The über-wealthy have many fascinating ways to speed on America’s highways, from night-vision goggles to convenient spotter planes overhead. But those of us who toil in the middle class have to earn our velocity by hard graft. Freeway speeding is the crack cocaine of fast-road driving—cheap, easy, addictive, and deadly—and nighttime freeway speeding is both more glamorous and annoying than its daytime counterpart.

Once the sun goes down, we can do a lot more of that left-lane passing which is so near and dear to the hearts of wannabe Europeans, thanks to a trick I call “Poor Man’s Takedown.” Cop cars have “takedown” lights: high beams which flash alternately. We can simulate the effect as follows: While coming up behind traffic in the left lane, switch to parking lights only. When you are a few hundred feet back, flash your brights three or four times, producing the “takedown” effect. As Billy Dee Williams would say, “It works every time,” primarily because it startles Toyota drivers into yielding the lane before their natural territorial instincts can assert themselves.

We don’t use the shoulder at night unless we have to. Confused deer, abandoned cars, and discarded retreads tend to hide out there. In the event that a lane-changing fellow motorist leaves us with no safe lane choice and no time to slow the car, it’s occasionally possible to simply split the lane on the side away from the lateral direction of the lane change. If you are swift enough with it, you might even keep your mirrors.

The time will come when, despite our best efforts to look ahead, watch brake lights, and use our Valentine Ones, we will be clocked. At this point, we have two useful options. We can pull over and wait for the nice policeman, right there across the road from his clocking point (this will sometimes earn us some goodwill), or we can run.

It isn’t really “running” until the cop is directly behind us with his lights on. That’s a felony, and I advise against it. Until then, it’s merely additional speeding, spiced up with some unwarranted direction-changing. When we decide to perform said additional speeding, we need to absolutely abandon the idea of getting where we were going. That’s no longer important. Instead, we need to perform three important tasks.

Task one is breaking visual contact. As long as the cop can see us, we are toast. So it’s time to boogie. Most police sedans with light bars can’t break 120 mph, so we want to get to that speed or better immediately. We look ahead, not behind, or we will surely drive right into the back of a lane-wandering minivan full of multicultural children stroking crippled kittens and singing “Kumbaya.” We can check our mirrors in the gaps between traffic.

With Task One accomplished, it’s time to multiply possibilities. The police handbooks indicate that fleeing drivers almost always turn right. So we get off the freeway and turn left. If we have enough clear air and we aren’t driving something like a lime green Audi S5 or other memorable car, we can cross the median and join the lawful traffic heading in the other direction. If that’s too much to ask, get off the freeway . . . but do it quickly. We keep our speed up, using the techniques I’ll cover in Part III, and we make multiple direction changes.

After a few of these, it’s time to abandon the whip. We get out of the car and walk away. A gas station is fine for this, a restaurant is better, a car lot is best of all. If you have, ahem, a new Ford Flex, why not drive into a Ford dealership and park in a line of them?  Then get away from the car. Guess what? If they can’t prove we were driving the car, we have a fighting chance in court.

If the police manage to catch us, we say we didn’t see them and that we always drive like a maniac. This abject confession of putative stupidity saved, um, a friend of mine from a beating after he led the Ohio Highway Patrol on a 120+ mph chase down Route 71 in a Lotus Seven clone. Sorry, officer! Didn’t see you back there! Gimme the ticket, I’ll sign it!

In cities, we return to the scene of the crime. Police search in an outward circle that expands with time. The one place they won’t be is the place where the search started, so we go there, using left turns. Needless to say, we don’t go speeding with weed, Ecstasy, firearms, or illegal immigrants in the car, because one felony charge at a time is enough.

In Part III, we will learn how to drive back roads at outrageous speeds.

[Click here to read Part I or Part III of the series. Note: as these editorials have triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples, in an entirely first amendment friendly sort of way]

Nathan writes:

I have a 1999 Dodge Stratus. Lately, after I drive and get out of the car, I go around the back of the car and notice my brake lights are still on. They start to turn off with a tap of the brake pedal. After this started occurring more often, I changed the fuses as well as the battery. Unfortunately this problem is still coming back. Any advice?

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Let us begin with this: it is possible to go much faster on North American public roads than the law allows. Much faster. If you are interested in exploring the upper limits of this possibility, read on. If you find this idea morally, legally, ethically or spiritually repugnant; please return to your regularly scheduled bailout coverage. If you’re a member of law enforcement, please consider this a work of fiction.

