OK, so the latest GM Fastlane PR exercise is actually entitled “What Is GM Doing With The Money?” Defensive much? Anyway, coming from Fastlane, there’s obviously no mention of giving Cadillacs away. Or throwing cash down the Delphi hole. Or paying Brazilian workers to sit on their hands. No, having received $13.4b, GM’s Steve Harris reveals that GM’s plan is to (wait for it) comply with the terms of the loan! In other words, “prove that we can repay the loan, achieve a positive net present value, and meet federal fuel efficiency and emission requirements, and manufacture advanced technology vehicles in the U.S. ” And with the federal money, GM is “making progress,” says Harris. How? By building concepts like the Cadillac Converj. And announcing vehicles like the 2010 Equinox (Saturn Vue cannibalism!) and the 2012 Spark and Orlando (which debut after the loan is due). Hallelujah!  And though Harris mentions the UAW Job Bank shutdown and “discussion” of plans to reduce dealers by 400 per year, his effort to “do a better job of communicating our successes (and) how we will be changing going forward” leaves out all the interesting bits.

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So it’s the dealers’ fault if Chrysler goes down in flames. Nothing to do with Daimler, who gutted the company like a fish. Or Cerberus, who wanted to gut the company like a fish, but found itself without a fish to gut. Or the company’s current management, who have lied, stonewalled, mislead, cut backroom deals with our elected representatives and generally manipulated honest, taxpaying Americans into supporting their stupid selfish schemes. As Chrysler’s backers, as their only means of survival, let’s think about this. ChryCo dealers are sitting on a 151-day supply of new vehicles (provided new car sales have stabilized). Even if Chrysler dealers didn’t order another car, truck or minivan, they’d have five months’ supply. There’s only one reason for them to take any more vehicles: to help justify the company’s desire to milk/bilk/fleece/con Uncle Sam for more “loans.” And still Cerberus point blank refuses to reveal to us, their supposed paymasters, who owns the company. No matter what you think of a ChryCo Chapter 7 or 11 or car dealers, this is an unseemly, disgusting clusterfuck. Look what they done to my Chrysler, ma.

Not buyers of Dodge Vipers per se. Some 127 of them found their way to a Dodge dealer in January, a 74 percent gain from last year’s total. Of course, that may have a little something to do with the fact that A) Dodge dealers are dealing as if their life depends on it (which it does) and B) the chances of buying a new Viper are decreasing by the minute. Especially since Chrysler revealed that it wants to sell the model as a brand to . . . someone. Oh how we laughed! Well, not Autoblog obviously, despite having reported that American tuner Saleen was a suitor (after having reported that Saleen’s busy going belly-up). I mention this not because I’ve been dying to put the boot in to Autoblog ever since my reader-inspired vow of fraternity, but because it raises the obvious question. Is Chrysler lying when it told the MSM that it has three companies interested in buying its Viper tooling and trademarks? (Setting aside the question of whether or not Cerberus has already mortgaged these “assets.”) Here’s AB’s take:

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Despite looking at a half-sized Q1 production plan, GM says it will bump truck production in the month of March. Production will be restored and escalated in March at GM’s Flint and Arlington truck plants, meaning there will be more Silverado, Sierra, Tahoe, Yukon and Escalade models. So, uh, why? “As far as our 2008 and 2009 mix goes, we’re significantly down on 2008 models, where most of our competitors have a lot of 2008 to get rid of. So anticipating a spring selling season, we’d like to increase our 2009 inventory,” GM’s Pete Ternes tells Automotive News [sub]. GM’s truck inventory has dropped noticeably, from a 122-day supply on December 1. But with 90 days of light truck supply, there’s still no real reason to increase production. Most industry-watchers consider a 60-day supply ideal. So what’s up?

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Following the Scottsdale auction season, dealers at the top end of the collector car market breathed a collective sigh of relief. As the the New York Times headline put it, the auction action proved that prices “Soften but Don’t Crash.” Maybe so, but there’s a hidden dynamic involved. “People tend to forget that the auction houses work just as hard at reducing the sellers’ price as they do on getting the buyers to pay it,” says Mike Nicholl, proprietor of Las Vegas’ Classic and Collectible Cars. In other words, the results simply reaffirm that car sellers’ willingness to take a hit currently matches buyers’ bargain-hunting budgets. The General Manager of Lamborghini Bergen County (NJ) agrees. He says pre-owned inventory levels are up, but the deals are still going down. “More people are hurting, looking to get out of their cars,” Alan Greenfield says. “But the lower prices are attracting new buyers.” Despite the market’s recent diet of anti-gravity pills, or at least away from the people dispensing same, there are signs that the high end market is headed for collapse.

