A month or so ago, I exchanged emails with an editor whose auto blog shall remain nameless. TTAC had slated his wide-eyed, spin-friendly coverage of some auto industry news. The offended ed wanted me to believe that our sites were brothers in arms. He argued that delivering "soft news" was just as valid a pursuit as purveying "hard news." In what turned out to be my final missive, I insisted that the term "soft news" is an oxymoron. We were actually discussing the difference between good journalism and bad journalism. And that was that. But the more I surf his site, the more I cruise the autoblogosphere for honest-to-God reportage, the more I wonder if Watergate ever happened. Time and time again, the press give even the most patently bone-headed not-to-say Lutzian industry players a free ride. Even on those rare occasions when a reporter asks a suit a hard question, the self-proclaimed journalist never drills down to the nitty gritty. I guess that's why we're here. To ask the question no one else is asking. And I think the industry knows it. That's why Tesla failed to honor its promise to TTAC and followed BMW, Subaru and other automakers in refusing us seat time in a press car. But–  and I'm guessing here– our editorial independence is also one of the reasons Toyota recently contacted TTAC and offered access to their press fleet. Does this signal some kind of sea change? Is the industry finally ready to face the music? I doubt it. But like Ford CEO Alan Mulally's promise to see the world through "clear glasses," it's a start. Kudos to Big Al. And props to Toyota. While we won't give either automaker special treatment, we recognize and respect their courage.

Sharp-eared listeners to the TTAC daily podcast know that Justin shares his life with a number of canine companions. Single-minded bastard that I am, I've never asked my colleague how many dogs are in situ (situ!), their names or occupations. But I do know that Justin's father is a veterinarian. So clearly, Justin's a dog person and a pistonhead. As such, Justin does not follow the piss-poor example of pop star princess Britney Spears. He doesn't drive with a dog on his lap. Now I know that a mini-rant on the dangers of driving with a domesticated pet perched on your private parts doesn't really qualify for TTAC's hard-edged tell-it-like-it is news, views and reviews coverage; but this really sticks in my proverbial craw. If your local state government can (and does) ban drivers from talking on their cell whilst automobiling, why would they let license holders pilot a couple of tons of metal with a simple-minded animal (sorry Rosie) between them and the car's major controls? Come to think of it, I wonder if our spiritual leader, ex-Car & Driver editor and part-time paramedic Stephen Wilkinson can tell us what happens when an airbag explodes into a dog sitting on a driver or passenger's lap? Or, more generally, what happens when a front seat passenger gets hit with an unsecured pet flying through the air at 50 or 60 mph? Seriously folks, get a pet seat belt. Or, potentially, die. 

After I finish this post, I'm off to the U.P.S. store to post a memory stick of my audition for Top Gear (posted on YouTube here). Thanks in part to the writers' strike, NBC is attempting to fashion a uniquely American version of the highly sarcastic (to say the least) British program. It's important to note that British Top Gear airs on public TV; which is funded by a TV tax. The U.S. version will air on "free" TV, funded almost entirely by advertising. Now I'm not sure how much of GM's $2.1b annual ad spend the peacock network enjoys, but I bet it's a fair old whack. And Ford's no stranger to signing huge checks with the letters "NBC" in the important space. Not to mention Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Subaru and the rest of The Truth About Cars fan club. So you gotta wonder about the relationship between my chances and American Top Gear's editorial freedom. My brilliant career aside (as it has been for many years), the idea of a mainstream TV show that "dares" to be critical of crap cars sounds preposterous. But I've still got that Honda-friendly ELO song ringing in my ears. So WTH. I'm sending the stick (not Stig). Wish me luck. And rest assured that while every man may have his price, the ability to tell the truth is mine. I know.. I should be so lucky. Well, guess what? I am.

