Eamonn Fingleton is the author of insightful books titled “Blindside: Why Japan is still on track to overtake the US by the year 2000” and “In Praise of Hard Industries – Why manufacturing, not the new economy is the key to future prosperity.” Whoever followed his advice either has committed suicide by now, or lives in a place where sharp objects are banned. Except for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader, who think Fingleton is a swell guy. In truth, the Tokyo-dwelling Irish author has few friends left. He just found a bunch of new ones: the editors of The Detroit Free Press (Freep).

The Freep was so desperate to find a new scapegoat for The Big 2.8’s woes that they scoured the Internet and found and republished a two-week-old rant on Fingleton’s whacko blog “Unsustainable.”

“Detroit’s problems are partly – but only partly – its own fault,” Fingleton states in his opening salvo. The trouble with Detroit, Fingleton wrote, is not managerial incompetence, greedy unions nor wrong cars. Blame those numbnuts in Washington who failed to lock-out the foreigners. Without foreign competition,  Detroit would be just fine.

“For 40 years the Detroit companies have been systematically undermined by foreign competitors’ predatory pricing in the U.S. market,” writes Fingleton. Whoever priced an import lately will beg to differ, but neither Fingleton nor the Freep are fazed.

The theorist then asserts that the Japanese “have kept their home market as a protected sanctuary, operating in cartel fashion and free from effective foreign competition.” As in: if the market be open, the Japanese would all drive Chevys. Living in Japan, Fingleton must be blind. But let’s play the numbers game…

Statistics from the Japan Automobile Imports Association show that the island nation imports some 300K cars a year. The U.S. only accounts for 15K of model year 2007’s imports, including, of all things, HUMMERS (favored by the Yakuza.)

According to Japan’s Automobile Inspection Registration Association, Mercedes makes the most popular imports, with 633,402 on the road. Next up: VW, with 623,089. And a little less than 200K units later, BMW accounts for 489,106 cars in the land of the rising yen. (We’ll get to the yen part soon.)

In Fingleton’s original piece, these statistics were misrepresented as “two German manufacturers, Mercedes Benz and BMW, enjoy token positions.” The Freep wisely (or maliciously) left it out. It would have begged the question: how many American cars are on the road in Japan?  In all, just 50K Chevys. That’s less than 10 percent of Mercedes’ total. Not including 1473 of the aforementioned HUMMERS.

At some point, it should have dawned on Fingleton and the Freep that American exports have been on the rise. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “exports of light vehicles have increased by 52% since 2002, with exports of new vehicles up 21% and exports of used vehicles up almost fourfold.” Ignoring that factoid, Fingleton fingers another culprit for Detroit’s dementia: “the unrealistically high dollar.” Excuse me?

Until July, the greenback was so dirt cheap, that – damn the real estate crisis – there was a bubble in Manhattan condos, snapped-up by the Euro trash with wildly depreciated greenbacks. And now the dollar is heading back down, in the “unrealistically low” direction last seen in July.

The unrealistically weak dollar had its effect. “Between 2002 and 2007, exports to the NAFTA countries actually fell by 5%,” writes the Chicago Fed. “In contrast, Europe received 52% of the net increase of 287 thousand in new vehicle exports over that period; the Middle East accounts for about 40%.”

The rise of the Japanese Yen is the talk of Tokyo. Fingleton must not be just blind, he must also be deaf.

The Nikkei writes today: “The yen’s steep appreciation and the global economic meltdown have turned the tables on Toyota Motor Corp. and other Japanese manufacturers that had sought growth in foreign markets in recent years.” Even the Financial Times, which certainly is not biased towards Japan, concedes that “Dented consumer demand is exacerbated on the bottom line by the strong yen , which lopped a third off Toyota’s November forecast operating income.”

“So, yes, the U.S. car industry’s fate reflects in large measure American incompetence,” Fingleton’s piece ends, undeterred by simple facts. “But the main source of this incompetence has not been the engineers of Detroit but the opinion makers of New York and Washington.”

Apparently, even the Freep must have come to the conclusion that the $17.4b of taxpayers’ money is the last Detroit will ever see. The begging has ended. So let’s throw dirt at those who gave. Let’s demand quotas. Let’s demand a Detroit cartel. Let’s demand high prices.  Let’s demand inflation. Nothing short of a full frontal assault on the forces ranged outside Fortress Detroit will save the Big 2.8. At least, according to Fingleton and the Freep.

Auto shows are intended to be recipes for excess. Take one excessively large convention hall, fill it to capacity with excessive quantities of costly chrome and metal, mix in a few brigades of excessively attractive women, and cap it off with a cadre of excessively awkward journalists (present company excepted, er, we hope) to glorify the results with excessively vapid superlatives. But that was before Carmeggedon and the Great Credit Crunch of ’08 came to town, raining on the parade with an excessively nasty vengeance. Cars are a serious business, and 2008 is looking to be about as serious as it gets.

This year’s extravaganza is most noteworthy for what isn’t happening. For starters, General Motors is a non-starter. GM has canceled both of its planned new vehicle debuts. Neither the new Buick Lacrosse nor the Cadillac CTS Coupe made the trip. Car Czar Bob Lutz, who was previously scheduled to make an appearance, is also staying home. Maximum Bob isn’t having lunch at the RenCen by himself; every other spokesperson within the GM public relations squadron, i.e. anyone who might have been required to field skeptical questions from a editorially-liberated pack of hacks, is likewise giving this show a wide berth.

Not to be outdone by its erstwhile merger partner, the Cerberus-Chrysler team was apparently too preoccupied by the Mervyns bankruptcy liquidation to dispatch anyone here, either. Aside from a few electric concepts, Chrysler has no product launches and provided no PR staff to manage and dazzle the press corps. It gets worse – according to the Los Angeles Times, the Three Headed Dog is offloading much of the cost of this year’s fete onto its Southern California dealers. The Auburn Hill Boyz have been establishing a now-familiar pattern of cramming down their problems onto their retail network, and the LA show is proving to be no exception.

Renault-NIssan head Carlos Ghosn established the weary-although-optimistic tone in his keynote speech, which opened the event. Ghosn is probably the closest thing to a rock star that you’ll find in the auto industry, and his talents for salesmanship and managing a room are top notch. Le Cost Killer fired on all cylinders, masterfully packaging the greenbacks-for-green-tech message that has been offered far less convincingly by Detroit’s troika of CEO’s.

Few seemed to notice the irony of Ghosn touting his vision of an emissions-free future on the very same day that Nissan was launching its 370Z sports coupe and Infiniti revealed its convertible, abundantly-pistoned G37.

Other subtle signs of the industry implosion are evident throughout the floor. A deathly quiet hovers across GM’s vast acreage, which occupies what should be a high-traffic area in the middle of the Convention Center’s South Hall. Much of the obligatory well-dressed eye candy seems to have been given the day off. Most painful for a hungry, coffee-powered observer such as yours truly, the customary sponsored sit-down luncheon was quietly nixed, replaced by a haphazard buffet of small stale sandwiches that made Quizno’s seem like Spago in comparison.

In keeping with the theme of tough times, many an automaker press conference made at least a passing mention of the stumbling economy, even as they proudly touted their new models. Despite the pall, everyone claims to be confident that the current tumble in auto sales is a manageable bump in the road.

The Dearborn side of the hall was considerably more cheerful. Undaunted by bailouts, the brink of bankruptcy and Congressional hearings, FoMoCo debuted the new Fusion and its badge engineered Mercury Milan sedan twin, as well as the Mustang pony car and Lincoln MKZ sedan. During their upbeat presentation of the new Fusion, Ford EVP Mark Fields and Marketing VP Jim Farley seemed not to notice the faltering car market. Crisis? What crisis?

