When Cerberus liberated Chrysler from its German captors, we speculated on the role parts maker Magna would play in the ailing automaker's future. At the time, we were looking for the three-headed canine to perform a quick strip and flip, off-loading a big ass chunk of Chrysler's production onto the cash-rich Canadians. Perhaps we spoke too soon. Bloomberg reports that Magna has reversed decades of anti-union efforts and signed a "Framework of Fairness" with the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW). Under the terms of the agreement, the CAW agrees to a no-strike clause, in favor of independent arbitration.Today's Globe and Mail prints a joint statement by Magna's Frank Stronach and the CAW's Buzz Hargrove claiming that they've put away their differences "for the sake of the industry." Apparently. "economic studies have suggested that companies that pair union representation with extensive mechanisms for worker involvement and participation attain the best possible combination of high productivity and high morale." Who knew? A more likely explanation: at a stroke, the deal removes Chrysler's United Auto Workers members' objections to Magna's purchase of Chrysler production facilities, if not the entire company. Rock and roll!

OK, so the UK hasn't banned smoking in cars– with or without kids in situ. But changes to the Highway Code– the rules and regulations governing all road users– have empowered police to ticket puffing motorists for "not allowing proper control of a car" (allowing?). Although police pedants have previously cited UK drivers for drinking from a water bottle in slow-moving traffic and other petty distractions, a survey from the esure auto insurance company reveals that 45 percent of smoking motorists have a simple response to the new prohibition: piss off. esure surveyed a thousand UK motorists to discover than a little less than half would ignore the rule change entirely. To ensure esure's survey adopted the correct line on the matter, their research company winkled-out some "worrying" statistics: a "massive" 80 per cent of smoking motorists admit to taking their hands off the wheel to fire-up a fag; 75 per cent of them think smoking whilst driving on a motorway is acceptable and poses no risks; 46 per cent admit to dropping their cigarette in the car (26 per cent said they took their eyes off the road to retrieve it); and 45 per cent admit to throwing fag ends out the window. esure's Head of Risk and Underwriting sounded the appropriate note: "At esure, driver safety is our top priority and so the risky habits carried out by some smokers are a cause for concern. We advise drivers to always pay the road their full attention." That's it then. Carry on. 

CNN Money is reporting that Toyota has dropped from first to fifth place in Consumer Reports' (CR) ranking of average predicted reliability for all models sold under a given brand after one year of ownership. ToMoCo now slots beneath Honda, Acura, Scion and Subaru. What's worse, CR no longer recommends V6 Camrys or V8 Tundra full-size pickups due to their poor reliability. And the hits keep happening. CR says the results are so rad/bad they're changing their "free ride" methodology. Before now, Consumer Reports would assume at least average reliability for Toyota's new cars, without waiting for owner survey data. From now on, the magazine will wait for a full year of reliability survey data before recommending a Toyota product. As it does with most other manufacturers. As it should have from the git-go. Meanwhile, of the domestics, only Buick made it into CR's top ten, although Ford and Mercury are climbing CR's brand reliability charts (to 13th and 11th respectively). Of the 39 cars rated "most reliable," the domestics scored just four nods. Of the 44 "least reliable" models, The Big 2.8 accounted for 20. And the biggest loser is… the Solstice, with 234 percent less reliability than CR's statistical average. Pontiac's once red-hot roadster just beat the Cadillac Escalade EXT for the bottom position. CR reckons the 'Slade is 220 percent less reliable than average. That doesn't sound good.

[TTAC data provider truedelta analyzes CR's methodology here.] 

So here I am, on the phone to a car dealer to hook-up a test drive in the "new" Ford Focus. As I type, I'm on hold, listening to an ad for Stop and Shop. While I'm sure the message is part of a radio station plug-in, why the Hell should I call a car dealer to be sold groceries? Anyway, Dennis comes on the line forty-nine seconds later to tell me that they've got one, and it's on the showroom floor. Great! I'll come down for a test drive. When are you interested in buying the car? I resist the urge to blurt out "when my penis exceeds 12 inches." Before I can say "soon" he goes off on a rant on how some people want to test drive cars that they're only interested in buying six months hence, and how his manager is not enamored with test drives related to purchases within this time frame. Five minutes later, I get a return call. We're good to go. Do you have a vehicle to trade-in? And that's it, save a sudden desire to take a shower. Still. this process keeps us in touch with what you go through, and I gotta say, it ain't pretty. As Ford doesn't have a whole lot of exciting cars in the showroom or pipeline, perhaps they ought to use this interregnum to sort some things out at the sharp end.