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Holy lack of internal controls Batman! Automotive News [sub] reports the “now it can be told” story behind the story of a Minnesota mega-dealer’s collapse. Chrysler pulled the plug on Denny Hecker last fall, forcing Hecker to close six of his 16 dealerships and sell three others. Turns out Chrysler Financial lent the “flamboyant 56-year-old entrepreneur” $550 million. And get this: $50m of that went to Hecker personally. The information surfaced after Hecker sued Chrysler Financial for canceling his dealerships’ credit lines “without warning.” Chrysler countersued, revealing that it loved them some Hecker. Post-Cerberus, ChryCo threw money at—I mean, “invested”—in Hecker’s dealerships, a rental car agency (since bankrupt), real estate and “investment firms.” Ford was behind the curve on this one; they’ve sued Hecker for a relatively paltry $3.1m for missing vehicle and parts payments. As the Detroit-shaped crater grows larger, look for more “revelations” from American automakers’ go-go past. Others may have done the same thing, but they won’t be facing the same volume or genre of music if/when their dealers end up in bankruptcy court. Meanwhile, Denny better hope his tagline doesn’t apply to his forthcoming court battles: “Nobody walks!”

The tipster writes:

Press and Landry spent three days going to their six business areas for dealer conferences. They said, “If all you dealers do not order your Feb and March allocation, Chrysler will liquidate.” How’s that for a pep talk sales pitch? Not only that, but they also said there’s a 50/50 chance they will liquidate even if we do order. So, according to Press and Landry, the only chance we have to save our dealership is to overload our stock. An Iowa dealer asked, “What if we can’t afford 40 new units because our bank won’t floor them?” Press answered, “Then we’ll liquidate.” So they are selling fear to their dealers. Go buy our shit NOW or you won’t have a dealership. The Fiat deal was just to be able to export Dodge trucks to Europe, that’s the nuts and bolts on that “merger of equals.” Chrysler’s suits also described the talks with GM: “We went on a date with Nissan, had sex, and they got some trucks we got some cars. Then it was 2AM, we were drunk and started talking romantically with our cousins at GM, we realized that our children would have crooked teeth.” God I love this business.

Rumors of GM channel-stuffing became reality when we heard that the General was forcing dealers to take on unwanted inventory to qualify for incentive cash. And while the smaller dealers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, big boys like AutoNation at least have enough clout to make a choice. And CNN reports that AutoNation has told GM where it can stick its overstock. GM and Chrysler “have implemented wholesale incentive programs where they basically say to get the incentives for the inventory you want, you have to buy more inventory,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said Thursday with his trademark subtlety. “The channel is full, and they are trying to stuff more in. I think this is the wrong thing to do. We are not playing that game.” Meanwhile, GM and Chrysler are exhorting their dealers to take more unwanted inventory. While on a sales drum-up dealership tour last week, Chrysler Vice Chairman Jim Press said the automaker needs dealers to begin ordering vehicles because the “downside could be a lot worse” if orders don’t increase. For the OEMs, anyway. AutoNation’s fourth quarter sales dropped 34 percent, although $200 million in cuts and $750 million in debt paydown last year have helped keep the retailer afloat. “We do believe that there’s the possibility of an improvement in March if credit really begins to thaw, but we are taking a wait-and-see attitude,” Jackson said. “We want to see it before we’ll stop at that level.”

• We expect the annualized light vehicle selling rate (SAAR) to run in a range of 10.0 – 10.3 million units in January, the midpoint of which would be about 34% below the year-ago pace of 15.4 million, and a little softer than last month’s pace of 10.3 million.

• Unit volume (selling day adjusted) should be down in a range of 35% – 37% versus January 2008, compared to a decline of about 35% in 4Q08. The seasonal factors are favorable this month, which explains how unit volume could be down more than the annualized selling rate.

• The industry faces significant sequential and year-over-year sales headwinds from lower daily rental deliveries in January. Demand from rental car companies is weak; but the decline in deliveries will be exacerbated by severe production declines in January as daily rent vehicles typically turn quickly from production to delivery.

• By maker, we see GM sales down in a range of 40% – 42% year-to-year, with market share dipping to around 22% or less, compared to share of 24.4% in December, and versus 23.9% in the year-ago month. We see the sequential decline in share as partly driven by fewer daily rent deliveries.

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A great selection here.

