OK, so you want to save all eight remaining GM brands. Good for you! It sure would make a lot of people happy. So let's do it, starting with each GM division's USP. Each brand has to produce vehicles that do one thing better than anyone else in the world. No clones. No model overlap. Each vehicle must reflect, embody and personify its unique brand identity. If you look at a car, truck, SUV, minivan or crossover and know it's a GM product, we've failed.

Let's be clear about this: the United Auto Workers is not going to let General Motors cut ANY union benefits without a long and vicious fight. GM Vice President Rick Wagoner knows it. UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker knows it. GM workers know it. Wall Street knows it. And if you don't know it, listen up: last Friday, The General formally asked the UAW to re-open its contract. The UAW told them to fuck off.

Of course, we don't know if Shoemaker's crew used that expression. Both GM's request and the UAW's rejection took place behind closed doors. Still, you can get a feel for the UAW's perspective from their official response to Wagoner's promise to trim health care payments. Shoemaker ended his three paragraph reply with a simple statement: "We will do all that is possible to protect the interests of our members and their families." In other words, fuck off. And don't fuck with us.

'We aren't going out of business in the next six months.' After yesterday's stockholder meeting, GM Chairman Rick Wagoner faced reporters and jokingly predicted that his company will last until November– just in time for the long-delayed launch of the new Pontiac Solstice. The irony would be delicious if there weren't so many diners at the table. GM's continuing slide threatens the financial future of hundreds of thousands of shareholders, workers, suppliers, dealers, even the Seven Million Dollar man himself. And yet Wagoner's "big idea" to revive The General's declining health is a sham.

While Wagoner unveiled a five-point plan for GM, the headlines focused on plant closures and screamed "GM to slash 25,000 jobs!" The Chairman's committment to downsizing was a guaranteed spin winner. You know the drill: American manufacturing jobs are disappearing. It's a crisis! Something must be done! Equally important from Wagoner's POV, there's a market-pleasing corollary: times are tough, but GM is taking tough action. News of the move sent GM's share price (which has lost over 50% of its value in recent times) up fifty cents.

Once upon a time, enthusiasts bought a car's underpinnings from an automaker and then commissioned a coach builder to drop a body on top. The result: non-identical twins. And so it is with today's Dodge Charger R/T and Chrysler 300C. The two cars share chassis, engines, gearboxes, suspensions, wiring systems, the lot. It's not so much platform sharing as automotive cross-dressing. Of course, I don't mean that in a feminine way. The Dodge Boys have given the gangsta C a comprehensive muscle car makeover. But is it enough to lure NASCAR Dads into the showroom?

"Real" muscle car aficionados hate the new Charger on principle. How DARE Chrysler name a four-door sedan after a legendary two-door muscle car? I reckon that's a bit like being anti-Pammie because Ms. Anderson breasts are one cup size too large, but I feel their pain. There's nothing like driving a pavement-scorching two-door Yank tank to make you feel young, sexy and single– especially if you drive with your elbow on the window sill. Yes, well, sorry guys; those days are gone. The first time you strap your tantrumming rug rat into the back of your Charger and slam the rear door, you'll secretly thank The Dodge Boys for sacrificing authenticity for utility.

GM and its supporters have a mantra: product. By continually chanting "product, product, product", they hope the company's critics will believe that a string of hot cars, trucks, SUV's and minivans will pull the world's largest automaker back from the brink. While the argument ignores GM's sky high costs and decades of soured consumer relations, it sounds plausible enough. Chrysler's doing it. Why not GM?

For one thing, GM doesn't know how to sell a hot product when they have one. Take the Pontiac Solstice. No wait, you can't. Despite promising the car for summer '05, production problems have delayed dealer delivery until October. Ish. While GM wants props for selling no Pontiac before its time, you've got to laugh (or cry) at their incompetence. The company finally comes up with a blockbuster, generates massive awareness through a hit TV show, opens a special website for an "early order program" (EOP) and then… nothing.

Bob blogs. Mr. Lutz' entries on fastlane.gmblogs.com are irregular enough to merit cybernetic Metamucil, and the GM Vice Chairman's comments are about as 'off the cuff' as the State of the Union address. Even so, the blog provides fascinating insight into The Main Man's mindset. Sure, you have to slow the spin and read between the lines. That just makes it more fun. Bob's last entry, May 12th's 'The Game Plan… an Edited Version', is a perfect example.