Obviously, we don't screen our readers' TWAT nominees– until next week. That's when TTAC's writers vote on the 20 finalists from ALL your suggestions, for your final vote. Meanwhile, the "best of the best" love fest that inspired our name and shamery continues over at the buff books, car writers' associations and anywhere else they can get brownie points (i.e. press cars and advertising) from automakers. Motor Trend has announced their SUV of the Year :" the Mazda CX-9. Strangley, the accompanying article is laden with qualifiers "Mazda's finest demonstration of infusing sports-car qualities into an SUV;" "An SUV seemingly well suited for going to the mountains, midtown, or the market;" "The CX-9 was arguably the most enjoyable sport 'ute to pilot;" and "Of course, the CX-9 isn't perfect;" Although it's [more than] a little unfair to suggest that the CX-9 is inherently TWAT-worthy (our review is on its way), the SUV didn't escape TTAC commentator kansei's scorn: "The CX-9 is decidedly unsporty and pollutes the zoom zoom brand image." Oh, and two of the 11 Motor Trend's also-rans are former TWATs: the Jeep Compass (the Liberty was also on their short list) and the Subaru Tribeca. Just sayin'…

What's the bet that Ford has a whole room full of MBA's who do nothing more than scan the tea leaves of the U.S. economy and powerpoint their prognostications to the Powers That Be? If so, you gotta be a little worried, 'cause Ford CEO Alan Mulally doesn't seem to be. Despite the ongoing slide in American home values (a.k.a. the mortgage crisis) the soaring price of oil (cresting $86 a barrel) and the current downturn in new car sales ('07 looks to be the slowest year since '98), Reuters reports that Big Al sees 2008 U.S. light vehicle sales between 16.3 million and 16.5 million units. In fact, "We've laid out our plans to handle that kind of volume." Yes, well, however theoretical, a rising tide doesn't lift all boats. As Reuters points out, Ford has lost roughly one percent market share per year since the turn of the century, and is set to shut 16 plants and cut more than 50k jobs. Here's hoping The Blue Oval Boyz know something we don't. 

There are plenty of auto industry execs who see car enthusiasts a bunch of Buddy Pines. I'm talking about the sycophantic fan in The Incredibles: a boy whose ambition to be Mr. Incredible's sidekick foundered on his abject lack of superpowers. In fact, Buddy Pine's pathetic devotion put Mr. Incredible in harm's way, and, eventually, turned Pine from a fan into Mr. Incredible's murderous stalker. The truth about car fans is far better represented by a cartoon panel that shows a King looking down on his troops as they head into battle. A man stands next to him holding a machine gun. "I don't have time for salesmen now!" the King shouts. I was reminded of the image when I discovered that Jaguar is finally consigning the X-Type to the scrap heap of history. Enthusiasts had been warning Ford that they were killing Jag from Day One, when it was clear FoMoCo knew about as much about careful parenting as Cronos. The X-Type turned out to be the British brand's ultimate indignity– and that's saying something. If Ford and Jag had listened to Jaguar's most passionate if amateur guardians they could have, well, it breaks your heart to see the XK120 and E-Type's descendants descend into the abyss. Keep this in mind when you comment here and elsewhere, and rest assured that there will come a day when car companies realize they have to let us inside the factory gates. For their own good. 