In theory, I’ve been driving “too fast” on public roads for more than twenty years. In that time, I may have learned a lot about what works and what does not. I will share this hypothetical knowledge—bought and paid for in terror, twisted steel and sleepless nights—with you. Or not.

Before we begin, a caveat. The fast-road driver needs more than skill, more than training, more than a fast car. He (and it is almost always he) needs luck. Luck eventually runs out. When that happens, people get hurt. Sometimes innocent people get hurt—if any of us are truly “innocent” in this world. Sometimes the driver will go to jail or beyond that to the penitentiary. Sometimes people die. You have been warned.

To drive truly quickly, you will need a level of preparation and skill roughly equivalent to what is found in NASA’s Time Trial class. Your car needs to have its fluids at the appropriate levels, its tire pressures checked and its suspension components torqued. Your tires need full tread, no plugs, no camber wear.

You, as the driver, need to be alert, sober, rested, and ready to look all the way down the road. The trained fast-road driver scans the horizon and looks to the end of his available vision. That’s where the cops are, that’s where the accidents happen, that’s where you start to intuit the movement patterns of your fellow drivers. Practice identifying cars in the oncoming freeway lanes as soon as they are visible. At any time, you should be able to close your eyes and recite the makes and models of the cars around you.

We’ll use a limited set of the race driver’s toolkit in our pursuit of maximum street speed. Trail-braking is out, deliberate contact is out, drafting is out. Instead, we follow the old Bondurant curriculum. All braking is done in a straight line, every time. If you have ABS, don’t be afraid to engage it. We never steer and brake simultaneously, particularly on the freeway. We don’t accelerate out of turns with the steering wheel “pinched” and we use formula-car hand positioning on the wheel. No shuffle-steer. Ever. This isn’t autocross. Get the wheel straight and put your right foot all the way down.

Traction control is left on at all times, with the exception of when we need a Jarno Donut (to be covered later). Turn the radio down or off. Sit close enough to the wheel that your wrist falls naturally on the rim of the wheel. If you have a CG-Lock, you can left-foot brake. If you don’t, don’t, because when you panic-brake from high speeds you will have nothing to keep your body in the seat. Get your heel-and-toe together, pronto. And for God’s sake, put your seatbelt on because you’ll eventually need it.

We’ll start with freeways. Speeding on the freeway is easy. Anybody can do it. The trick is in maintaining a consistent pace of twice the pack speed or higher. To do this we extend our vision to the horizon as mentioned above and watch the cars ahead. Look for lane changes, look for shifts in traffic, look for drivers who are slow, distracted or wobbly. Most of our passing is done to the right. This offends wanna-be Autobahn drivers, but we don’t care.

Cops expect you to speed in the left lane and they tend to look down the left lane. Stay to the right. Truck convoys are the exception. They will punish you for right-lane passes.

Our passing method is simple. We come up on a car-to-be-passed from directly behind. We do this to attract the driver’s attention into his rear-view mirror. When we are two hundred feet behind, we change lanes (to the right, if possible) and pass as far away as possible. While we prepare the pass, we look at the adjacent lane and we have a backup plan in case the car we are passing wobbles.

If there is no lane, evaluate the shoulder for heavy marbles, dirt, obstacles. If we see those, we dial back the speed to 100mph or less. Get in the habit of driving on the shoulder. We learn to drive on the shoulder because we’ll have to do it many times in the future, both to avoid panic-swerves and to pass recalcitrant lane-blockers.

In Part II, we’ll discuss night freeway driving and basic evasion techniques.

Longtime TTAC reader dastanley writes:

As a TTAC reader and sometimes blog participant, I have a question about motor oil in our 2008 Hyundai Tucson with the 2.7L V-6. The owner’s manual recommends Quaker State 5W20, 5W30, and 10W30 in that preferential order. Why Quaker State? Is there an engineering/operational reason for that particular brand or is that a marketing deal where Hyundai gets cheaper oil for their new cars off the assembly lines if they recommend Quaker State?

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I’ve just purchased a Pontiac G8 GT. Sport red metallic with every option. I paid too much (even though it was a below-invoice deal). The car just begged me to buy it. Yep, car guys make the dumbest deals when it comes to their own personal transportation. And I love it. I will drive the wheels off this car, and enjoy every torque-rich moment. But enough about me. Now about Pontiac, and GM. With fewer than eleven days to go before what was once the largest corporation in the world files for bankruptcy, with the Pontiac brand disappearing (what exactly is a “niche” brand anyways?), the G8 GT is a reminder of what could have and should have been. But is it also an indication of what will be? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

As good as it is, the Pontiac G8 GT highlights GM’s greatest failing: the formerly world’s largest automaker’s unshakable tendency to take the path of least resistance. Remember: the G8 is an Australian import. Originally, this state of affairs was supposed to be a “temporary” fix: a quick way for Pontiac to sell a suitable product in the American marketplace. As with the Belgian Saturn Astra, the G8 was sold internally (and to the UAW) as a “place holder.” After the models succeeded, production would switch to American soil.