This year’s show includes new world debuts from Bentley (Azure T Convertible), Infiniti (a convertible version of the G37), Lexus (RX 350 and RX 450h Hybrid), a brace of Porsches (Boxster and Cayman) and Nissans (370Z and Cube), as well as the new Mazda 3, an electric Mini and a VW (the TDi version of the Touareg.). Four concept cars make their premiere show appearances here: a Honda FC Sport fuel cell sport concept, Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, a Kia Borrego fuel cell vehicle, and a Toyota CNG Camry Hybrid. Tomorrow’s events will include the presentation of the Green Car of the Year award, which promises to be less controversial than last year’s Tahoe Hybrid.

Not that this will matter much.  Anyone who is paying attention knows that the country’s most important auto show is not being held in Los Angeles or Detroit or Chicago or New York, but in Washington, under the DC big top, where big bailout bucks are the order of the day. It can’t help but make one wonder whether next year’s show will be considerably smaller than this one.

Last night, the New York Times “broke” the story that General Motors and Chrysler/Cerberus were discussing a merger. The report lacked only one crucial component: facts. As RF reported in his initial blog on the subject, the story unravels by paragraph two. We learn that the entire story is based on “two people close to the process.” While anonymous attribution is common new industry practice, a story without independent corroboration is a nothing more than rumor— especially when it defies common sense. General Motors’ assertion that they routinely talk to other manufacturers about collaborative efforts doesn’t count. But it does reveal the truth of the matter.

In fact, the GM – Chrysler/Cerberus meetings are an open secret. As The General’s spinmeister intimated, GM regularly engages in tech sharing discussions with a wide range of carmakers. Given Chrysler’s yet-to-be-realized tie-up with Nissan, its decision to provide re-badged minivans for VW and ongoing attempts to create a Chinese hook-up, GM is a logical “partner” for Chrysler ongoing campaign to outsource product development. And cut costs.

GM and ChryCo could be discussing rebadged Malibus. Or a Chrysler badged Cobalt. With materials costs soaring, the two ailing American automakers might be examining the possibility of sharing resources. Or looking for economies of scale re: suppliers. And, lest we forget, General Motors owns 49 percent of endangered auto and mortgage lender GMAC; Chrysler’s masters hold the other 51 percent. If GM and Chrysler are NOT talking to each other about GMAC’s future, there’s something seriously wrong (more wrong?) with both companies’ executive management.

It’s no wonder Times scribes Vlasic and Sorkin backpedal on their GM – Chrysler merger story. They tell us that their two sources estimate chances of a merger are “50-50.” There could be “significant roadblocks,” not including the fact that sewing two losing companies together merely makes a bigger losing company. But the real argumentative implosion comes buried in the story: “neither side has yet to dig into each others’ private financial books and records.” How serious can the merger talks be if the lawyers and accountants haven’t even begun diligence? Answer: they can’t.

Clearly, the providers of “all the news that’s fit to print” didn’t give the merger story a fitness test. In fact, this is a classic example of what GM shill Rush Limbaugh calls “drive by media.”

The 24 hour news cycle (of which this writer, typing after midnight, is a member) was quick to pick up the story and discuss all the implications. The CNBC network, “the recognized world leader in business news,” called in the big guns for comment: Ray Wert of Jalopnik. While we understand the mainstream media’s ongoing fascination with the “new hotness” of blogs, Wert screwed the pooch on this one.

Wert claimed that GM and Chrysler “have two different lineups that actually are very complementary.” This is just wrong. GM and Chrysler have nearly identical lineups, with some niche-product distinctions. Recognizing this, Wert contradicted himself in his next comment. “They’re both looking to sell a lot of large trucks and large SUVS, and it makes sense for them to manufacture them on the same platform.”

The CNBC hosts ask Wert about the financial issues in a merger. His vaguely dishes “My assumption is that Cerberus has probably bit off a lot more than they can chew, and with credit kind of crunching in right now it makes a lot of sense for them to try to jettison a company that isn’t providing something that isn’t to their core business plan.” Except that’s not what anyone is talking about. The story from The New York Times: Cerberus would end up with an enormous stake in the hypothetical GM-Chrysler firm.

CNBC concludes by asking Wert about potential issues with a merged GM-Chrysler and organized labor. “I think it’ll be easier for them to get some economies of scale on UAW talks. It’ll be easier to work out one deal as opposed to two deals.” Efficiency in labor talks is a secondary goal (talking for less time, paying fewer labor lawyers). The actual issue is concessions. There is no quantitative academic evidence to suggest that it would be easier for a gargantuan company to negotiate with the UAW and CAW than two very, very large companies. In fact, odds are good the negotiations would be even stiffer.

CNBC failed in its background research. They should have read the editorial Wert published the same day: “GM Will Go Bankrupt: Why That May Actually Be Good For The General.” Considering Wert’s previously held belief that GM would benefit from Chapter 11 filling, why did he suddenly decided that a GM-Chrysler merger be well-advised? Something to do with publicity perhaps?

All of this discussion blatantly ignores the glaring issue: a GM-Chrysler merger would be a disaster. And that’s the truth.

Driving well has nothing to do with how well we late-apex Oaktree Corner at VIR, how cleanly we rev-match a heel-and-toe downshift or how much we know about F-bodies and Kappa platforms. It’s all about simple movement and complex congestion, intuition versus intelligence, myth versus reality. Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt is a shot across the bow of the typically clueless, not very competent, generally thoughtless, surprisingly unsafe, unjustifiably over-confident average driver. In other words, you and me.

Take the common task of merging from three lanes into two. Polite drivers will segue into the next lane as soon as they can. Jerks will stay in the closing lane all the way to the end, then force their way in. As Vanderbilt correctly argues, these “jerks” actually help traffic move faster. If a larger number of motorists simply followed their lead, stayed in the “open” lane to the bitter end and THEN alternate-merged into the funnel, everyone would get where they’re going more quickly.

Or say you’re in a line of fast-moving cars following somebody in your lane who slows quickly— maybe he’s been cut off, or is about to miss an exit. You’re third in line and so skillful a wheelman in your Brembo’ed BMW that you can follow the car ahead pretty closely and still brake safely. Unfortunately, the six cars behind you each progressively uses up the rapidly closing gaps that you have single-handedly created, and the tenth car in line has a huge and unavoidable rear-ender that you caused.

Traffic driving is filled with visual illusions and sensory tricks. SUV and pickup truck drivers tend to go faster without knowing it, because they’re just that much farther above the road. They’re just like early 747 pilots who tended to taxi at speeds that could damage the landing gear, because they’d never sat that high above a taxiway.

Traffic has many facets. We communicate in traffic with bumper stickers announcing that we’re religious, liberal, ex-Marines, whale-savers, parents of teachers’ pets. Yet the little billboards are counter-communicative. Beep to try and say Semper Fi and you’ll get the finger. (I was leaving the gym in our Boxster awhile ago and found myself right behind a woman in a near-identical Boxster, waiting to enter the highway. I gave her a “Hi, Porschie fan” toot and got, yes, the deadly digit.)

Parking is an inevitable part of driving. Why do many people park substantially farther from the big-box store if they have a sightline to the front entrance, even if there are closer spaces off to either side? Some drivers are active parking searchers, endlessly cruising to look for a spot, like an orbiting hawk. Few can bear to be owls, perching in wait for a shopper to come out of the mall to follow them and take their spot. In one survey of a 15-block area near UCLA, a survey discovered that people looking for parking drove 3,600 miles a day.

Driving involves not just seeing but knowing what to do with the information you thus collect. A driver in Maine will brake immediately for a moose but less quickly for a zebra, since he has to process an unfamiliar situation. When the light turns yellow, you need to quickly make the correct decision: push through and run the slight risk of getting heavily T-boned by a green-light jumper, or stop quickly and run the more substantial risk of getting into a minor rear-ender.