When the United Auto Workers (UAW) concluded their strike against GM in two days, plenty of people reckoned the industrial action was designed to put the fear of God into union members, rather than wrest new concessions from GM. If so, it worked a treat; 66 percent of the UAW rank and file approved the new contract the following week. When the UAW strike against Chrysler lasted six hours, the strikelet scared no one. In fact, Bloomberg reports that the head of the UAW's negotiating committee at Chrysler will tell his union brothers and sisters to reject the accord. Doh! He forgot the job guarantees! "Virtually no Chrysler plant received commitments beyond the scope of their current product," Bill Parker revealed. "The plant- by-plant threats we've experienced in the past will continue." Parker's also says the settlement fails to match the GM accord's assurances that Chrysler's current temporary workers will move into full-time jobs. So why is the UAW lead negotiator disavowing his own agreement? You guessed it: union politics. Parker is part of an anti-Gettelfinger faction called "New Directions." This could get interesting…

We're happy that Washington Post car columnist Warren Brown is happy with the "new" GM. But methinks he protests too little. In his latest minimus opus, Brown begins by admitting that "it's too early for General Motors to declare 'mission accomplished'"– even though that expression has been considered ironic since GWB gave a post-Iraq invasion press conference on the U.S.S. Lincoln. Anyway, if that's not scary enough, Warren reveals there's a "discernible note of confidence in the voices of GM's top executives today" and "smiles on the faces of the company's designers, engineers, vehicle line executives, marketing and communications people." And that's because GM's "changed its culture from one of authoritarian control with little regard for consumers or rank-and-file employees to one in which car people — designers, engineers and marketers — have been empowered to go full blast in anticipating and meeting consumer needs and demands." Wow! On the tangible proof side, Brown lauds the new Chevrolet Malibu, Cadillac CTS, Saturn Sky, GMC Acadia, Saturn Outlook and Buick Enclave (Shhh! Don't tell Warren's readers that the last three are the same vehicle.) As for actual factual evidence of this turnaround, Warren cites the Sky "stealing sales from the iconic MX-5 Miata," GM's slight sales increase during the last two months and, uh, that's it. With a cheering section like this, who needs PR?

The Daily Telegraph reveals that the Labour govenment has ditched plans to introduce a "pay-as-you-go" pricing scheme for UK motorists. The move comes after an on-line petition against so-called road pricing (a.k.a. "Electronic Road Pricing" or ERP) garnered an unprecedented 1.8m signatures. The Telegraph, which lead a journalistic campaign to strangle the idea in its metaphorical, non-MTV crib, predicts that the Department for Transport will officially signal a shift from national road pricing to local schemes (a la London's Congestion Charge) in a statement to Parliament next week, as follows: "We agree that there are congestion problems on parts of the strategic road network, but 88 per cent of congestion is in urban areas. Therefore it is sensible to prioritise the assessment of road pricing in these areas." Reading between the lines, the government has left the door open to local or country officials seeking to introduce ERP schemes on national or trunk roads within their territory. In other words, the battleground has now shifted to Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle. Watch this space (and we're not charging you for it either). 

When Cerberus rescued Daimler bought Chrysler, pundits predicted a radical reinvention. Oh well. But that hasn't stopped the irrepressible Jason Vines. Chrysler's Spinmeister's got another story to tell, and The Financial Times is happy to tell it: "Chrysler cuts a dash with speed and decisiveness." Aside from the six-hour resolution to the United Auto Workers' strikelet, "signs of the new urgency include a swift move to bring down swollen inventories of slow-selling models. Five plants were idled last week, and four will shut this week… According to Mr Press, the production cutback was sealed during a seven-minute conference call between Mr Nardelli and a Cerberus executive." (Did we tell you that phone call would be PR fodder?) Other than that, "Frank Klegon, head of product development, observes that Mr Nardelli 'lets me know what he thinks, a lot.'" And Steven Landry, head of North American sales, says “they want to fix things quick." The FT buries the real bombshell (as have we) for the end of the piece. Speaking at the National Automobile Dealers Association in Vegas, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli answered a dealer's questions about the possibility of Cerberus "spinning off" Chrysler bits and pieces. "While he did not exclude a future spin-off, he said Cerberus would wait at least until Chrysler is once again profitable." Huh.  