Did GM really think that would happen? Who knows? If laziness was GM’s worst sin, self-delusion was its second (followed closely by ADD). Importing cars for a mainstream brand from high cost countries is an inherently risky proposition. (One of the main reasons Toyondaissan builds here.) And sure enough, surprise! GM got nailed on the exchange rate before either car crossed either ocean. More importantly, instead of developing an American Pontiac G8, GM hit [what looked like] the easy button. In so doing, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Again.

It’s important to remember that the American automaker has always a deep bench of world-class design and engineering talent. GM also enjoyed complete access to the marketplace. And it had billions to spend on advertising. GM could have fostered strong brands with domestically built, highly competitive profits. But that would have taken genuine commitment from a management team committed to product excellence, rather than the Peter Principle.

How many Pontiac G8’s died because GM’s CEOs and “car czars” sat back and allowed the company’s divisions to expend their energy fighting each other; executives jockeying to generate the quickest, easiest and largest profits, rather than facing their real enemies outside the gates?

GM’s endless internecine warfare led to less competitive products. A growing number of divisions mortgaged their future by offering copy-cat (i.e., badge engineered) vehicles across multiple brands, using aging platforms and retro engines. Why? Why not? And so GM’s products fell behind their Japanese competitors’ reliability, build quality and value for the money.

At some point, GM simply forgot that it was in the car business. It forgot the fact that people buy cars from strong brands that meet or exceed the brand’s underlying promise. How cynical and lazy does a car company have to be to change its brand promise—“Pontiac is car”—rather than build vehicles that deliver the original premise?

In truth, there was nothing wrong with Pontiac’s mantra “We Build Excitement.” There was everything wrong with Pontiac’s products, and, by extension, the corporate culture that provided them. The Pontiac G8 GT is a “true” Pontiac: a poor man’s BMW. Aztek? Montana? Wave? It’s far too late to convince consumers to come back. 

The Pontiac G8 GT I drove home last night gets it right. The Aussie sedan lacks a luxury interior and some “surprise and delight” features (e.g., rain-sense wipers, HID headlamps, and power reclining seats). But it delivers excitement at a price the average working stiff can afford (more so every day). It is a Pontiac. Perhaps even “the” Pontiac; a car that completely surpasses the performance and handling of the parts-bin specials from which the brand was born. The G8 does exactly what a Pontiac’s supposed to do.

That’s the lesson for the New GM. Demote the bean counters to their rightful position as guardians of profit, not destroyers of initiative. Elevate the engineers and designers. Build a limited range of vehicles that fulfill their brand’s promise (although God knows what a Buick is supposed to be). Cut all the models that fail to fit the remit.

If you want to know if the post-C11 GM will make it, that’s where you need to look: at the vehicles GM doesn’t build. In that sense, the Pontiac G8 GT is both a clarion call and a warning. In today’s bloated, highly competitive automotive industry, if GM does the easy thing instead of the right thing, nothing can save them. Nothing.

I realized I was airborne when my steering inputs had no effect on the direction of my Carrera. At the point the ass-engine configured rocketship started its atmospheric re-entry, several things went through my mind. If the rear-end breaks loose, do I keep my foot down? What happens if I lose it? Am I going to crash? When the rear tires made contact with terra-nürburg, and I was able to counter steer in a brilliant fashion (what really happened was Porsche Active Stability Management once again made me a driving god), all thoughts of impaling my Porker into the Armco ceased. Once again, I was driving the dream and having the time of my life on the most legendary driving circuit in the world, the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

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Here’s a genuine milestone car. This Mercedes W108 began the lineage of modern S Series cars, which took its maker to the pinnacle of the global luxury sedan market. In the US, it single handedly broke the backs of Cadillac and Lincoln. A youthful ride in one left me permanently altered. And it all started with this somewhat modest but exquisite 250S. A couple of more milestones: this is the first Curbside Classic car owned by a TTAC reader, and it marks my two-hundredth car deemed interesting enough to photograph. Oh, and this is CC number thirteen. Many milestones indeed. Read More >

Three years ago yesterday, on a Jalopnik-TTAC joint podcast, a certain Robert Farago foresaw the rise of a “hybrid aesthetic” in automotive design. In order to break into the consumer psyche, went his logic, a hybrid car must look unmistakably like . . . a hybrid. Fast forward to 2009 and the new Honda Insight seems to confirm that looking like a hybrid means looking like a Toyota Prius. Chevy’s Volt might someday become the third member of the Prian party, while the forthcoming Lexus HS250h looks to be a Prius rebadge of GM-level laziness. If hybrids are the cars of the future, are we doomed to inherit a world of identical, beetle-shaped rides?