Traffic is stuffed with seemingly random but always instructive factoids…

We constantly see other drivers making mistakes but are unable to see ourselves doing so.

We often drive at a distance behind the vehicle ahead that far exceeds our ability to avoid a crash, because we have blind faith that the driver in front of us will never, ever need to stop quickly.

Drivers prefer waiting in a single long line than in multiple shorter lanes, because they hate the stress of worrying that the other guy has chosen a faster lane.

Rubberneckers create the perfect self-generating traffic jam, and people slowing to look at an accident get into accidents themselves.

If you drive an average of 15,500 miles a year, there is one chance in 100 that you will die in a fatal car crash over a 50-year lifetime of driving.

The most dangerous vehicles on the road are… pickup trucks. More people die in pick-’em-ups per 100m miles driven than in any other vehicle.

Stirling Moss once said “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.” But then smarter Albert Einstein said, “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” Go figure.

The unveiling of the production version of the Volt will go down in history as one of GM’s final coffin nails. Not only does it mark the death of the Volt cult, but it also signals the end of the whole “concept/dream car” era as invented by GM’s legendary Harley Earl in the fifties. Bob Lutz has thrown his “Hail Mary pass” right into the stands. The fans are furious, heading for the exits.

Strong words, considering GM has committed to actually building the Volt. But the promise of the Volt, as defined by the concept car, was something totally different from the perfectly ordinary-looking compact sedan revealed. The Volt concept was a blatant effort by Lutz to tap into the last vestiges of the Futurama psyche: a place where reality is suspended in the belief that a better (and greener) tomorrow really exists, thanks to GM’s infinite technical and styling prowess.

Never mind that the Volt concept was utterly impractical, and had zero chance of becoming the actual production car. In typically Lutzian fashion, the gut dominated the head. The car’s profile, the long, low hood, the chopped top, and those huge wheels, pushed out to the extremities, are nothing but a recapitulation of Lutz’s favorite concept, the Cadillac Sixteen. It’s a RWD concept intended to carry a sixteen cylinder engine under the hood, not a coffee-can electric motor driving the front wheels.

The Volt concept was a blatant lie, because nothing of its mini-Sixteen form spoke to its intended EV role. It was a bait-and-switch routine, consciously contrived to generate enthusiasm, such as the 30k names on the gm-volt.com “waiting list.” Lutz may imagine himself to be the modern day Harley Earl, driving his beloved (and utterly impractical) gas-turbine powered rocket-ship Firebirds. But no one took dream cars like the Firebirds seriously back then; they were part of the Futurama show of unlimited possibilities– which never actually came.

Lutz lied when he said the Volt just needed to be “aerodynamically optimized.” In reality, GM knew it couldn’t afford to develop the technology as well as a new platform and distinctive body too. The production Volt would, by economic necessity, be part of the Delta II platform and body family. It’s an electrified next-gen Cobalt/Cruze/Astra, plain and simple, with a stupid, fake blanked-out grill. It explains the Volt’s mediocre Cd of .28. The Prius may not be stunning, but Toyota shelled out for a unique platform and (more) aerodynamic body, sans fake grilles.

“Rolling turd-mobile” is just one (delicate) sampling of the profound sense of disappointment at Volt Nation. The “leaked” images of the production Volt unleashed a tsunami of negative comments (over 800 and still growing). Some asked to be taken of the (un-official) waiting list, and many are apoplectic. What gives? Weren’t they mainly interested in a car with a 40-mile electric-only range?

The Volt concept coupled the powerful emotional and visceral right-brain appeal of a snorting Cadillac Sixteen with the left-brain advantages of an EV. It was the royal flush, the four cherries, the completed Hail Mary pass that would resurrect GM from the ashes of its (self-induced) immolation. The Messiah/Volt would leap-frog the Prius (and the ascending Asia it represents) as well as shove a giant middle finger in OPEC’s face. America’s place in the world would be restored.

But the production Volt brings to light a grim and stark reality: it’s just an ordinary-looking car. Where’s the (Pontiac) excitement and fun in that? Yes, GM has made an important (and necessary) step in the long-term electrification of the automobile. But it’s hardly alone in that. And it may not be all that exciting, either. In fact, the electrification of the automobile represents the triumph of the left-brain/form follows function/Japanese approach to car building: rational, systematic, measured integration of technology, continuous improvement, and cost-effective (profitable) production. The very qualities that lead to the Asian dominance of the American car market, and cars like the Prius (there never was a Prius concept, it just appeared one day, production-ready).

The glorious fifties and sixties are long gone and dead, despite Detroit’s best efforts to evoke them with retro pony cars and Volt dream-car concepts. And the much-hated Prius represents the force that killed that era. No wonder so much of the scorn being dished out at gm-volt.com is laced with Japanese model names: “Ugh; it looks like a bastard child of a Prius and a Civic.” What the GM faithful were looking for, what Lutz got them excited about, was the equivalent of the 1963 Riviera coupe powered by a nuclear reactor. And they were willing to pony-up. But what they’re seeing now is a forty-grand Cobalt. And falling gas prices. And rising electric rates. Suddenly, the Prius and Insight look… not so ugly after all.

Psychologists tell us it's important to vent, so every so often I have to clear the air and discuss what really grizzles my gristle. I can't take it anymore, and it's possible– even likely– that I'm not alone on this. So, without further ado, you know what really grinds my gears?

For starters: Edmunds' Inside Line. While all the rest of us in the internet-car world (by which I mean all of us– TTAC, WorldCarFans, Jalopnik, Autoblog, whoever) are busy posting pictures of some car released at 12:01 AM, EIL already has a review of that car up. I mean, for heaven's sake, even Pulitzer Prize-winner Dan Neil is often stuck waiting behind them in the queue. Just yesterday, for example, InsideLine posted a drive of a Camaro mule and reviews of the Cadillac CTS-V and the new European Ford Fiesta. They can go straight to hell.

The upshot, however, is when Edmunds described the 2008 Lancer: "This weightiness similarly describes the car's ride quality and chassis reactions, but in a good way." I more candidly reported that "Mitsu has fitted the base car with a suspension made out of Twinkies." I'll always take free market capitalism over a well funded command economy.

You know what else really grinds my gears? The lack of good seat coverings in cars. If you're buying a regular car, you can choose between cloth and plasticky over-treated leather. On the other hand, in nearly all luxury cars you're limited to Dow Chemical leather– or the occasional cheap-ass vinyl posing as leather. Where is the nice cloth in a luxury car? Especially the cushy cars that deserve cushy cloth seats. You wouldn't wrap yourself up in a leather blanket when you're cold, and I'm not sure that leather chairs in the car are much different. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, they seem to be frequently uncomfortable. What they do have going for them is that they're pretty stain resistant and take longer to show wear. But can't they do something about the hide? If they have to use leather, at least use quality leather. I'd pay more money for a car with leather seats if they felt like my girlfriend's Coach purse.

The next issue that's been grinding my gear this week is crummy car websites. It seems like the manufacturers have no interest in leveraging the benefits of the internet at all. The web interface on so many manufacturers' sites appears to have been designed by a ninth-grade kid. Bandwidth is apparently so expensive that we are limited to only 6 photos, including an obligatory picture of the plastic shroud that covered the engine.

This last one is even more useless than when the dealer tries to show you the engine, as if it means anything at all to see "Honda V6" under the hood. The "estimate payment" functions tend to be so useless that it's better to leave them off entirely. What I want in a manufacturer's website: easily accessible stats (which aren't buried in sub menus), tons of photos, and a functional inventory locater.

Special tuner-edition German cars also grind my gears. Every day we learn about yet another ABC Tuninghaus that has a new version of the Audi A6/Mercedes SL/BMW 5-Series that has 904 horsepower and a tragically ugly bodykit. And, it's only $100,000 more than the original version of the car, which the manufacturer spent billions developing. But hey, a few guys say they can crank your new German sports saloon up to methamphetamine levels.