Over the years, I've noticed that TTAC flamers arrive in groups. Usually, it's down to a reader posting a particularly blunt TTAC editorial or negative review in a fanboy forum. While these single-minded venues usually prefer to kick the snot out of TTAC in the psychological safety of their own website, an emotionally charged individual or two (or three) often feels compelled to vent their home site's collective ire in the forum that gave rise to it. Needless to say, I gently remind them of our policy, issue a warning and invite them to write an 800-word rebuttal– which is WAY too much work for most. Recently, as The Big 2.8's blunders have escalated from dumb moves to farce, the flamers have reappeared in force. I take it as yet another sign that the domestics are facing "the end of days." Later today, I'll pen a Death Watch on Rick Wagoner's pronouncement that his turnaround plan is working. Meanwhile, I noticed that USA Today published a review of a plug-in electric hybrid Toyota Prius– some two years ahead of GM's now we say it, now we don't launch date for the Chevrolet Volt. Yes, it's different technology. But surely we can conclude that it's all over bar the shouting. Which is, of course, our job.

Is it OK for a motorist to simply buy environmental absolution? The concept is certainly in keeping with traditional Western philosophy: you sin, you pay. Even a lousy student of history knows that powerful organizations have been creating, reinforcing and exploiting that equation for their own selfish ends for the last ten thousand years or so. (The Catholic Church's history of selling "penance reduction" for cash springs to mind.) And if you take the idea of paying for your sins to its logical conclusion, you end up in that kinky "I was a crack 'ho before I was born again" [applause] place, where you start believing that you gotta really sin before you can really repent. Don't you feel guilty driving that Lincoln Navigator? Hell no. I'm saving a rain forest! Call me a Rhode Islander, but I distrust anyone who brokers that kind of crazy ass deal, never mind the deal itself. Literally. Never mind it. The truth of it is, any car owner who thinks that they can buy "forgiveness" for polluting the planet (if they believe that they are) is simply trying to avoid the totality of their personal responsibility. 

Perhaps I should explain why I gave GM Car Czar Bob Lutz his nickname "Maximum Bob." Nah. Why bother? TTAC's archives are suffused with the demented ramblings, patently absurd pronouncements, wildly inaccurate analysis and stupefying statements of GM's resident bodacious braggadocio. He really is God's gift to TTAC. We [also] thank GM CEO Rick Wagoner for appreciating his own true nature as a Harvard-trained beancounter; a realization that led him to place the entire global product line of the artist once known as the world's largest automaker into the hands of an ill-informed, ADD-addled executive. An automobile executive who couldn't name all VW's brands. But I digress. Automotive News [sub] reports that Lutz is tired of fighting. The Car Czar wants to know why can't we all just drive E85? "There's no reason the automotive industry can't go to 100 percent E85 vehicles, and the world we love doesn't have to change." You see, the thing is, the automotive world already has changed. A funny-looking car called the Prius has outsold the once mighty Ford Explorer– and that's just for starters. Shhhh. Don't tell Bob. TTAC wouldn't be half as interesting without him. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're a GM employee, dealer, customer or stockholder), it's only a matter of time before Maximum Bob unfurls his bankruptcy-proof golden parachute and floats off into a gilded retirement home (or three), proclaiming himself the architect of GM's product renaissance. He will be missed, but in a different sort of way by a different kind of people. If you know what I mean. 

Judging from the comments on this site, the average TTAC reader is closer in age to a Buick buyer than a Sciontologist. Then again, you never know. I would have given my right testicle to find a site like this as a boy– you know, if it had dropped by then. In deference to the possibility of juvenile readers, I tend to keep the language in the posts and comments G-rated. Or at least asterisked. God knows why. Three of my four daughters– aged ten through 14– are fully conversant with every one of George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV. I reckon it's a matter of days before my four-year-old learns that "stupid" isn't on the comedian's list. Just last week, I overheard one of these fine little ladies tell a notoriously aggressive classmate to f-off. Did I upbraid her? Yeah right. Truth be told, I'm a big fan of swearing. Although I don't swear in front of the kids, I'm not averse to a little plain speaking in unmixed company. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of using swear words on TTAC as a way to differentiate us from our more mainstream competitors. But the last time I deployed obscenity on this site in the name of art, the shit hit the fan. I received a barrage of emails suggesting that my salacious sailor-speak destroyed TTAC's credibility. Fair enough. So I want you to know that the F-bomb in the attached podcast was entirely inadvertent, although, I thought, editorially appropriate. You be the judge.