As America’s car dealers gather in N’orlins– an ironic enough venue given that some 80 percent of U.S. car loans are “under water”– the talk of the town is culling. Where once there were too many domestic car dealers, now there are too many car dealers full stop. Now you might think that a process of natural selection would have untied the Oldsmobile-shaped Gordian knot (i.e. 50 states’ worth of franchise laws say they can’t simply pull the plug and be done with it). Nope. In a story that somehow got culled from The Wall Street Journal website, Sharon Terlep provides a reality check. “NADA in December predicted about 900 dealerships — including small numbers of foreign-based auto makers — would go out of business in 2008. But Detroit’s auto makers alone lost more than that, company executives said this weekend. About 300 Ford dealers closed last year, while 401 GM dealers and 287 Chrysler dealers went out of business. Consulting firm Grant Thornton estimates about 2,500 of the nation’s 25,000 new vehicle dealerships will close in 2009. However, 5,000 would need to close to have a healthy level for this year’s anticipated level of auto sales, the firm said this week.”

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At the moment, Chrysler reimburses a dealer for the cost of topping-up the gas tank on a car the dealer sells to a customer. No mas. That little tidbit was buried deep in the Detroit News story about Chrysler’s incipient “traveling roadshow”– a corporate effort to “convince” dealers to order more cars despite the fact that no one’s buying them and it costs money for the dealers to have vehicles sitting on their lots. We also learn that Chrysler has frozen the labor rate for warranty work, scheduled to rise in ’09. “‘I think they understand the place we are in and understand the need for all parties to put some skin in the game,’ said [former Toyota Prez and current Chrysler Co-Prez Jim] Press, who received a standing ovation during the meeting with about 400 dealers.” Somehow I don’t think it was that particular statement that earned Mr. Press the standing O. Perhaps it was his pledge to work for $1 until Chrysler paid back its four soon-to-be seven billion dollar loan. Just kidding. Unfortunately. Anyway, Chrysler’s set a target for channel stuffing– I mean, dealer orders…

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When it comes to moving the metal, Toyota doesn’t fool around. OK, they did do those stupid Tundra truck tricks. But how do you think a man like Mr. Toyonda got to be a man like Mr. Toyonda? By building on the brand’s rep for reliability. To that end, to expand the market for Priora and other hybrid models, Toyota’s adding “Toyota Certfied Used Hybrids” (TCUH) to their Toyota Certified Vehicles (TCUV) program. “Customers benefit from additional inspection and warranty coverage on Toyota hybrids within the program. Each vehicle comes with the three-month/3,000-mile comprehensive warranty, seven-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty and roadside assistance plan offered on traditional TCUV models.” The program also “brings added awareness to a pre-existing eight-year/100,000-mile factory hybrid battery warranty.” In other words, same coverage, more rappers. The TCUH pre-certfication process includes 14 additional hybrid-related inspection points, including the hybrid transaxle, control modules and battery. Existing owners should benefit from improved residuals. Now, if Lexus will do the same for the LS600hL…

As Robert wrote earlier, GM is piling on the incentives to move metal in a January market that seems to be moving like molasses. And though GM and its finance units are benefiting from the largess of the federal bailout bonanza, their decision to delay incentive payments in December is putting the squeeze on its dealer network. Especially as they’re forcing dealers to buy more inventory in order to qualify for incentive cash. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM’s $4b loan “provided a short-term relief,” but  “it didn’t fix the issue,” according to GM’s Mark LaNeve. La Neve tells AN that he isn’t planning on altering the incentive schedule. So, although payments have resumed, they are now two weeks behind schedule. And he doesn’t know when they’ll return to the normal schedule; it all depends on when tranche deux of the federal sugar shows up. Meanwhile…

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Ex-Toyota and current Ford marketing maven Jim Farley tells Automotive News [AN, sub] that The Blue Oval Boyz “expect” to stabilize their U.S. market share– after a 13-year decline. And if that’s not stretching the boundaries of credibility (your call), Jimbo reckons the new Lincoln MKT and, what was it again? MKS “could” increase the luxury brand’s slice of the American pie. “We think we have a really good chance this year. We don’t know what the luxury market is going to look like, but the one thing we’re really focused on is making sure that people see our products as aspirational and they pay the price.” Although Farley fails to provide a plan to achieve this goal, AN reckons it could may maybe perhaps happen. “Lincoln could gain share even as the brand’s total sales fall below 100,000 for the first time since 1982. Lincoln finished 2008 with sales of 107,295, its lowest total since 1983. With forecasts for lower industry sales in 2009, executives acknowledged that new-vehicle entries may not be enough to keep Lincoln sales in six figures.”