Jinking through traffic somewhere above the ton, it quickly became apparent that the Lexus IS 350 wasn't the ideal car for the job. The erstwhile sports sedan bumped and jiggled over surface imperfections like a tied-down tunermobile. It rolled through directional transitions like a luxobarge, helming with unacceptable imprecision and unwelcome lean. While the powerplant provided more than enough shove for the work at hand, the IS 350's dynamics drew a definitive line between "doable" and "enjoyable." If further proof were needed that I was in the wrong car at the wrong speed, the BMW M3 keeping pace provided it.

After a few polite lead exchanges, the M3 dropped the hammer and disappeared. I rejected the idea of visiting V-Max. The IS 350's 3.5-liter V6 holsters a surprising percentage of the mighty M3's oomph (at a fraction of the price), but it's no Bimmer beater. More specifically, maxxing-out a 3-Series anything is like gently drifting through the tunnel of love, compared to the baby Lexus' Autobahn of Doom stunt show. What upmarket motorist needs THAT kind of excitement? Indeed, why would anyone suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous ride and handling when any number of similarly priced cars offer a more pleasurable driving experience?

According to Rabid Rick Wagoner, terminating his employment would only slow down GM's recovery: 'When you bring in a lot of new people, you bring in a lot of change and people just sort of sit there and try to figure out what to do.' As opposed to what? Keeping the same old people and making no changes so that people can sort of sit there and watch the world's largest automaker go bankrupt? Rick's comment appeared in AutoWeek immediately after Standard & Poor's rating service downgraded GM's credit rating to "B", some five steps below investment grade, with a negative outlook. Clearly, Wagoner is to leadership what penguins are to civil engineering.

Like any clueless corporate alpha, Rabid Rick wants us to believe that everything's under control. Indeed, he's instructed PR flack Gina Proia to tell the world that GM has "an aggressive and well thought-out strategy to turn around our North American business." Apparently, this comprehensive plan comes complete with quantifiable goals, implementation dates and, well, everything Rick's mob needs to save GM from a Valentine's Day Massacre. Only AutoWeek reports that Rabid Rick "prefers to keep it private." In fact, GM's would-be savior "declined to predict whether GM's North American automotive operations could break even next year." [NB: "could" not "would."]

I'm a bit of a fix-it freak. Don't get me wrong: I'm no great fan of home improvement. I just love tools. I can quite happily while away an hour or so down at the Depot, cruising the aisles, checking out the hammers, screwdrivers, drills, planes, work benches, etc. Needless to say, I can spot a perfect implement at twenty paces. The second it falls to hand, I'm suffused with delight. A well-designed tool's intrinsic excellence rescues me from the foul compromises of daily strife. It soothes and thrills me with its minimalist mix of precision and possibility. It fills me with admiration for the craftsman who made it. It's the same feeling I get from the new Porsche Boxster S.

I freely admit that the new Boxster S doesn't look particularly special. Although Porsche's open-top roadster shares no major sheetmetal with its immediate predecessor, it continues to forfeit sexy to its continental and Japanese competitors. Truth be told, the Boxster has yet to recover from its divergence from the sublime, Speedster-inspired prototype. The latest iteration pins its hopes for aesthetic redemption on newly pumped haunches and a slightly more aggressive stance. It's better, certainly, but the Boxster's overall form continues to reside in push-me/pull-you no-man's land. It still looks like a hairdresser's car.

Forget GM's Toe Tag sale, which failed to extinguish the automaker's low sales idiot light and sealed their reputation as the K Mart of cars. Ignore GM's eternal promise of new and better products. Disregard Rabid Rick's pathetic bleating to the Wall Street Journal that lawsuits, fate and the federal government are responsible for GM's $4.8b black hole. The General's immediate future depends entirely on whether or not the United Auto Workers' (UAW) calls a strike against bankrupt GM parts supplier Delphi.

This January, the UAW's leadership may tell Delphi Prez CallMeSteve Miller to shred his salary and benefit-reducing proposal and flush it down the toilet of his Gulfstream Challenger. Miller will then ask a federal bankruptcy judge to terminate the UAW's contract. The UAW will retaliate with a strike that will starve GM of parts. GM's assembly lines will close. Should the UAW strike last more than a couple of months, The General will burn through its multi-billion dollar cash reserves. The world's largest automaker will be forced to file the world's largest Chapter 11.

Last Thursday, the American Family Association (AFA) reached an agreement with The Ford Motor Company ending their boycott of the automaker's products. The faith-based organization launched their action last May to stop FoMoCo from supporting gay and lesbian groups. Specifically, the AFA demanded that Ford stop all contributions to homosexual social events (e.g. gay pride parades), end all donations to homosexual organizations and cease advertising in all gay-oriented media. Yesterday, Ford confirmed that Jaguar and Land Rover will pull their advertising from gay publications, but refused to discuss any other details of the AFA agreement. One thing is for sure: The Blue Oval caved, Big Style.