[Warning: the attached podcast contains intemperate language, including the "F-word"] 

When Frank and I heard that Mike Spinelli was disengaging from daily Jalopnik, we agreed: blogging ain't for sissies. To have a hope in Hell of attracting a regular audience, a blog must constantly and consistently feed the gaping maw that is the internet. As a former CNNer and borderline workaholic, I've got no problem facing an empty literary quiver every morning. I just bloody well get on with it. Frank's military discipline and undiagnosed personality disorders also qualify him for the task. But I understand that what we do requires a rare level of craft and commitment. If you think about it– and I have– every week, TTAC produces the equivalent amount of editorial as a monthly car magazine. And we're doing it for a fraction of the cost– and getting a fraction of the revenue, but that's a whole 'nother story. Anyway, all this is an excuse for why I didn't post this podcast yesterday; I simply ran out of time. Well, that and I had to drop my step-daughter off with her Dad in Boston and my brother-in-law wanted to see what The Ocean State has to offer in the way of nightlife (let's just say parking isn't a problem on Thursdays). Normally, I'd let the podcast slide and move on to the next one, but Justin had some real insights worth presenting. I think.

Underneath the latest GM Death Watch, a kvetch of commentators are hashing-out an old argument: why doesn't Ford bring its Euro-Focus to America? As KatiePuckrik points out, the current U.S. – Euro exchange rate makes any such proposition a potential financial catastrophe. A $40k Focus? No way José (i.e. Ford's Mexican workers can relax). On the other hand, why not? Let's say Ford imports their vastly superior European subcompact and sell it for $20k, losing $20k per car. And let's imagine they sell 100k of them. So they'd lose, what, two billion dollars? You could make a case that it would be worth $2b to put Ford back on the map as the American purveyor of quality small cars. The consistency clockers amongst you will note that I'm suggesting a flag-planting strategy that I've condemned in GM's case re: the Saturn Astra. The crucial difference is that the Focus is a quintessential Ford, while the Astra is an Opel modified for a brand whose amorphousness rivals that of Cnidaria Scyphozoa. In any case, someone in Detroit needs to make some Bold Moves. But I guess that'll have to wait 'til bankruptcy brings in some new players. Meanwhile, happy birthday to a man with genuine backbone: Justin Berkowitz. 

First Samir Syed reminded me that the New York Auto Show is a crashing– I mean, static bore. Then I looked out my garret window and saw the dirty snow covering the Lady and the Tramp Victorian landscape below my perch. And then blautens suggested we move the TTAC party to West Palm Beach to coincide with the Barret-Jackson auction. This idea has a couple of things going for it. First, auctions have a certain pleasing rhythm to them– unlike car shows which are Stendhal syndrome in-car-nate.  And second, it's warm in Florida. So what do you say folks? Spring break for TTAC? Meanwhile, I'm taking a few days off. We'll resume this adventure next Thursday or Friday. I thank you all for your continued patronage. Frank, myself and the TTAC team will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that we are worthy of your time. Merry Christmas!

It is with great trepidation that I raise this possibility. I remember my first foray into bridging the gap between Internet postings and FTF. I was writing "The Truth About Cars" column for Pistonheads. Flush from my proto-fame, I decided to attend their inaugural Pistonfest. Not only did I feel like a Jew at baptism, I was a Jew at a baptism. An American Jew at the birth of a particularly English enterprise characterized by an inordinate number of TVRs in the parking lot and a peculiar pride in a certain fondness for meat pie. These particular pistonheads had little time or interest in a writer whose keyboard spat vitriol like a milked puff adder, who couldn't even tell an Audi S4 Avant from an Audi S Avant (a mistake with an apparent half life of strontium). My wife and I retired to the world's nastiest hotel room where we watched Anneka Rice fly around the UK in a helicopter looking for a teapot named Ralph (look, don't ask). Anyway, any suggestions for a TTAC party venue? And if we do a TTAC get together, I warn you: I may give my name tag to one of my writers and look on from the sidelines. What was it my report card said? Doesn't play well with others. 

