the world's largest automaker into the hands of an ill-informed, ADD-addled executive. An automobile executive who couldn't name all VW's brands. But I digress. Automotive News [sub] reports that Lutz is tired of fighting. The Car Czar wants to know why can't we all just drive E85? "There's no reason the automotive industry can't go to 100 percent E85 vehicles, and the world we love doesn't have to change." You see, the thing is, the automotive world already has changed. A funny-looking car called the Prius has outsold the once mighty Ford Explorer– and that's just for starters. Shhhh. Don't tell Bob. TTAC wouldn't be half as interesting without him. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're a GM employee, dealer, customer or stockholder), it's only a matter of time before Maximum Bob unfurls his bankruptcy-proof golden parachute and floats off into a gilded retirement home (or three), proclaiming himself the architect of GM's product renaissance. He will be missed, but in a different sort of way by a different kind of people. If you know what I mean. 

The Lansing State Journal reveals the reason Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Malibu sales are stuck in second gear: parts. According to Gary Cowger, GM's group vice president of global manufacturing and labor, "a lack of components" underpins this December's decision to shut down a third shift at Lansing Delta Township factory. "Even if that had kept running, we still wouldn't have been able to make more Enclaves." What's more… "As you know, we put that third shift on for a while to try to ramp up. But at the tooling rates of the supplier base, you'd have to buy another set of vendor tools (to make more parts) and that takes time. We're maxed out from a tooling standpoint." Cowger also implied that the Chevrolet Malibu drought is down to the same parts problem. "What we're doing right now with the Enclave and CTS and (Chevrolet) Malibu is doing a very detailed analysis of the bottlenecks in the supplier community so you can invest in the right tool sets out there and increase the capacity of that product at the plant." Cowger admits GM underestimated demand for all three cars, but said it's "a good thing." Try telling that to the 1000 GM workers who got laid off, or the GM dealers desperate for product to sell. Oh and don't think we've forgotten that back in October, when GM announced they were shutting down the third shift, they told the LSJ they "eliminated the third shift to keep from overproducing the crossover vehicles made there." I wonder why they didn't bring up the parts issue then? [thanks to Sparky for the tip]

Rick Wagoner, eh? "Not specifically enamored." Classic passively constructed British understatement from an American car exec. Anyway, for those of you following the development of India's revolutionary Nano, it's probably no surprise that GM doesn't have the hots for the people's car's $2500 price point. The Financial Post reports that GM's chief executive declared that that “the magic” price for an ultra budget car is yet unknown. Meanwhile, GM will compete with the Nano by taking costs out of existing economy cars (e.g. GM's Daewoo delights). Speaking from the floor of the North American International Auto Show, Wagoner also admitted that his golden parachute provider has tried making a cheapo car from scratch before, using coloured plastic panels instead of painting the cars later on. "Overall, the effort hasn’t worked," he said. "What we ended up with was not a very good looking car that wasn’t that cheap.” I say nothing.

If you write for WardsAuto, you know the vast majority of the people reading your bon mots are car dealers. So you can't come out and say "you greedy bunch of bastards are responsible for getting people into cars they can't afford, which is about to turn around and bite you in the ass big time." On the other hand, you can't come out and say "consumers are stupid morons who deserve what they get when they get in over their heads on a new car and can't get the Hell out." Consumers are customers, after all. For an example of how to play it straight down the middle, alienating both camps, I recommend you click on Steve Finaly's latest editorial "The Dealer Made Me Do It," riffing on the LA Times article “New Cars That Are Fully Loaded – With Debt” (blogged on TTAC here). "First off, I’m not excusing auto dealers. Or lenders. They have a moral and business responsibility to try to stop their customers from doing something stupid, such as buying a vehicle with a sticker price that will stick them with an oppressive debt… But so many consumers today buy too much vehicle. Then, when the financial squeeze becomes eye-popping, they look for someone to blame. The dealership and lender make nice targets. Seldom do the debt-ridden blame themselves." Well, why would they? 

It's entirely possible, likely even, that GM doesn't want to reveal any decisions about their Canadian production facilities until they beat the Canadian Auto Workers with the same stick that convinced the United Auto Workers to surrender wages, job security, health care provisions, etc. But it's also true that GM has been vacillating back and forth on whether or not to build Canadian rear or front wheel-drive passenger cars for the American market for well over a year. Aside from the… wait for it…. here it comes… ready…. not yet… Camaro, there are no firm product plans for our neighbors to the north. For an answer to this dilemma, the Globe and Mail turned to GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who said union schunion [paraphrasing]. "The issue we're looking at in the U.S. is just with the CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Requirements] – how big those segments are going to be. It really is the $64,000 question." That figure might be a little low. According to the Globe, "Sources said the original plan called for GM to manufacture as many as 500,000 rear-wheel-drive vehicles including the Camaro once the plant was running at full tilt by 2010." The limbo dance continues. 

“In a nutshell we would disagree with the assessment that Acura would fall that low in any survey,” an unnamed Acura company spokesman told Ward’s Automotive re: Consumer Reports recent brand perception survey. “Our research shows Acura is ranking high in technology aspects and brand awareness and those types of things.” Those type of things? Ed Farrell, associate director for Consumer Reports' survey team, defended the mag's methodology. He told Ward's that they interrupted 1,720 U.S. adults' family dinner to ask brand-related questions, like “When you think of performance, what car best typifies to you performance?” Typifies to you? On an aggregate basis, top place finishers Toyota and Honda earned scores of 189 and 146. Acura garnered just eight points, finishing below Audi (14 points), Mitsubishi (21 points) and Mercury (22 points). According to the unnamed Acura spokesman, "That may be one of those snapshots that’s blurry when it comes to Acura’s real image.” May? Looks like Acura joins another well-known automotive brand at the top of the charts for obfuscation, petulance, arrogance and denial.