You know what I want to see them tune? My Volkswagen GTI. I want it to drive exactly the same, but to get 80 miles per gallon on regular 87 octane (on the tow truck on the way to the mechanic doesn't count).

I close by giving a nod to all the "midsize" luxury SUVs out there– the Mercedes ML, BMW X5, Audi Q7, Acura MDX, and all their cohorts. They all grind my gears. I don't care how carlike their are to drive, or how decently they handle, or that when equipped with the optional $10,000 V8 (sorry Acura), they can out-accelerate a Honda Accord, ten year old Porsche or attack helicopter.

I don't care because they are ugly. They are not as good to drive as sedans and wagons. They are not ideal off-roaders (in spite of gadgets) because the bodywork costs trillions to repair, and because they all weigh 15,000 lbs. And they are all chasing some holy grail of the most sports car-like SUV. I like sports cars too, which is why if I wanted one, I'd buy one. I wouldn't buy Pringles Pizza Flavor chips because they taste "just like pizza"; I'd buy a pizza.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what grinds my gears. For now, at least.

Source Interlink Media owns Motor Trend magazine. Both conglomerate and car mag are heading south, quickly, in a big way. Ad revenues and circulation are in free fall. Motor Trend (MT) is fighting for it survival with glossy pimpatorials for equally doomed advertisers. The August issue features a glossy "special advertising section" for Buick ("Drive Beautiful") and a slick "advertisement" for the Dodge Challenger ("Motor Trend drives the new Dodge Challenger Through Europe"). Meanwhile, the chronically undercapitalized columnist arthur st. antoine takes a whack at a premium car brand: BMW. Huh? 

Start with this: BMW doesn’t advertise in Motor Trend. GMC, Extenze (male enhancement pills), Mercedes-Benz, The Sinclair Institute (“Better Sex for a Lifetime”), MINI, Xomax (male enhancement pills), Infiniti, MAGNA-RX Inc. (male enhancement pills)– but no BMW. You could say with all those pills readers need not buy a BMW– but I couldn’t possibly comment.

Anyway, no feeding hand is bitten, bitte. If MT’s Editor at Large had taken a shot at the Chevrolet Aveo on the mag’s back cover– now with extra hideousness (courtesy of an Audi meets Malibu snout)– I would have been impressed. But he didn’t so I’m not.

“We car journalists are suckers for BMWs. Every model the Bavarian Brand produces is an engineering masterwork, manna for driving enthusiasts, an internal combustion mallet for pummeling comparison-test rivals into humiliated awe. Why even bother to conduct such tests? We’ll choose the machine with the blue-and-white propeller every time. Right?”

Clued-in parsoholics will realize that “Right?” signals st. antoine’s sarcasm. Clued-in pistonheads will realize antoine’s defense comes hot-on-the-heels of Car and Driver’s July comparo, where the mag rated a BMW M3 higher than a Porsche Turbo and Nissan GT-R. Though st. antoine is a former Car and Driver writer, doesn’t he have anything better to do than defend his erstwhile rivals? Apparently not.

“That’s the cliché… But the reality is this: BMW’s supremacy is a myth, one based in part on some historical validity but sustained in recent years largely by a single model, the 3 Series (okay, the new 1 Series seems strong, too). As for the rest of the lineup… where are the superstars? M5 sedan? A thrilling drive, yes, but in its most recent comparo (February 2007) a second-place finisher to the sweeter, sleeker Audi S6.”

Is it me or is st. antoine trying to gum BMW to death? The new BMW M5 blows compared to any car in the entire world that doesn’t have an SMG gearbox. The latterly six-speed manual M5 is OK, and plenty damn quick by any metric, but the Bimmer is a bling-bang-boom travesty when contrasted with its legendary predecessor.

There, that wasn’t so hard was it? And either the 1 Series is strong or it isn’t. It “seems” like a good time for st. antoine to get off the fence. Of course, attacking BMW isn’t really the point of this dietribe [sic]. It’s all about defending MT’s “objectivity” and “integrity” (har-har). Hence st. antoine presents a list of MT comparos Bimmers DIDN’T win within its increasingly tissue-like pages.

And now, a bit of dead horse beating…

“…the iDrive controller remains a poster child of frustration and feature-glut (do you really need a an electronic menu to adjust the airflow from individual vents?), we simply can’t heartily endorse a car– no matter how surgical its steering or smooth its inline six– blemished by that glaring chrome iDrive mole.”

Wow! That’s a LOT of punctuation. But little punch. Critizing BMW for iDrive is like slagging an Escalade for lousy mileage; it’s safe, well-trodden ground. Oh, and in this case, st. antoine's claim of withholding his love for the propeller people's products simply isn't true. st. antoine on the 135i:

“I'm blown away by this little stealth fighter. I can't recall another car that's been more surprising to drive; I expected the 135i to offer solid performance, but it's breathtakingly quick. Refined, too- it's a bona-fide BMW."

Sounds solid to me. Uh, where was I? More importantly, where was st. antoine? Ah, giving the BMW X6 what the Brits call a proper pasting.

“…the X6 is also grotesquely heavy, too small to carry anything, compromised in the back by that free-falling roofline, saddled with iDrive and a needlessly complicated shift lever, and absurdly expensive.”

Finally! st. antoine substantiates his contention that BMW ain’t so big (it’s just tall, that’s all). The paragraph is also a compelling argument that his employer isn't in BMW's pocket. So, a quick twist of the knife and out. Right?

“That BMW’s engineers are gifted goes without saying. As German-born architect Mies van der Rohe once said, though, “Less is more.” Also, “What is this big chrome mole here?”

You gotta admire a writer who can so deftly blend ass-kissing, name-dropping and a non sequitur. Still, at the end of page 24, st. antoine’s quasi-rant provides proof– if proof be needed– that MT is doomed.

In the July issue of Car and Driver, the BMW M3 coupe beat the Nissan GT-R in a comparison test.  I couldn't understand how this happened, or even why they'd be comparing the two, until I found a copy of this letter:

Dear Nissan,

You may have noticed (we hope someone does) that BMW's M3 beat your GT-R in our recent "Vision Quest" comparo. We want to apologize for this. Please don't feel bad. The GT-R really is a great car, as witnessed by the fact that we rated it higher than the Porsche 911 Turbo. But as BMW is secretly our parent company, they demanded that their M3 win any and all comparisons. As we are contractually obligated to have a BMW win at least four comparisons a year, well, it was your turn.

We did give Nissan the inside back cover and wrote a nice one-year update on the Altima. There are also a couple of complimentary articles about the Infiniti G35xS and the FX50S. Oh and by the way, that FX50S is an impressive ride, but you really need to do something about the silly "bionic cheetah" moniker that you've attached to it.

Anyway, rest assured that we feel very badly about placing the GT-R behind the M3. Even though the M3 is slower in the quarter mile, 0-60 and around a track, the BMW does have a bigger back seat and more usable trunk space. 

Again, please take solace in the fact that your GT-R totally demolished the Porsche 911 Turbo, which is a worthless car. By "worthless" we mean it's an OK enough car, but Porsche doesn't spend enough money advertising in our magazine. When was the last time you saw a two-page ad for a 911 or an inside cover ad for the Boxster? I wish we could stop covering their lame cars altogether, but they've weaseled themselves into an important position in the automotive industry with all of their performance, history and heritage. So try as we might, we can't ignore them. 

Enough about the third-place finisher, the over-powered 911 Turbo. We are here to apologize for that first place finish awarded to the M3.

If we were really honest, the M3 wouldn't have been in the comparison. It's in a totally different class than your GT-R. The thing is, our comparo is the first in a new series with cars competing out of their league. We think our advertisers (that's you!) will love this new marketing plan. It will give prestige to the lower end cars. Next month, a Nissan Rogue will beat the Porsche Cayenne. Just think how Nissan salesmen all over the country will be able to promote the Rogue as the "SUV that beat the Cayenne!"