Hunter Thompson and Ernest Hemingway are my greatest literary influences. The former taught me that writing is important. The latter taught me to use as few words as humanly possible. I mean, to write concisely. But let's not forget technology. I would never have become a writer without the advent of word processing. As someone who suffers from OCD, pre-WP days were Hell. I'd write a paragraph, start editing it, realize I could hardly read what I'd written, copy it over to a new piece of paper, and then start a second paragraph. Then I'd edit the second paragraph, rip it off from the first, and re-write that paragraph. By the time I had three paragraphs on three separate pieces of paper, I had to copy all three on a new piece of paper. A single page of text could take me an hour. And it still wasn't done. The moment I started writing on an Apple II, I was reborn. I accepted highlight delete as my personal savior. I worshipped at the altar of cut and paste. But I never forgot that Thompson's best work was born of personal conviction, not literary perfection. And I never forgot that Hemingway's skills were the intellectual embodiment of his ill-fated quest for a clean, well-lighted place (which is, for me, TTAC). As we've just heard that the Detroit Auto Dealers Association's has reconsidered– they will grant TTAC two presses for the North American International Auto Show (out of four requested)– this thought occurs: while we're heavily out-gunned, I've been training for this all my life. As have our NAIAS writer/reporters, William C. Montgomery and Sajeev Mehta, and Managing Editor Frank Williams. Watch this space. 

you'll go broke. This was my father's admonition to my mother whenever she returned from the sales, triumphantly proclaiming she'd saved vast quantities of cash. He was right, of course, the spoilsport. Comparing what you would have have spent with what you actually spent might make you feel better, but the real comparison lies between what you spent and what you can afford. My father's words returned to me as I read  "Lutz: Astra a Huge Cost Saver" [Automotive News, sub]. In this erstwhile piece of automotive journalism, GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz claimed that importing the Opel Astra saved Saturn about $900m in development costs. Given that Lutz admits that GM spent $100m Americanizing the Astra (which didn't stretch to additional cupholders or a center armrest), does this mean it costs GM a billion dollars to develop a compact car? (Someone should tell Telsa.) Also, does the money that GM didn't spend on the Astra figure into the calculations that Maximum Bob uses to assert that the Belgium-built hatchback will generate a profit for his employer? We're talking about a product that will sticker stateside for $15,995 to $18,495 (absent discounts and incentives). Automotive News didn't say. Which is why TTAC has a place in this world. 

A friend of my father's taught me there are only three markets: price, value and quality. Price-driven consumers want the lowest possible purchase price, period. In car terms, they want to pay as little as possible for a vehicle. Everything else is secondary. If the car falls apart, if it loses them money in the long run, it doesn't matter. Manufacturers catering to these customers need not concern themselves with anything other than purchase price. At the other end, quality driven car customers want the best car, money no object. Manufacturers catering to quality-seekers have a [relatively] easy time. All they have to do is secure the world's best talent, give them the resources they need and not get in their way. Value-driven customers balance price against quality. Automobile-wise, they want as much of everything as they can get– economy, features, safety, ride, handling, resale, the whole schmeer– for as little money as possible. Manufacturers aiming for value-driven customers are fighting an endless war against everything: low-end carmakers aiming high, high-end carmakers aiming low, direct competitors, production costs, fashion trends, technological innovations, you name it, they've got to sort it. Like Icarus, the one thing they must never do is fly too high. Ford GT. Chevrolet Corvette. The new Saab Turbo X, Mitsubishi Evo and Toyota Land Cruiser. If a consumer says, wow, that's a lot of money for a —–, it's a clear sign that a value-oriented car brand is shooting itself in the foot. Short term, it can work. Long term, it's a big mistake.  

I'm a big fan of Autoblog. While there are some who might suggest that there's a good reason that re-writing (or republishing) press releases is a lost art form, and that a 53 minute podcast is the pistonhead version of waterboarding, I don't count myself amongst them. At least not until now. In any case, there's no denying that Autoblog is, as Justin says, the newspaper of record. Equally clearly, TTAC is a bunch of cybernetic muckrakers who abide by Oscar Wilde's dictum that if you can't say something nice about someone, come sit by me. While I don't begrudge Autoblog their success, there are times when I wish they'd grow a set of stones. But then I think, hang on, these are genuinely nice folks. Just because Autoblog doesn't share TTAC's jaundiced view of the auto industry doesn't make them bad people. Why be so [double] negative? Not all children are born with a desire to turn over rocks and unearth the life-and-death battles beneath. Why begrudge Autoblog their wide-eyed, unquestioning, puppy-dog enthusiasm? Because they get press credentials to the Detroit Auto Show and we don't? Well, yes, precisely. And while we await final word on that subject, rest assured we will not go quietly– or cheerfully– into that long good riddance. Or something like that.