Even before we start, he's waffling. The 'edited version' in the title implies that the full blueprint for GM's turnaround is too long or complicated for the General's public. It's a stunningly efficient projection of corporate condescension. In case you missed the point, Maximum Bob immediately reassures visitors that he reads their comments. The hand-holding exercise is necessary because Max Bob never answers a specific post, yet understands that his impersonal commentary violates the spirit of the exercise. To wit: 'I know that some bloggers [answer questions] more quickly than others…we're all doing what we can.'

Who killed the full-sized SUV? There they were, lumbering along, transporting America's families in comfort and style, when BANG! Dead genre driving. The biggest of the big– mighty Yukon XL's, epic Sequoias, humongous Hummers– now sit on dealer lots in long, neat rows, covered in ten-foot pole marks. JD Power reports that sales of full-size SUV's have dropped 22% so far this year. Sales of Ford's Explorer are off by 25% in the same period. Formerly truckeriffic GM is teetering on the abyss. Who dunnit?

Suspect number one: gas prices. The media coverage connecting rising gas prices with shrinking SUV sales has been relentless. Story after story showcase a working-class Dad or multi-tasking Mom whose love affair with their SUV rolled over and died (so to speak) when its petrochemical needs became financially overwhelming. Or, as printer Bob Fisher of Medford put in a recent NY Newsday article, "my Durango is killing me in gas."

The Jaguar XJR is an iconic car. No wait. I mean, it's an ironic car: an automobile with a huge gap between expectation and reality. For example, you expect a leather-lined British luxury sedan to literally reek of class. The XJR smells of… nothing. You expect the torch bearer for Jaguar's performance heritage to handle corners with cat-like reflexes. It doesn't. And yet, the XJR perfectly embodies the Jaguar creed of "pace and grace". Truth be told, the XJR is both more and less than it seems.

On the more side, the XJR will pleasantly disappoint anyone expecting dodgy electrics, rusting panels and faulty mechanicals. While JD Power's Initial Quality Survey is more about customer satisfaction than build quality, the brand's ascension to the second place slot is a reasonable reflection of the XJR's reliability. No part of the sports sedan seemed predisposed to rot, break, fall off or fail. It's a thoroughly modern machine.

Vice President Spiro Agnew used to call the press 'nattering nabobs of negativism'. The barb was part of Agnew's campaign against the press during the Nixon administration. Today, GM and its apologists are also accusing journalists of negative bias. While their language isn't as colorful as the disgraced Veep's, the idea is the same: GM is the victim of a malicious media. Sure, the company has a few 'issues', but the media's perception of GM's products (and therefore the public's) lags behind reality. GM isn't bad. It's just misunderstood.

This anti-media bunkering was recently emboldened by customer surveys from Strategic Vision Inc. and JD Power. In Strategic Vision's 'Total Quality Award', GM scored more victories than any other manufacturer. Six GM products took the top slot in their genre: the Pontiac G6, Buick Rainier, GMC Sierra, Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Corvette and Hummer H2 (tied with the Range Rover). Given the G6' lukewarm reviews, the scorn heaped upon the gas-guzzling Hummer and the cold shoulder afforded the Ranier, Sierra and Escalade; the survey provided plenty of ammunition for GM supporters who consider the press 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history'. Well it ain't necessarily so.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a plan! Post-Fiat payoff, post-financial quarter from Hell, post-Kerkorian, post-junk bond status, pre-stockholder meeting, The Detroit News has finally unearthed GM's strategy to extract itself from the multi-billion dollar hole that threatens to swallow the entire corporation. Step one; stop digging.

According to Mark LaNeve, GM North America's Vice President of Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing, The General is going to trim overlapping models across all eight domestic brands. We will no longer see re-badged versions of identical vehicles being sold under different GM banners (e.g. the Pontiac, Buick Satrun and Chevrolet minivans). As part of this overlapicide, only Chevrolet and Cadillac will sell a full model range. Everyone else will sell niche-specific vehicles, and nothing else. This leads us to…

The M3 CS is one of those rare cars that makes you change your driving habits. Grasp its suede-effect steering wheel and you find yourself in a single-minded pursuit of corners. You hunt for wiggly arrow road signs like a lion searching for a wounded Wildebeest. You scan for curving off-ramps that lead to… curving on-ramps. You waggle to your destination as if you're trying to shake a bad guy. Sure, the 333hp M3 CS can obliterate a straight line. But it's a reverse scuba diver at heart. It lives for the bends.