The obvious explanation for Prian design influence run amok is found in the wind tunnel. The outgoing Prius boasted a low-low coefficient of drag (Cd) of .26, making for one slippery hybrid. But the current Mercedes S-Class and Lexus LS460 also earn the exact same rating. For a four-door, the Prius’s CdA (Cd multiplied by area) is also surprisingly good at 6.24. But that’s not much better than, say, a 1991 Subaru Legacy which scores a 6.81.

The point is that the pursuit of wind tunnel efficiency does not lead inexorably to the Prian form, like some aerodynamic Mandelbrot set. There’s more to the wave of Prius-aping than mere laws of nature. The hybrid, writ large, has entered the American psyche. And it looks just like a certain Toyota.

To many Americans, the outgoing Prius was more than just a car. Through eight years of George Bush’s presidency, the Prius became symbolic statement of iconic power. It would not be unfair to say that, in 21st Century American iconography, the Prius took on the role of the Volkswagen Beetle to Bush’s Richard Nixon. It’s distinctive looks, unsullied by visual association with humdrum “regular cars,” created an undeniable statement. The bumper sticker had wagged the car.

The always-incisive cartoon South Park tapped into the Prian archetype in its send-up of self-satisfied hybrid drivers, “Smug Alert!.” The episode portrays the “Pious” and “Hindsight” as near-identical Prius-alikes, a subtle metaphor for the lockstep conformity of their “enlightened” owners. And with Honda’s latest hybrid so sincerely flattering the Prius’s looks, the South Park critique clearly had some merit.

But the real threat presented by the Priusification of the hybrid sector is not a looming cloud of smug. Rather, the very soul of automotive expression could become a victim of trend-following. Mass-market automotive offerings have long lost any stylistic luster, but more profitable “dedicated hybrid” models offer new opportunities to shape the automotive zeitgeist. In the face of this opportunity, automotive stylists seem to have raised the white flag, surrendering to (and thereby reinforcing) the power of the Prian archetype.

And this doesn’t just hasten the dystopic day when car buyers are forced to choose between a few flavors of hump-backed hybrid. Chasing the Prius’s self-defined segment too closely forces a comparison of the pretender to the original in which the newcomer may not fare well. The new Insight seems to have already fallen victim to this vicious dynamic. With so little separating the driving experiences of the Toyota and the Honda, reviewers are forced to conclude that the Insight is a slightly cheaper Prius without usable back seats.

Beyond this model-specific self-sabotage, the pursuit of the “dedicated hybrid” segment creates other dangerous temptations for automakers with hybrid ambitions. The early stages of the hybrid market favored unique models that identified their owners as early adopters. But as hybrid technology filters into the mainstream, Prius-like “dedicated hybrid” models will lose their unique appeal. If South Park jabs doesn’t get ’em, technological proliferation will.

Honda may have traded in its Hybrid Civic and Accord efforts for the Insight due to weak sales, but it may well have missed out on the “dedicated hybrid’s” moment in the sun. The third generation of the Prius hits dealerships this year, and early reports indicate that its blockbuster predecessor has been relentlessly improved upon in typical Toyota fashion. Oh, and the looks haven’t changed much. Honda’s decision to attack the Prius on price alone may run into some heavy competition.

If the Insight sells like gangbusters, the Farago principle will play out with a grim determinism. This scenario would not only prove that the hybrid market still demands visual representations of eco-awareness; it would also permanently cement the Prian form as the distillation of this hybrid aesthetic. But the automotive future is simultaneously too exciting and mundane to be represented by a single, instantly-recognizable (and baggage-carrying) form.

On the one hand, hybrid technology must eventually enter the mundane realm of the Fit, Corolla and Matrix. On the other, truly cutting-edge technology must be packaged in ever-more inspiring new forms. Not just another Prius.

George writes:

I own a 1999 Honda Accord EX V6 Coupe with 103k miles.  Should I sell it now or keep it?

The Positives:

1) Purchased new with 9 miles on the odometer.

2) Used Mobil 1 synthetic oil changed at 5k intervals.