The "new" Ford Focus rests atop eight-year-old underpinnings. But the car's PR campaign uses cutting edge (so to speak) New Media techniques. Cnet.com reports that FoMoCo's launching the '08 Focus with the spin industry's latest jargoneriffic widget: a Social Media News Release (SMNR). Ironically enough (at least for Nissan fans), the SMNR was created by SHIFT Communications as "a viable new format to spark and cultivate online conversations about a product." In case you can't be bothered to click through to a release on the hot new Focus, the non non-viable digital press release contains "boilerplate statements," loads o' links, podcasts, a webpage or five, links to old stories, pre-approved quotes, eye candy photos, graphics and YouTubeage. We were expecting some new level of interactivity– IM or webinars with people within the company, connections to other journalists or links to Foci forums, but no; it's same old you-know-what is a new wrapper. Clearly, the "fourth wall" between automakers and their customers is still bricked-up. Perhaps Ford's new marketing maven from Lexus could have a look at this…

Does the average American consumer know or care that GM owns Saturn? Or Toyota Scion? Nope. TTAC has been arguing since ever that brands are the heart and soul of any and all car companies; it's how people perceive the products vying for their patronage. Automotive News [AN, sub] has run an analysis of U.S. car sales by brand for the first nine months of '07, and there's blood all over the carpet. A cataclysmic shift leaves Toyota the undisputed king of cars. "The Japanese juggernaut slashed the retail sales gap with GM by 40 percent during the first eight months of 2007… GM's retail advantage dropped from 487,235 vehicles for that period last year to 282,677 vehicles this year. If current trends continue, AN predicts ToMoCo will wrest the overall number one spot from GM within four years (by 2011). In fact, the Chevrolet Impala is the only domestic vehicle that appears in the nine-month top-10 automotive list, trailing the Toyota Camry by over 100k units. (Take fleet sales out of that equation…) Meanwhile, "Honda has quiely risen to number three in U.S. car sales, looking at achieving 10 percent of the U.S. light-vehicle market by year's end. Ford has tanked. The Blue Oval Boyz' overall sales are down 13.3 percent. They've lost sales every month this year and dropped nearly two points of market share. In the upmarket automotive arena, Lexus is set to topple Cadillac as America's favorite luxury brand, heading for '07 totals that will beat Cadillac's best ever sales year. 

I remember the afternoon Nancy Reagan sashayed into CNN for an in-studio interview. I was tethered to camera two, panning its unblinking eye left and right six inches– as I had done for eight hours a day for the previous year-and-a-half. To say I was numb with boredom and seething with resentment is like suggesting that Osama Bin Laden would be persona non grata at a U.S. Marines' barracks. Of course, this was a kindler gentler time, when the CIA was busy training Osama and his cronies to terrorise the Russians in Afghanistan. Anyway, Nance was deeply involved in her "Just Say No" anti-drugs campaign. Her interviewers: Don Farmer and Chris Curl (whose long-suffering though minion-squashing producer Katie Couric dreamed of better days). At some point, Don asked The First Lady "So how did your children avoid taking drugs?" I nearly snorked. The previous winter, I'd had the good fortune to ski with Ron Jr. in Aspen Colorado. On the lift up Ajax, Ron and I had partaken of a particularly fine bud of Maui Wowee nestled in the bowl of my erotically shaped meerschaum pipe. I don't remember what Nancy said, or how in the world I kept my mouth shut (a skill that remains undeveloped some twenty-plus years later), but I do remember thinking that truth is the first casualty of minimum wage Hell. (Or something like that.) As TTAC heads towards adding video, you can rest assured that we will continue to pull no punches– and leave those buds unsmoked.

Sorry, I get confused sometimes, what with all these domestic automaker-sponsored surveys that surprise! reveal that their products' quality is nearasdammit as good as their competitions'. Initially. In some cases. If you're comparing a lack of defects– as opposed to some other, more consumercentric measure of quality. Anyway, once again Ford paid RDA Group of Bloomfield Hills to survey 31k car buyers who'd lived with their new whip for all of 90 days. The Detroit News (DTN) dutifully reports that "2007 model year Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars and trucks had 1,395 quality issues per 1,000 vehicles, compared with 1,381 per 1,000 vehicles for 2007 Toyota, Lexus and Scion cars and trucks." (Honda came first.) Just in case you suspect that shock! Ford's patronage might have influenced the outcome, the DTN assures us that "The firm conducts similar studies for other automakers [Ed. with similar results?]," and "its findings have hewed close to those of the closely watched annual initial quality survey independently conducted by J.D. Power and Associates." Bennie Fowler, Ford's quality chief, told the DTN that Ford's "trying to listen to its customers and take their concern to heart." As Yoda would say, NO TRYING! Either do or don't do.