The month after that, the Nissan Sentra will win against the Lotus Exige. Of course, we need to keep our journalistic integrity. So we'll use the base Exige vs. the Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V. The little Lotus won't stand a chance. I mean have you seen the back seat in an Exige? No, you haven't, because there isn't one. The trunk? Tiny! Rear doors? Nada! The Nissan Sentra is obviously the superior car. A lot of automotive reporting outlets don't have the courage to compare an Exige to a Sentra, but we think it's time–once again– to put your money where our mouth is.

If you think about it, this will work out better for Nissan in the long run. The GT-R can withstand a second place finish to the benchmark BMW M3. (Sorry, we're contractually obligated to put the word "benchmark" at least once every time we write about BMW, and technically we are writing about them.) Anyway, as the first year supply of your GT-R is sold out, what do you care? It's not as if someone's going to say, I WAS going to buy a Maxima, but now that the GT-R got beat by a Bimmer I'll buy a high-mileage 3-Series.

Bottom line (our first and only concern): we're truly sorry for the second place finish to the M3. We wanted to write it as a tie, but the Germans have no sense of humor. (Just imagine if we'd written "Every other manufacturer should give up on building their own cars and just make GT-Rs instead.")

But we don't want this article to damage our mutually profitable relationship. And if you want to be mad at someone, have you seen what that "The Truth About Cars" web site is saying about the GT-R's record around the ‘ring? The nerve of some people. Adiosu!

Yours sincerely, 

Car and Driver Magazine

[read the Car and Driver comparo here]  

With the notable exception of Dan Neil's work at the LA Times, the vast majority of newspaper car reviews are written to fill the spaces between automotive advertisements while sucking-up to the dealers and manufacturers who provide the ad revenue. When I caught sight of Tom Keane's take on the new Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid in the San Francisco Chronicle, I decided to see if the paper that fired TTAC's founder for his infamous Subaru Tribeca B9 "flying vagina" review had any teeth left in its automotive editorial coverage. In a word, no.

Keane didn't just imbibe the GM Kool-Aid, he cut-and-pasted it. The scribe went straight for the official press release to "explain the design" as having "a strong stance and bold proportions" and "a visually lower, yet longer, greenhouse and shorter deck [to] suggest motion and agility." It features an "aggressive, stable stance and rear-profile with Corvette cues that connects to Chevrolet's rich performance heritage."

Hey, at least Keane admitted the description came from "the Chevrolet people." But he begins the piece with his own, bold assertion. "With gasoline topping $3.50, there's no better time to drive the Malibu Hybrid."

To make his case, Keane compares the gas-electric 'Bu to the much thirstier 3.6-liter V6-powered Malibu, which gets 17 mpg city, 26 mpg highway and 20 mpg combined. He points out that the Hybrid is $4k less than this more-deluxe model. Well, yes. And it beats a Suburban LTZ by $22K, 12 mpg city and 15 mpg highway. So why not use the Yukotahburbalade if you're going to make an inherently biased apples/oranges comparison?

Reality check: the 2.4-liter four-cylinder Malibu Hybrid gets 24 mpg city and 32 mpg highway; 27 combined on the EPA test cycle. The non-hybrid model with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine gets 22 mpg city, 30 mpg highway and 25 combined– a difference of only two mpg across the board.  In contrast, the Camry Hybrid betters its gas-powered sibling by 12 mpg city, three mpg highway and nine mpg combined.

But what can Keane do? He can't point out if you spend $4k more for the Hybrid you only gain two mpg. That might make readers think GM isn't very good at hybrids, and we can't have that. In fact, reading this paean to erstwhile pistonhead perfection, I began to wonder if Keane worked in the SF Chronicle's advertising department. You know, formally. No joke. It happens all the time. At the bottom of the review, I read © Motor Matters, 2008.

Motor Matters caters primarily to the newspaper industry. The website proudly proclaims they have "12 automotive writers to provide editorial support for your automotive advertisers." They provide "accurate, clean copy written by… people [who] are highly respected by the automotive industry." Well duh! What's not to respect for an auto exec or dealer thrilled to the gills by glowing reviews of the latest metal? Motor Matters cites the number of papers that carry their reviews as "evidence that what we produce is informative to readers and beneficial to advertisers."

Motor Matters make no bones about their complete lack of editorial integrity. Their reviewers "give driving impressions, report their findings with integrity, but not in an objectionable manner." Screw the readers, for whom an automobile is their second largest financial purchase (after their house). Screw the truth. 

Motor Matters' website provides links to suitable examples of their fundamentally unobjectionable copy, hoping to lure newspapers ready, willing and able to sacrifice editorial honesty for the good of their automotive advertisers. One of these is Keane's review of the Chrysler Sebring convertible. 

To refresh your memory, when TTAC's Captain Mike Solowiow tested the Sebring, he noted "when the trunk lid pops to swallow the top, the entire car shakes like a pole dancer, wobbles a bit and then clunks alarmingly when sealing shut." His conclusion?  "I wouldn't keep the Sebring past the standard warranty period based solely on the scary top operation… If it was my hard-earned $30Kish, I'd spend it on a Mustang GT Convertible, VW EOS, SAAB 9-3, Mazda MX-5 or ANYTHING else."

So what was Keane's take? He loved the "bright interior appearance, " the "remarkable shifting of various hardtop components as they… folded into the rear compartment" and "its attractive design." In parroting a variety of numbers provided by the factory, he cites the top's "30-second opening and closing operation" (which Capt Mike actually timed at 45 seconds). Keane closes with "this automaker offers up-scale quality vehicles with eye-appeal."  Oh, and that "their products should keep the Chrysler showrooms busy for a long time." Has he even driven past a Chrysler showroom lately?

[BTW: Keane also mentions that a Chrysler engineer accompanied him on the test drive. Nope. No bias shown there.]

We understand that automotive writers like Keane have to put food on their table. We know they're part of a corrupt system that's as outdated as some of the products they're shamelessly promoting. Sadly, we also know that the average newspaper reader is oblivious to the lies, spinmongery and propaganda perpetuated by the craven automotive press. Rest assured that as long as media outlets keep publishing crap like this, TTAC will keep sounding the alarm. And telling The Truth About Cars.

My personal highlight of Last year’s Dallas Auto Show was watching Sajeev work his magic on GM’s regional marketing director. He’d met her at the Houston Auto Show some weeks earlier, where they’d had a productive conversation. Apparently the Powers That Be within GM didn’t think that was a good idea. She was talking gaily with other scribes when we approached her. When she turned to greet us, her face darkened the moment she recognized the dashing Mr. Mehta. Visibly agitated, she hissed, “I can’t talk to you,” spun on her heels and scurried away. After a moment of stunned silence I asked TTAC’s lonely lothario, “Do you have that effect on all women?”

My, how I do love telling that story. Sadly, work commitments kept my friend, Don Juan Mehta, in Houston this year. So I flew solo at the 2008 DAS.

To put things in perspective, the press preview day at the DAS draws about twenty print journalists and a couple of local TV crews. Meanwhile, the press preview for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit lasts three days and attracts some 6000 media people from around the world. More than one-hundred new products were “revealed” at NAIAS. I counted one at the DAS. Celebrities, industry big wigs, and politicians vie to be seen in Detroit. In Dallas, all I saw was a small group of aging, overweight, balding, vertically challenged, writers wearing sensible shoes.

While less of a spectacle, the intimacy of the DAS provides far greater access to the objects that we’re all there to see: the cars. Aston Martin would never allow thousands of clamoring critics crawl all over their lusty DBS. Yet they are perfectly willing to permit twenty of us to sit behind the wheel and fantasize about violently ordering all 510 horses to the rear wheels, stat!