Ford's acquiescence to the AFA's religious agenda is a huge mistake. It's lit a fire under the large, wealthy and equally well-organized gay community. Gays and lesbians around the country are sure to respond to Ford's AFA accord with a boycott of their own. If Ford backs down from THAT pressure, the AFA will relaunch their boycott. By choosing a side in the contentious "homosexual lifestyle" issue, Ford is now smack dab in the middle of a Hatfield – McCoy-style conflict that it can't win, on any level, ever.

If a rose by any other name would still smell so sweet, would a Ford Fusion by any other name still be a front-wheel-drive economy car? Lincoln certainly hopes not. It wants its upscale customers to view the new Zephyr as a discrete model, rather than a gussied-up Ford Fusion. Mercury harbors similar hopes/delusions for its Fusion-with-frills, the Milan. Come to think of it, the Fusion is based on the [Ford-owned] Mazda 6, whose price overlaps both the Fusion and the Milan. I suppose the answer to the conundrum posed by the incredible sameness of automotive being depends entirely on the customer's ability to smell a rat.

Fifty or sixty years ago, car buyers were easily fooled by re-badged vehicles. And even if they weren't, it didn't matter. The Big Three bestrode the US car market like a colossus. Even casual pistonheads could name every single car for sale. Auto brands were stronger than superglue. Driving a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury meant something; your car's sheet metal and badge reflected and projected your personal status. Customers who knew that their fancy new Lincoln was actually a Ford in a zoot suit didn't really care– as long as they got a good car that earned appropriate props. Brand loyalty was king.

What's the difference between a rental car and a mass market motor? Not a lot. But this much is true: the new Fusion's headlight switch wouldn't seem out of place on an EASY-BAKE oven. Actually, Ford should be so lucky; Kenner has sold over 16 million cookers since the feminist's least favorite toy debuted in 1963. The probability that the Fusion will deliver similar amounts of EASY-PROFIT depends entirely on the Y factor. Why would anyone buy an automobile that's had any hint of personality professionally removed by a crack squad of cost-conscious engineers? Purchase price? Reliability? You tell me and then we'll both know.

If customers swim into their local Ford dealer's fishbowl to spawn between $17k and $21k on behalf of a new Fusion, they won't be doing so because the sedan's sheet metal haunts their dreams– unless it's a nightmare about being pursued by a giant razor. The Fusion's three-blade front foil is the car's only attempt to make a visual statement; to my eyes it looks as if it's saying "I want to be an Infiniti when I grow up". From any angle other than the front, Ford's family four-door is so generic that the binocular fusion required to scan it hardly seems worth the effort. To be fair, the Fusion's Euro-blanditude obscures its proletarian roots with unrelenting unobjectionality. How great is that?

Yesterday, GM announced it will release former subsidiary Delphi from an agreement trimming big bucks from The General's parts bill. This despite the fact that GM CEO Rabid Rick Wagoner has consistently used the discount to casually suggest that Delphi's bankruptcy was good for General Motors. Never mind. Delphi responded to GM's generosity by extending its contract deadline with the United Auto Workers (UAW) to January 20th. The quid pro quo means GM avoids a cataclysmic loss of parts– until that date. It's all part of Rabid Rick's masterplan for dodging Delphi's strike-related bankruptcy bullet…

Rabid Rick's tendered the 'get out of free competition free' card to provide Delphi with the funds it needs to subsidize the unthinkable: the difference between what Delphi wants to pay its UAW workers ($10 an hour) and what they currently earn ($27 an hour). What's more, TTAC's Deep Throat reckons GM will also reach into its back pocket to mop-up other UAW claims against Delphi's cash. The General will pay Delphi's superfluous union workers not to work, underwrite the union's benefit guarantees and assume Delphi's $10.8b pension liability. In short, Rabid Rick's recently stated desire for all sides to figure out "what we really need to do here" actually means delivering huge sacks of GM blood money to the UAW.

I used to think that spin meant arranging facts to conceal their meaning. After watching Rabid Rick Wagoner's responses to the pre-shocks signaling GM's impending implosion, I now see spin as the art of distraction combined with the sin of omission. Back in October, on the day Rabid Rick revealed a $1.6b quarterly shortfall, Wagoner also announced a $1b health care "giveback" by his unionized employees. Only later did we learn that GM is paying the union $2b to cushion the impact. Yesterday, Wagoner announced he was slicing 30k jobs and closing nine production plants by '08. So Rick, how much will THAT cost GM?

Wagoner publicly conceded that The General will take a "sizable charge against earnings" to cover the plant closures– and then point blank refused to provide any details. It's entirely unlikely that Wagoner made the downsizing decision without knowing its exact impact on GM's bottom line. His reluctance can only mean one thing: red ink, and lots of it. Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa estimates that shuttering the nine plants will cost The General between $1b and $2b. Mr. Casesa was unavailable for comment; it's not exactly clear what expenses his figures encompass. Of this we can be certain: the closures will cost a bundle and do sweet FA to relieve GM's sky-high labor costs, either now or in the future.

'I'd just like to set the record straight here and now,' Rabid Rick Wagoner wrote in an email circulated yesterday on GM's intranet. 'There is absolutely no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy." Obviously, the growing suspicion that GM is heading for a cataclysmic financial failure prompted Wagoner tell the world that The Man in Charge isn't playing kissy-kissy with a bankruptcy judge behind the bike shed. At the precise moment when Wagoner should have been rallying his troops with a bold survival strategy, he chose to declare the fact that he's not [currently] negotiating surrender. Wrong answer.