The CS in question stands for "Competition Sport". It's the performance-enhanced version of the performance-enhanced version of BMW's venerable 3-Series. It's also the last hurrah of the current M3 before the new model, based on the latest generation 3-Series, inspires fresh reverence and awe. To pump-up the volume on the M3's Swan Song, the CS option package adds 19" wheels and tires, dramatically bigger brakes, a faster steering ratio (14.5:1), a less intrusive handling Nanny, aluminum interior trim and optional Interlagos Blue paint. Oh, and $4000.

Last week, we learned that embattled GM Supremo Rick Wagoner was flying to Tokyo to discuss the possibility of 'sharing' Toyota's hybrid technology. GM officially denied the story. Today, we learn that Wagoner did indeed meet with Toyota President Fujio Cho (on a Sunday no less) to discuss "fuel cell development". In the news biz, this is what you call going from bad to worse.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are decades way from actualization. Despite billions of dollars in development funding, engineers have yet to devise a hydrogen fuel cell efficient/practical enough for anything other than a large commercial bus. While not insurmountable, the challenge requires entirely new technologies and materials, which must then be subjected to the same rigor that applies to gas-powered propulsion: performance testing, manufacture, packaging, mechanical reliability, recyclability and more. And then there are safety concerns, especially at pump time.

Whenever a domestic automaker goes to the wall, it's always someone else's fault: the foreign exchange rate, health care costs, pension obligations, product cycles, changing tastes, the media, government regulations, union contracts, etc. Executives start shuttling off to Washington to talk about "leveling the playing field'. By now, we're wise to these buzz words; they're an attempt to hide the fact that a US automaker "suddenly" lacks the competitive skills to take on their foreign rivals. This time it's GM. Well it's time for GM to stand up and take some responsibility for their actions.

This is not GM's first chance to come clean. Remember the Arab Oil Embargo of the 70's? Gas stations lines went around the block and gas prices rose to unheard of levels ($1 a gallon!). When consumers reacted by flocking to smaller, higher mileage foreign-made cars, GM claimed that the Japanese were "flooding the market" with cheap imports– as if it was some vast conspiracy to put Americans out of work. The plain fact was that the Japanese and German product was better than ours: better engineered, better built and more economical. Not that they'd say so, but GM's corporate laziness simply caught up with them.

How fast in the Mercedes Benz E55 AMG Wagon? Fast enough to send the sunroof cover panel backwards. Fast enough to fling the ice cream out of a well-packed cone. Fast enough to make you hit the recirculating air button to keep the smell of burning rubber from curling your nostrils. Fast enough to turn your securely fastened two-year-old into a Teletubby (Again! Again!). Fast enough to lure you out of your office for a quick spin to… anywhere. That's right: pistonhead catnip now comes in station wagon form. Go figure.

Just don't try and find one. You won't find an E55 AMG Wagon on your local dealer's showroom floor or in a glossy ad. The World's Fastest Station Wagon is only available by straight-from-Germany-to-your-driveway special order. By its own admission, Mercedes didn't think there were enough adrenaline-addicted Americans willing to stump-up $80k for a supercharged station wagon to justify the cost of marketing, promoting and importing the beast.

Car czars say the craziest things! In 2002, GM CEO Rick Wagoner said hybrids were only applicable to Japan, where gas cost $4 a gallon. About the same time, Flyboy Bob Lutz ridiculed edgy-looking, proto-300C concept cars as 'angry appliances'. And now Mercedes chief Eckhard Cordes says MB may no longer strive to top JD Power's survey of initial quality (IQ). For a brand whose reputation once rested on the bedrock of bullet-proof build quality, Mercedes' potential capitulation to the forces of mediocrity is startling– in the worst possible, most memorable way. If Jeopardy had a category 'Things Auto Execs Shouldn't Have Said', Cordes remark would only be a $100 answer.

From a PR perspective, Cordes' remarks are an unmitigated disaster. If there's one thing Americans hate more than a $80k German sedan with dodgy electrics– I mean, a loser, it's a sore loser. In J.D. Power's 2004 Initial Quality survey, Mercedes-Benz clocked-in at number ten, with 106 problems per 100 vehicles. (Lexus was first, with 87 problems per 100 vehicles.) When the tenth ranked company suggests it no longer aspires to the top slot in the most widely recognized measure of who builds the best damn car on the planet, it's the very definition of sour grapes, in a seven-year-old kinda way. Who cares about YOUR stupid quality survey ANYWAY? I'm going to do my OWN survey. So THERE.