A few moments of solitude behind the wheel of the DB9 Coupe found me awed by authentic interior materials and old world craftsmanship. The aluminum instruments and bezels are actually aluminum, not plastic (plastichrome). The clock crystal is crystal, not plastic. Wood accents are really wood, not plastic. The headliner is suede, not plastic. The leather upholstery is leather, not plastic (vinyl).  The sense of luxury was so powerful that I forgave the car’s narrow foot wells and niggling ergonomic design flaws.

With Aston Martin still fresh in my mind, I wandered to Cadillac and sat my butt in the XLR-V. The home team didn’t fare well in comparison. Despite the marked improvement by GM’s flagship brand, it’s clear how far Caddy still needs to go before it has a truly world class interior.

While both marques employ leather, AM’s cows certainly have a better dermatologist. I suppose it’s unfair to compare an exclusive hand-built car to one rolling off a mass-production assembly line.  But GM chose to play in the $100K end of the pool and right now they’re in over their heads.

The only hint of controversy on the day came at the Hummer press conference. I meekly asked how Hummer planned to combat the rising drumbeat of accusations that the planet is being ravaged by enormous gas-guzzling SUVs, of which the H2 is the poster child. “Or is Hummer content to say ‘screw you’ to the rest of the world.” Okay, maybe that part of my question came out a little harsh.

Like a seventh-degree judo black belt, GM’s mouthpiece, a third-tier marketing manager, skillfully parried the question and deftly avoided giving me anything interesting to write about-– some unapologetic diatribe about customer satisfaction and that their customer’s don’t care about being perceived as gluttonous.

My surprise came from the woman who stepped up beside me. To the satisfaction of Mr. Goodwrench, she began a vigorous defense of Hummer, citing its excellent fuel economy relative to others in its class.  At first I thought the interloper was another GM hired gun. But the shabbiness of her appearance confirmed that she was, in fact, another journalist. I wouldn’t have minded her input if a group of us were having drinks and sharing war stories. But I was at the press conference to hear what The General has to say, thank you very much.

Perhaps this is further evidence of the enmeshed relationship between automotive news makers and the [supposed] watchdogs in the press corps. Or maybe this was just a run-in with a mad old cow with an irrepressible impulse to rudely butt in and speak for companies with whom she has no affiliation.

And thus ended another DAS press preview day.  I left with a bag of swag (including a jar of Super Hot HEMI Powered Barbeque Sauce), a camera full of hi-res pix, and memories of a few new cars for cubicle daydreaming, both mine and yours.

[Click here for William C. Montgomery's DAS Pixamo photo gallery ] 

Some car companies produce TV commercials that are targeted at your left brain. They hit you with stats and prices and lots of dry information. Some TV ads cater to entirely to your right brain. They seduce you with music, action and Jill Wagner (what car does she sell again?). And some TV ads try to mix a little bit of both at the same time. And then there are Volkswagen’s ads, which are no-brainers. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The current marketing slogan used in VW’s commercials: “Sign THEN Drive.” This strap line assumes that you, the viewer and potential car buyer, must be told to execute a car purchase in the following sequential order: 1) sign the papers; and 2) THEN drive off in your new VW. They even helpfully put the word “THEN” in all caps just in case you miss it. Without VW’s instructions, who knows what might happen?

The ad shows us. A clean-cut, 20-something Caucasian male approaches a group of dreaded and hated lawyers (ipso facto). The not-the-Apple-Mac-guy (‘cause he’s busy) informs us that VW is “testing for the new Volkswagen Sign And Drive event.” 

As he approaches the testing site, milquetoast man looks in horror at the multitude of putative VW buyers desperately trying to sign paperwork and drive VWs at the same time. The drivers swerve madly, running over cones and barely avoiding the other three drivers in a huge open area. One of the lawyers whispers into Joe VW’s ear, then he looks at us, mildly shakes his head (“How could we have overestimated our buyers’ intelligence!”). He makes a small notation and tells us that VW is now running the “Sign THEN Drive” event. “Even better!” he assures us.

Never mind that today’s cars offer a multitude of distractions deadlier than trying to sign a piece of paper while driving. Like any other manufacturer, VW offers plenty of potentially lethal electronic asides in their cars. But apparently, VW does not think its models’ buyers are capable of signing their names and driving their cars at the same time. (God forbid you throw chewing gum into the mix.) Such an arduous task will surely send the VW driver careening into a ditch. 

The commercial reflects poorly on VW’s collective (if fictional) intelligence. Did VW really need to “test” for a marketing event? And if the resulting mayhem was so surprising, what does that say about VW’s marketing data and strategy (we had no idea that selling our cars for zero money down would attract paradigms of Darwin’s theory)?

A second VW “Sign THEN Drive” commercial is even worse. It shows a typical 20-something yuppie couple– Asian-American female with a Caucasian male, ‘natch– approaching a pristine white VW. [BTW: ALL of the cars in these VW commercials are white. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like it. Is BMW designer Chris Bangle “Axis of White Power” secretly behind this?] The male is proudly showing off the automotive apple of his eye to his female companion. 

But as they get closer, the VW honks several times in defense. The couple backs away, then tries again. Again, the VW objects loudly. The female turns to the male and whispers fearfully, “What’s happening?” The guy stands there looking absolutely dumbstruck and flummoxed. 

Cut to a smiling African-American male (VW commercials are nothing if not racially diverse) standing high above the confused couple, next to another Joe VW salesman. He is gleefully playing with the remote horn button on his keyless fob, toying with the challenged couple below. Joe VW offers to put the confounded couple out of their misery, but VeeDub buyer declines, his schadenfreude spreading by the second (with no fahrvergnugen in sight).

Again, we have a couple of clueless VW buyers who apparently have never heard a car honk before, have no idea that a remote fob contains an alarm button (my 1998 Civic had one, for crissakes) and have mental capacities slightly lower than the chicken I ate last night.  Meanwhile, we get introduced to a new type of VW buyer, the Sadist. The Sadist delights in using his new VW to mock and ridicule lower life forms. He stands up high, looking down at the little people, flexing his superior (average) intelligence. And Joe VW, in both commercials, looks on helplessly.

Neither of these commercials tells me anything about VW cars or why I would want one. The humor is crass,  insulting, and juvenile. Along with VW’s recent spate of commercials that show VW drivers constantly getting into accidents, VW seems to have an extremely low opinion of its buyers. Then again, given VW’s poor reliability, high cost of maintenance and repair, and high price points, maybe VW knows exactly what it's doing. 

Angus MacKenzie did everything but call TTAC by name in his essay GM Shares Tumble. So What? Yes, the Motor Trend scribe can “almost hear the Detroit death-watchers rubbing their hands with glee” at the news of GM's stock hitting two-year lows. It's true. Every time GM's share price dips, we light giant cigars, twirl our collective mustache and laugh maniacally. That Mr. MacKenzie sees critical coverage of the auto industry as journalistic schadenfreude goes some ways towards explaining Motor Trend’s increasingly toothless car reviews. But how can MacKenzie, an experienced car hack, justify pinning Detroit’s woes on anyone other than, well, Detroit? Hey, a man’s gotta eat.

What prompted GM's share price slump, said analysts, was a drop in the overall auto market, and worries about future profits in light of disappointing February sales… What the analysts really meant was Wall Street's money men don't think GM's a good bet for making them a quick buck right now. And if the money men don't think a company can make them a quick buck, then it's basically worthless.

This kind of rhetoric– references to unnamed, evil “money men”– smacks of Ye Olde International Jewish banking conspiracy. As populist as such a sentiment may be, it’s unconscionable for a responsible journalist to perpetuate such a well-worn shibboleth.