If you still believe that Rabid Rick and his cronies can save GM, I suggest you surrender that opinion now and join the industry analysts wise to Wagoner's wicked ways. Every time there's trouble at the mill– an occurrence whose increasing frequency is only matched by its escalating intensity– Rick announces Something Is Being Done. The scandalous manipulation surrounding last quarter's financial statement, when Rick revealed the bogus United Auto Workers (UAW) health care "giveback" on the same day GM lost $1.6b, is a perfect example of Wagoner's MO. It's got the point where any executive assertion of corrective action signals yet another financial disaster.

You can't blame Jeep for launching a retro-styled seven-seater at a time when dealers' forecourts have become sport utility tar pits. The Dark Lords of DCX pulled the trigger on the Commander when the petrochemical sun was shining, hay was being made and the word "hybrid" applied to orchids, vegetables and farm animals. The logic was sound: build a more commodious SUV to keep fecund followers of Jeep's trail rated trucks within the fold. Something that would also lure lifestylers helming less venerable vehicles. But the execution is inexcusable. Even if Shell V-Power was free, you wouldn't want to waste it on the new Jeep Commander.

If it wasn't so funny, it would be sad. GM loses billions in ill-advised overseas 'investments', produces an over-abundance of vehicles that are two model cycles behind the competition, can't build a single hybrid, completely cocks-up production of its Solsticial one hit wonder, cedes US market dominance to Toyota, plays "Let's Pretend to Make a Deal" with its union, announces its intention to sell-off majority interest in the only profitable part of the company, refuses to outline its turnaround plan, and the stock market yawns. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) discovers GM's accountants have lost four hundred million dollars behind the couch and the stock tanks. What's that all about?

Before the SEC probe, like many other industry watchers, I was laboring under the impression that GM's stunning incompetence and epic lethargy reflected management myopia. In other words, The General's G5 corporate culture had insulated Rabid Rick Wagoner and his well-paid minions from what you and I would call reality. They honestly believe their own hype. Now, I'm not to sure. Although the $400m was "misreported" rather than "lost", there are ominous rumblings that GM's mea culpa is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Lest we forget, the SEC's main focus was/is GM's multi-billion dollar pension and benefit schemes (vis-a-vis bankrupt auto parts supplier Delphi). Yesterday, the federal Pension Guaranty Corporation reported that Delphi's pensions are underfunded by $10.8b.

I probably shouldn't admit to auditory hallucinations, but every time I sat behind the new Civic's diminutive silver and black steering wheel, I heard the Star Wars theme welling-up inside my head. I know it's crazy: a vehicle known throughout the galaxy as the automotive equivalent of a pair of Birkenstock nurse's shoes suddenly inspiring thoughts of an Incom T-65 X-wing Starfighter. But there it is: an electroluminescent mass market motor clearly designed to appeal to the light saber set. In other words, the eighth gen Honda Civic sedan is the car of the future, straight from the past.

For over 30 years, Maryann Keller's kept tabs on The General. The auto industry analyst has watched GM lose billions in overseas investments, surrender great chunks of market share to its rivals and sacrifice shareholder value in an endless pursuit of The Next Big Thing. According to Keller, GM's inability to face-up to its structural weaknesses is nothing new. Nor are the excuses coming from RenCen. "It's one big idea after another," Keller said. "This time it's crossovers. Well, they've used that 'there's a new product in the pipeline' routine for years. GM's problems are NOT temporary." OK, but are they terminal?

Like most observers, Keller's brain balks at bankruptcy. For one thing, The General is sitting on an estimated $30b cash pile– which will grow by another $12b or so when GM jettisons controlling interest in its GMAC mortgage and financing business. For another, Keller says bankruptcy would have a cataclysmic effect on GM's business. "Customers would disappear," Keller says. "They'd think, who's going to pay for my warranty claims? What will my car be worth? And what bank would write a loan for a car sold by a bankrupt company? Would fleet customers do business with them? I don't think so. The long-term damage to GM would be incalculable."

Generally speaking, I'm not partial to cars that remind me of death. But I respect Lexus for selling a model lineup that keeps faith with their "luxury car as mobile mausoleum" brand heritage. That said, the Japanese automaker's sensory deprivation shtick has taken a couple of major hits since the debut of the LS400, in the form of leathered-up, badge-engineered Toyotas. But the "new" GS300 is a far more worrying development: a bespoke model that turns its back on everything that made The Big L successful in the first place.

Visually, that's a good thing. The new GS300 represents a bold and beautiful break from Lexus' amorphous aesthetic. The four-door's front end seems a bit of an 8-Series crib, and the rear is as confused as an absinthe drinker, but the GS300's hunkered stance and nose-heavy proportions project a genuine sense of aggression. The rear pillars are especially wikkid, and the swageless sides add a statement of streamlined modernity. If ever a car promised to give the BMW 530i a decent run for the money– and quite a lot of money it is too– the GS300 is it.