3) Stays in a garage at night.

4) Reliable with only Delphi alternator failure outside of warranty.

5) Still looks good.

The Negatives:

1) Design defects in automatic transmission.

2) Only drained and replaced transmission fluid at 90k miles per manual instructions.  Should have replaced earlier.

3) Due for expensive timing belt replacement.

Normally a fairly well maintained used car is worth more to its original owner than to someone else, but the 1999 Accord has an unusual combination of a high resale value combined with significant transmission problems. Looks like a case where I should sell it now before I have to spend more money on the car. Any thoughts?

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Politics is the art of the possible. In other words, it’s the art of manipulating expectations. In other other words, Barack Obama didn’t achieve the highest office in the land by doing things. He became president by promising to do things. And now that he’s actually got to do stuff, Obama must resort to the politician’s best weapon in their endless fight to reconcile expectations and reality (i.e., special interests): loopholes. Those exquisite exceptions that allow those supposedly affected by a piece of legislation to avoid the law’s intent—to the point where you wonder why anyone bothered to write it in the first place. The answer to that question is obvious: so that the politicians who crafted the law could be seen to be doing something that meets with public approval. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new CAFE standards.

Let me cut to the chase: the feds could mandate a 100 mpg fleet-wide corporate average fleet economy (CAFE) standard and the carmakers would meet it. All they’d have to do is do whatever they have to do to not do it while appearing like they’ve either done it or gave it a damn good try, then pay the damn fine (if necessary), pass on the cost to their consumers and get on with it. Again.

Which means that today’s pre-announcement announcement that the federal government will eventually adopt California’s CAFE standards—42 mpg for cars, 26.2 mpg for trucks by 2016—is meaningless. You know, in the real world. In the political sphere, it will be a major victory for environmentalists, supporters of the president, Chrysler and GM.

Yes, there is that. The president will soon have new CAFE standards AND control of two car companies that can build the vehicles that conform to those standards. I mean, they’ll have to do that, right? Otherwise, a taxpayer-funded automaker may have to pay a large penalty to the taxpayers, using taxpayer’s money, for failing to meet a standard set by the government who owns them (the carmakers, not the taxpayers).

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those people who worries that Chrysler and GM will be forced to build Nancy Pelosi-mobiles. I’m one of those who knows it.

Ah ha! But you just said the automakers won’t meet the standards! They’ll only pretend to. Yes, and to pretend to do it, they’ll build the Volt, an electric minivan or suchlike and act like they’re building the vehicles that will right the sunked ship, meet or exceed all federal regulations, save the planet and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Meanwhile, they’ll sell other things.

Or not. I mean, what difference does it make? Both car companies are practically 501c3 non-profit charities as it is. Any business that owes its existence to subsidies, noblesse oblige and tax credits is not going to spend too much time worrying about little things like return on investment and long-term profitability. Why should they?

Sorry. I got distracted. The meat of the matter: the new CAFE standards go hand-in-glove with the $100 billion or so doled out (literally) to Chrysler and GM; a “fresh start” for a “clean future” with “green jobs” using “American ingenuity” and “innovative technology.”

It wasn’t planned that way. It just happened. Like I said, it’s the art of the possible: drawing from the temper of the times, tapping into a farrago of common hopes, creating a palatable policy platform for those who need to stay on message. And for those who need to build cars? “Flexibility.” Automotive News [sub]:

The proposal to run from 2012-2016 would maintain a single national standard for fuel economy and give automakers flexibility for meeting it, people with knowledge of the plan said.

The same would apply to anyone with knowledge of any government plan. This is not pure cynicism. This is cynicism based on historical precedent. Lest we forget, the last SUV boom was fueled by CAFE standards that allowed Chrysler to classify the PT Cruiser as a truck.

There is no reason to believe that the new CAFE regs will be any more stringently applied than existing laws, or if they are, that manufacturers will be any less likely to game the system to allow them to build the more profitable vehicles that people want to buy.

That said, again, this time ’round we’ll have two automobile manufacturers who will no longer care [that much] about building the vehicles that people want to buy. So they might NOT cheat. Which will screw it up for everyone else, Ford included.

Either that or they’ll force all automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles that will save the planet and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Oh, and be just as safe as current cars and trucks. After all, there are no limits to human ingenuity.