More to the point, MacKenzie is dead wrong. The short-term thinking that caused GM's stock price to head for the basement came from RenCen— not Wall Street. Nobody from the financial community forced General Motors to squander billions on misbegotten foreign alliances, or destroy its brands, or capitulate to union demands. Nobody told GM’s management to buy Saab and Hummer, or set-up Saturn. The end result of GM’s self-inflicted management failure is a company in deep financial crisis. This is clearly, unequivocally, completely GM’s fault.    

In an era when nameless screen jockeys can move billions of dollars at the touch of a computer keyboard, Wall Street's institutionalized ADD has resulted in a feverish short-term view of the auto business. Lengthy product cycles and huge investment costs, combined with a fickle, cyclical, fashion-driven market, are just too damned difficult to deal with.

Sure. Automotive analysts like John Casesa begin looking at the car industry, get bogged down in the numbers and market cycles, throw up their hands and say, “Whoa! That’s just too damned difficult. Forgeddaboutit.” And what of all those institutional investors who’ve stood by The General for decades? In fact, GM was once known as a “blue chip stock,” held as much for its healthy dividend payments (recently halved) as its share price.

There’s one reason this is no longer true: the company’s management has run the automaker into the ground. And why’s that? According to Mr. MacKenzie, it’s all about GM’s pesky quarterly financial reports.

Maybe that's why the world's most successful automakers — Toyota, BMW and Porsche, to name three – are those that have never had to sweat a quarterly earnings call with a posse of skeptical Wall Street analysts ready to trash their stock price when they don't see the opportunity to make that quick buck.

Wrong. BMW files quarterly reports. Toyota files quarterly reports. As does every major automaker you can name save privately-held Chrysler– and we all know how well that’s going. As publicly held companies (save Porsche), ALL automakers have to face the music. Just like GM.

Never mind. MacKenzie is determined to paint GM as a victim– even if he has to undermine his own argument to do it.

Bunkie Knudsen, who ran Pontiac and Chevrolet in the '50s and '60s, reckoned it all started to go wrong when Fred Donner became president of GM in 1958. Knudsen was outraged Donner would insist on talking about GM's stock price, and what the analysts thought about it, at his daily meetings with the heads of GM's divisions. Before Donner, those meetings were mostly about making cars and trucks. After, as the financial engineers took over from the real ones, GM's cars and trucks got worse and worse.

Again, how is this Wall Street’s fault? 

Bunkie Knudsen believed in a simple concept: The people in Detroit had to make good cars, and if they did, the people in New York would take care of the stock. After decades of fixating on financial engineering, GM is only now getting back to the business of making good cars. Only problem is, no one in New York seems to care anymore.

Reality check. It’s not “the money men’s” job to “care” about making good cars. That’s GM’s job. This they’ve failed to do, in spectacular fashion. MacKenzie’s finger-pointing at dark forces on Wall Street doesn’t change the fact that GM is in a hole of its own making. Their share price reflects that reality, which GM, like MacKenzie, refuse to face.

[Read MacKenzie's rant here.] 

I once read that a successful PR department is one that has managed to make the press an extension of its own. As bad as this idea may sound for an independent-minded consumer, I couldn’t help thinking that it now works the other way around. With the Internet obliterating buff books’ editorial relevance, many magazines have shifted their sales focus from their readers, the traditional customers, to the PR departments of the companies whose ad bucks support their survival. In this respect Greek car magazines are hugely successful.

In the last 15 years, Greece went from one car title to almost ten; including franchises of foreign titles (Car, Car and Driver, Auto Motor und Sport, Autocar, Autobild and Top Gear.). Arguably, most of these new car magazines were created by publishing companies for the sole purpose of soaking-up new product advertising. From ’91 to ’02, car sales in Greece tripled. As did the car importers’ ad budgets. This car ad-fuelled hothouse was short-lived. As the Internet ascended, circulation numbers fell, from tens of thousands of copies monthly, to just a few thousand. Selling ads soon became more important than selling magazines; the business plan had no room to accommodate reader demands. The basic concept of a car magazine “providing information while entertaining” went out the window faster than Protestants in Prague.

In the past five years, the Greek new car market has achieved European-levels of saturation. Importers’ ad budgets hit the ceiling and bounced back, decreasing year on year. With less pie left to slice, with pistonheads migrating to electronic info sources in droves, car magazines quickly figured out the fastest (if not only) way to keep the ad bucks flowing: inflate reader circulation numbers. In Greece, there’s no official circulation watchdog. So the car magazines were free to claim an absurdly large, loyal following. [NB: Τhe only limit was/is taxation; magazines pay tax based on how many copies they “sell.”] And so they did.

Depending on a business plan based on greed, editorial prostitution and fraud has turned the vast majority of Greek car magazines into nothing more than a monthly new car catalog. Looking at it from the readers’ perspective, the buff books are filled with pages of glossy shots of cars that look little different from the ads subsidizing their dissemination. There is literally no significant demarcation between the magazine’s copy and a carmaker’s sales brochure or press kit. Editorial quality is completely beside the point.

Content has hit rock bottom so hard that franchised titles are having trouble holding on to their brand identity. Browsing a magazine with its title covered provides no clue as to which publisher’s product your perusing. The word “production” nowadays describes operations starting with the layout and ending with printing.

No wonder there are no big names in Greek automotive journalism. Greek (ex) rally drivers (as in Luxembourgian policemen) with no talent– just “fame”– provide little more than bylines. Clearly, they can’t (or won’t) tell an editorial from an advertorial, a test from a ride. Corporate and editorial is so interconnected that a parade of editorial directors or editors-in-chief are meeting one car exec after the other, seeking to establish a “spirit of cooperation.” During one such a meeting, I heard the words “you give us the car and we will make it a god.” This was a British franchise of a well-known magazine title.

When Greek car magazines were specialized, focused, technical, knowledgeable and decent, imitation was impossible. As soon as they sold their souls and became generic, vague, tedious, clueless and blunt, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The laws of evolution tell us that saturation in a segment opens the door to fragmentation. In other words, familiarity breeds contempt.

Bigger publishers, with more publications (including first-rate newspapers) now offer better advertisement deals for car importers. Auto-related editorial is showing up as special sections in media with hundreds of thousands of daily readers, of all sexes, ages, and classes. They offer the same level of “journalism” at a lower price for advertisers, with a huge and more honestly calculated number of readers. At least ten such publications have appeared in the last three years, bulldozing car magazines.

And yet the buff books still can’t wake-up and smell the coffee. They’re still looking for more ads, not more readers. They continue to view the Internet as a sidekick to the print issues or an extra source of advertising space, rather than an opportunity to sharpen their coverage.

Up to this point, no Greek car magazine has gone out of business. But it’s only a matter of time before they start landing on their backs. Like Detroit’s long decline, the Greek car magazines’ slide into obscurity is a sad but inevitable result of their failure to stay true to their customers’ needs with integrity, passion and long-term wisdom. I await their reinvention.

The press preview for the 2008 North American International Auto Show is finally over. TTAC’s Texas twosome– Sajeev Mehta and I– did our level best to catch the major reveals, grill some suits and get a feel for the temper of the times. On the plane back to the Lone Star State, I collected my thoughts on the show’s winners and losers. Were the carmakers fiddling while Rome burns, or preparing to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes ahead?

BIG WINNERS: GM and FoMoCo. Call it a home field advantage, but The General’s troops and The Blue Oval Boyz did the most to impress, launching the drop-dead gorgeous, thundering Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 ; the luxe yet yeoman-like new Ford F-150 full-size pickup and the AMG-alike Cadillac CTS-V. Hail Mary passes they may be, but connect they did. (Yoda am I.)

BIG LOSERS: Chrysler and Toyota. Dodge launched their new Ram pickup amidst a gen-you-ine cattle drive outside the convention center. Indoors, the automaker’s displays were equally unfinished and disorganized. Toyota, the masters of organization, revealed nothing more exciting than a station-wagon-on-stilts. While the Camry-based Venza will sell in [non-cattle] droves, it oozed nothing in particular from every pore. 