In the ongoing drama between Porsche and Volkswagen, the MSM tends to forget that this is also a tale of two unions. Volkswagen is organized, not to say owned, by the German metal workers union, IGM. With 2.3 million members, IGM is the single biggest union in the world. Half the VW supervisory board belongs to the unions. In case of a deadlock, the decisive vote lies with the stockholders. The unions can also count on the state government—with its blocking minority vote— being “sympathetic” towards their suggestions. Porsche has their own union representation: The Porsche Workers’ Council. So just as we’ve got Porsche – Piech battle royale, there’s an IGM vs. Porche Workers’ Council cage match. Let the games begin! Or, uh, continue.

On one side stands Uwe Hück, chairman of the Porsche Workers’ Council and former European Thai Boxing champion. On the other, we have Bernd Osterloh, who only looks like a former Thai Boxing champion. Osterloh represents Volkswagen‘s workforce. He’s the man who profited from the hooker scandal that shook Germany three years ago, when Volkswagen management tried to get the Union members on the supervisory board into a more sympathetic mood by paying for amusement trips to South America (mainly because Osterloh couldn‘t be linked to any of it, but there you go).

The troubles began early on, when Porsche decided to take over Volkswagen The company needed a new legal framework for Volkswagen. So they created the Porsche Automobil Holding SE, which now holds 100 percent of the Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG as well as 51 percent of Volkswagen. As always, half of the supervisory board of the newly founded holding went to the unions. Porsche’s Uwe Hück negotiated the allocation of these board members with Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking. As a result of these talks, the unions claimed 10 seats, divided evenly between the Porsche and VW unions.

Though no queen, Bernd Osterloh was not amused. He figured that the fact that Volkswagen employs almost 30 times as many workers as Porsche should be somewhat represented when it comes to the allocation of board members. Osterloh took Hück and Wiedeking to court.

Porsche won round one. The court ruled that since Porsche only held a minority of Volkswagen at the time the Holding was formed, they didn‘t need the approval of the Volkswagen workers. This did nothing to improve the relations between Volkswagen and Porsche and their respective workers. Osterloh told the press that Wiedeking had “dangerous phantasies of almightiness“ and that he wants to rule “with the arrogance of an autocrat.“

The next time the Volkswagen board met, the Porsche workers organized huge protests against the board members. With a little help from everyone’s favorite Satanic mechanic (VW’s Ferdinand Piech), Porsche subsequentally lost their votes on the board. All of them.

The power shift towards Wolfsburg leaves Bernd Osterloh is more powerful than ever. He’s made it clear that any merger would only receive his blessing if the workers‘ participation and the so-called “Volkswagen Law” remain unchanged. In other words, the status must remain quo.

Osterloh openly calls Porsche’s management “dilettantes“ and “nouveau-riches“ from Stuttgart. Obviously, the kind of merger that Osterloh has in mind is in reality a takeover of Porsche by Volkswagen. This pleases his counterpart from Stuttgart not one bit.

Nor was Uwe Hück happy when Piech and Osterloh dropped some unfavorable remarks about Porsche. The VW duo claimed Porsche is overleveraged, running out of cash and worth several billion less than the €11 billion the press has been talking about lately. In Piech‘s case, this could be seen as infringement of the stock corporation law, as he also sits on the Porsche supervisory board as a major shareholder.

Hück is threatening to drag Pieh and Osterloh into court. Meanwhile, Hück reckons Porsche should remain independent. The company is doing just fine, thank you very much. What’s more, Porsche workers stand behind the automakers CEO Wiedeking, whose contract expires in 2012.

On Sunday, we witnessed the latest installment of this soap opera. Volkswagen called off any negotiations with Porsche regarding the merger until further notice. It was Osterloh who initiated this move, who later told the press that he‘s missing the transparency on the part of Porsche needed for talks to succeed. Obviously, Osterloh wants to increase the pressure on Porsche and Wendelin Wiedeking, who‘s still looking for outside investors to help him take over Volkswagen.

Today we‘ll see the next episode. The supervisory board of Porsche is meeting in Stuttgart. Uwe Hück has already announced that there will be massive protests by the Porsche workers against Ferdinand Piech. Even so, as we’ve seen in other editorials on this site, anyone who bets against Piech does so at his own peril. Somehow, the man always seems to get his way. We shall see.

Tom in North Carolina asks:

Sajeev, my 2005 Dodge Durango (4×2 Limited with Hemi and tow package) hit a critical juncture in April. The truck hit 70,000 miles meaning the 7/70 power train warranty expired, and Chrysler just BK’d. Since the vehicle is in great shape, good for road trips, is all but paid for, and is worth less to a dealer than it is to me, I plan to keep it for awhile. I have been told the 5.7 with the 5 speed auto is a fairly bulletproof power train, and with proper care and feeding should last a long time. The truck gets no severe service and is driven fairly gently, 70/30 highway/suburban use, 18,000 miles per year.