BEST SHOW TREND: diesel. Honda announced its plans to put a four-cylinder clean diesel engine into their [unintentionally] stealthy Acura passenger cars, as of next year. GM took the wraps off a new low-compression clean-burning 2.9-liter oil burner— a potential game changer in a Cadillac CTS coupe, no less. Mercedes, BMW and Audi all announced upmarket oil burners. And Chrysler promised to put a V6 Cummins turbo diesel into their half-ton Ram pickups, after 2009.

WORST SHOW TREND: alternative propulsion. The 2008 North American International Auto Show was the latest venue for the world automotive ecology Olympics. Unfortunately, all the athletes were pumped-up on PR puffery, and no events were actually run. Like the engine-less Cadillac Provoq “hydrogen” concept car, the hype surrounding the efficacy and practicality of a range of alternative propulsion powerplants has obscured the truth of reasonable expectations and anything like a practical timeframe.

CUTTING-EDGE WINNER: Former Aston designer Henrik Fisker’s mob made a major impact with their oh-so-sexy Karma all-electric sports car. Fisker execs say they’ll beat Tesla Motors to market with the first all-electric production sports car. Words are cheap, although neither car is. In theory.

CUTTING-EDGE LOSER: Tesla. Tesla’s no-show at the North American International Auto Show is a major miscalculation; with TTAC-fed doubts about the company’s viability, Tesla needed to fly the flag for their Lotus Elise-based all-electric Roadster. Either the silicon start-up couldn’t afford to lease the COBO real estate, or they didn’t want to face uncomfortable questions from an increasingly impatient press corps and public, or, sensibly enough, they’re conserving dwindling financial resources for more profitable endeavors. Anyway you look at this, they lose.

MEDIA WINNER: Autoblog, Jalopnik et al. The so-called new media continued their rise to prominence. Web slingers wrote stories, edited photos and transmitted the results for near-immediate posting on the Web. With Wi-fi, they didn’t even have to leave the show floor to do so. When The Old e-Gray Lady (the New York Times online) broke multiple photo embargos the night before the first press day, it was abundantly clear that print was dead.  

MEDIA LOSER: buff books. The reports and photos from the North American International Auto Show hit the blogosphere within minutes. The buff books’ reports won’t show up in tin mailboxes for at least a month, more likely two. The old tech publications are clamoring to morph themselves into something more relevant by utilizing video and feeding their own web sites. One ink-stained Hungarian-looking scribe called “Chubba” trailed around behind me with a film crew. He pretended not to know who I was but followed me everywhere. Creepy.

SHORT TAKE WINNERS:
• Audi – Major buzz around the R8, and deservedly so.
• Ford Verve – IF only…
• Nissan – The GT-R is gonna be a HUGE hit

SHORT TAKE LOSERS:
• Chinese automakers – Relegated to the COBO basement, where they belong
• Buick – Their only inspiration came from China. How great is that?
• Mercury – Who? What? Where? No one. Nothing. Nowhere.
• Jaguar – Jag needs a homerun. The XF ain’t it.
• Pontiac – Why would anyone buy a G8 over a CTS?

Taken as a whole, the 2008 North American International Auto Show did little to suggest that major manufacturers have busted any moves to meet the twin challenges of recession and regulation. Those that are ready, are. Those that aren’t, aren’t. I read somewhere that Nero was a pretty good fiddle player. So is Detroit.

[For full TTAC Auto Show coverage, click here.] 

I’m not big on ceremony. Throw in a couple of blowhard politicians, a bevy of self-congratulatory industry execs and a swarm of self-important journalist jackals; and meetings like the 12th Annual International Car of the Year Awards are like kryptonite to my modest superpowers. The invitation from the friendly folks at Road and Travel Magazine read, “Regrets not Required.” In my case, regret was inevitable. Still, I donned a monkey suit and took one for the team with as much enthusiasm as I approached my first doctor’s visit after my fortieth birthday. Fortunately my doctor was quick and his gentle finger was warm, so that experience was not as bad as I had grimly anticipated. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the green-themed ICOTY award pageant.

If you are thinking, I know C&D, MT and R&T, but what the hell is RTM, it’s probably because you aren’t a woman. Road & Travel Magazine was founded in 1989 by the lovely Courtney Caldwell to entertain and inform the fairer sex about all things automotive. The periodical founded the ICOTY in 1996, as an Academy Awards for automobiles.

The evening got off to a bumpy start with remarks by Michigan Representative John D. Dingell. Give the congressman credit; he boldly and proudly referenced the draconian increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. His words hung in the air above the heads of the audience born by tension and uncomfortable silence. All was made right when the old Washington warhorse called for applause for all the workers and management who supported the legislation.

This year’s convocation marked the bestowal of the first ever Earth Angel Award. This sappy honorific is designed to laud the most environmentally harmonious automaker; the car company that best carries the torch for alternative fuel transportation and whose “company position and mission on global warming” is most politically correct.

“Global warming is top-of-mind for everyone these days,” said Caldwell. “Automakers are too often criticized for environmental insensitivity when the reality is that they’re really making enormous strides on a global level to improve the earth’s environment.” 

August former CBS newsman, Walter Cronkite, who wants mankind to turn back the tide of increasing global temperatures by driving new and improved cars, heralded in the inaugural Earth Angel Award via taped introduction. Carl Levin, Michigan's Senior Senator, bestowed the first-ever Earth Angel Award upon the General Motors Corporation. 

In the estimation of RTM’s esteemed panel, The General best allows pistonheads to purge themselves of guilt for ravaging the earth. How so? By mapping out a comprehensive plan that will transform the automobile from a filthy mechanical machine into a clean electric appliance. Riiiiight.

The culmination of the gala event: the announcement of the International Car of the Year Award winner. J.D. Power and Associates counts votes for the nominees (not a difficult job since the electorate is comprised of a panel of just 12 “respected” journalists).

Unfortunately, the group’s previous picks look like a menagerie of mediocre moribund models mired on a used car dealership: Pontiac Grand Prix (1997), Oldsmobile Intrigue (1998), Ford Windstar (1999), PT Cruiser (2001), Jaguar X-type (2002), and Dodge Charger (2006). This is hardly a lineup of the best cars in the world. More likely these pickings bear the undeniable stench of money mildewed by a passage under the desk of RTM’s advertising director.

If you still care, the night’s winners include:

•    Honda Accord Sedan, the International Car of The Year, and “Most Dependable” Sedan of the Year
•    Chrysler Town & Country, International Truck of the Year, and “Most Compatible” Minivan of the Year
•    GMC Sierra Denali, “Most Athletic” Pick Up Truck of the Year
•    Audi R8, “Most Sex Appeal” Sports Car of the Year
•    Mercedes Benz S63 AMG, “Most Respected” Luxury Car of the Year
•    Volvo C30, “Most Spirited” Entry Level Car of the Year
•    Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, “Most Resourceful” SUV of the Year

Clearly the Honda Accord was a safe choice, perhaps an attempt to atone for past indiscretions. The Audi R8’s selection proves that ugly is the new sexy. The only winner that seemed to rankle the crowd, at least those outside of the Ford family, was the inclusion of the pricy Volvo C30 in the entry level car category.

By night’s end, the sickening sweet smell of 1984 Ferrari-Carano Cabernet Sauvignon permeated the room and the band played on. In black ties and evening gowns, industry manager misters and their silicone sisters renewed old acquaintances within the attendant corps of scribes. To everyone’s relief, the charade was complete for another year. As for me, my doctor tells me that I have the prostate of a twenty year-old; the prognosis is good that I’ll live to suffer through the ICOTY Awards again in 2009. Assuming I'm invited.