To keep it running I am debating keeping with the OEM scheduled 5000 mile oil changes (usually available for about $22) or switching to Mobil One at 10k or 15k change intervals. If I switch to synthetic oil, would you suggest a “better” quality oil filter (and what brand)?

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Anyone who’s spent any time around preschoolers knows they can ask some really hard questions. Fortunately, even questions like “why is the sky blue” or “where do babies come from” can be answered to their satisfaction with a little thought and careful wording. Questions from gearheads are a bit tougher and aren’t as easily answered. Here are nine questions I’d love for someone to answer. That is, if there really are answers to be had.

1. Why did Jim Press leave Toyota for Chrysler? He was sitting on top of the automotive world at Toyota as the President and CEO of Toyota North America. Press was the first non-Japanese member of Toyota’s management board. Suddenly, he quit, and went to Chrysler to work for Bob Nardelli. Was it Toyota’s executive salary cap that caused him to bail, or was there something more political going on? Did Cerberus promise Jimbo something more than just a co-presidency at Chrysler? Jim ain’t sayin’.

2. Why did GM keep Rick Wagoner around for so long? “Red Ink Rick” inherited a mess created by his predecessors. Instead of taking the draconian steps needed to get the company back on track, Rick accelerated the company’s slide to oblivion. If a GM middle manager had lost the company the kind of money that Rick did, he would have been given a box for his personal belongings and escorted from the building. Even so, how could it take a president of the United States to bring Ricky down. What power did RW hold over the GM Board of Directors that kept him in charge for nine years?

3. Does Fiat really think they can make a comeback in this country? Fiat sold just one vehicle stateside (pause) that met with any kind of critical acclaim: the 124 Spyder. Meanwhile, Fiat earned itself a stellar rep as the manufacturer of trouble-prone rust buckets whose dealers couldn’t get critical parts (even if they knew what they were and wanted to). Fiat’s decision to jump into bed with Chrysler is not the most ridiculously ambitious (or ambitiously ridiculous) idea in the world, but it’s in the top five. How does Fiat plan to market themselves? Just how big of a PR budget do they have?

4. How much longer can the UAW hang in there before it becomes a casualty of the “good” automakers? When American automakers were raking in the cash, the UAW demanded and received . . . whatever they wanted. In the cold light of day, the union priced itself out of the picture. The concessions surrendered during the last round of contract negations are the crack in the glacier [see: Ice Age]. By the time “new” Chrysler and GM find their feet [Ed: in our shoes], the UAW will carry about as much clout as the air traffic controllers union. How can they survive?

5. How long can GM’s ex-Car Czar, Bob Lutz, keep his mouth shut? Bob Lutz is the prince of WTF sound bites. Earlier this year, Lutz announced his retirement. Last week, he cashed in his remaining GM stock (what does he know that we’ve known for the better part of a a decade?). Why hasn’t Maximum Bob defended his legacy? Alternatively, how is GM managing to keep him quiet?

6. Why has Mark Fields been so quiet lately? Mark “Fly Me to Miami” Fields was another gold-mine of blogger fodder. Ford’s Presidente de las Americas even ran a web-based reality series, “How I Turned Around Ford Without Really Trying.” Lately, like Lutz, Fields hasn’t said boo to a goose. Did Big Al have a “come to Jesus” meeting with Fields? Or did Mrs. Fields finally silence her boy?

7. Where is Honda going with Acura? Honda’s schizoid sports/luxury wannabe division can’t seem to decide what part of the market it wants to play in. For a while, they sold a hard-core sports GT car and scrappy sports compacts and wanted to be the Japanese BMW. Now it seems Acura’s trying to be the Japanese Audi with soccer mom CUVs and AWD near-luxury sedans. Toss in styling only a Anime fan could love and who knows where they’ll go next on their voyage of self-discovery?

8.  How much longer will GM, Ford and Chrysler pour money into motorsports? Car and Driver ran an April Fool’s story reporting that budget constraints had forced GM to withdraw from NASCAR. It was so believable no one thought it was a joke. It isn’t. Nothing that any of the domestics are doing in motorsports has anything to do with what you can buy on their showroom. How can they justify spending millions on racing programs when they’re shuttering factories, firing people and begging for handouts to stay alive?

9. Will Toyota wake up and smell the coffee? Toyota’s creating superfluous brands, dragging their luxury division downmarket, trying to fill every market niche, and taking hits due to quality issues. Sound familiar? ToMoCo’s shaking up their management team. But will that be enough to keep them from becoming the GM of the Orient?

In the late 70s, after Volkswagen had launched their new worldwide dealer network under the mysterious V.A.G. moniker. The V.A.G. dealers received a strong voice, their own national advertising campaign and a renewed focus on the importance of service. No wonder. Then as now, after-sales is the VW dealer’s number one profit center. The profit contribution of parts alone was often 30 percent or more. In 1979, for the first time, VW invited the service guys to the IAA auto show in Frankfurt. The suits asked me to come up with a spectacular concept for their debut. My first idea: fix cars live, Formula 1 pitstop style. Everybody liked it—until someone found out that the maximum height of the booth was 2.5 meters, way below the heights of the lift. Scratch that idea. Then I had an odd thought: Why not do it virtually? Read More >

A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man. Piech certainly spends a lot of time with his family; however, they‘re seldom good times. It has been a long tradition for the Piech and the Porsche side of the family to fight each other and the power struggle over at Volkswagen is merely an extension of that.

For a long time, it looked like Piech would be the loser in Porsche’s Volkswagen takeover. Since the 1980s, the Porsche part of the family held a majority stake in their car company. Back then, Piech‘s brother—in complete secrecy—sold his shares in Porsche to Arab investors (after getting into financial troubles because of some dubious real estate deals). This was a sacrilege! No outside party should get their hands on the family business!

When Piech found out about it, he cried, “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart,“ or something to that effect, and called for a family meeting. The family decided to buy back the lost stake instantly in a combined effort. As a result, the Porsche family ended up with half of the shares that formerly belonged to Piech‘s brother.

With Porsche ruling Volkswagen and Piech not being in control of Porsche, he would ultimately have to answer to Wendelin Wiedeking, something that is unacceptable to someone with Piech‘s ego.

Piech hates Wiedeking with a passion. Piech considers Wiedeking an outsider, the hired help, an employee who holds far too much power. If it had been up to him, Wiedeking would have lost his job a long time ago. Unfortunately for Piech, Wiedeking is the protégé of Wolfgang Porsche, Piech‘s cousin and the new strong man of the Porsche family. In Piech‘s eyes, Wolfgang isn‘t even in his class, merely one of these MBA types who don‘t know anything about cars. And so, while everybody thought that he had finally been beaten, Piech did what he does best: Pulling the strings.

For a long time, he adhered to Vito Corleone’s advice to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. That changed in September of 2008. Piech dealt the decisive blow to his cousin Wolfgang and his man Wiedeking. An important vote took place in Wolfsburg: The supervisory council of Volkswagen had to decide whether Porsche could deal with Audi directly, or whether it had to be consulted every single time.

According to German law, unions and shareholders each control half of the supervisory board. In case of a deadlock, the vote of the chairman, who‘s appointed by the shareholders, counts twice. The unions have been protesting against Porsche for quite some time, so it came to nobody‘s surprise that they didn‘t support Porsche, which meant that Piech had the decisive vote. But somehow, he went missing. In his absence, Piech‘s proxy abstained from voting and Porsche lost the vote. On top of that, Porsche lost another crucial vote that day that could have put an end to the “Volkswagen-Law“ which gives the federal government a blocking minority. This also meant that Porsche could not possibly get their hands on Volkswagen‘s cash reserves in order to reduce their debt. Wolfgang Porsche was furious. “I am appalled by the voting behavior of the chairman,“ he told the press.

With the global economic meltdown hitting the auto industry, Porsche got into even deeper trouble, since the banks refused to prolong the cheap credit Porsche needed so dearly. So the family was forced to adjust their strategy. Instead of taking over Volkswagen, they are now working on a merger. And guess who‘s calling the shots.

Piech made it clear that Porsche will be just another brand in the Volkswagen empire, that headquarters will remain in Wolfsburg and that his man Martin Winterkorn will be CEO.

Like many unfortunate souls before him, Wendelin Wiedeking had to learn the hard way that you don‘t mess with Piech. When asked whether Wiedeking had a future in the new Volkswagen/Porsche alliance, Piech answered: “He would have to take several steps down the ladder. The role play would have to change from someone who‘s used to march through to someone with humbleness—I don‘t know.“

He couldn‘t have been clearer.

Don Piech is about to fulfill his life dream: To forge an automotive giant that builds everything from big commercial trucks to luxurious sports cars to tiny econoboxes controlled by the family. And most importantly, instead of Wolfgang Porsche and his guys in Stuttgart, it is now Ferdinand Piech and his guys in Wolfsburg who have the upper hand.