Highly leveraged toll road firms continue to post multi-million dollar losses as drivers shun expensive routes during the economic downturn. This week, two Australian firms with significant US holding reported overall negative results for the year ended June 30, 2009. Transurban, which owns Pocahontas Parkway in Richmond and is building High Occupancy Toll lanes on the Capital Beltway in Virginia, lost A$16.1 million. Macquarie, which owns the Indiana Toll Road, the Dulles Greenway in Virginia and the Skyway in Chicago, Illinois, lost $1.7 billion.

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Post-clunker mortem, CNNMoney says 700,000 clunker-traders “probably got a good deal.” The rest, not so much. “If you bought a car without a clunker in the last month, you’ve overpaid.” Ya think? “During the weeks the Clunkers program was in effect, buyers of the Toyota Corolla paid 29% closer to the full sticker price than before the program started, according to data from Edmunds.com. Prices were also higher on other popular models. Ford Escape prices were 13% closer to full sticker, and Ford Focus prices were 12% closer . . . on a dollar-for-dollar basis, car buyers were getting less car for their money after negotiating the deal.” And now?

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In an interview with Bloomberg, Ford’s European CEO, John Fleming, said that The Blue Oval Boyz aim to sell their Volvo-shaped money pit by the end of this year. More importantly, they have no intentions in keeping any remaining stake in their money-losing Swedish subdivision: “it has not even been considered.” Fleming also confirmed that Ford’s negotiating with “a number of parties” about the sale. Need they mention any names? Ford is looking for $2 billion for the moribund brand—less then a third of what The Glass House Gang paid for Volvo way back in 1999. Not to mention billions more spent in a hugely unsuccessful attempt to take the brand up market. “It’s not the global economic downfall that has sparked the decision to sell Volvo,” Fleming said, without dwelling on Ford’s patently inglorious management. “We’ve been in a process of separating Volvo and Ford for a year already.”

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The largest provider of red light camera and speed camera services in the US admitted yesterday that public opposition has begun to affect the bottom line. In an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Melbourne-based Redflex Traffic Systems reported a nine percent drop in net profit for the year ended June 30, 2009. This has come about in part as motorists increasingly refuse to pay automated fines and use public pressure to force cities to eliminate photo enforcement programs. “We have been adversely affected by reduced collection rates on some of our US contracts, write-downs on several contracts that have not been renewed, extended start-up difficulties with a major state-wide speed contract in Arizona and costs in dealing with litigation and legislative issues,” a Redflex statement explained. “These and other factors have affected profitability for the year.”

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When Russian automaker GAZ teamed-up with Canada’s Magna Corporation to make a play for GM’s Opel division, TTAC’s Best and Brightest saw the danger: the Russians could use GM’s global small and midsize platform to build cars to compete with Chevy in the Motherland. “Ви́лами на воде́ пи́сано!” they proclaimed. True dat; the deal was written with a pitchfork on a flowing water. Wabusinessnews.com reports that the German government snookered GM; the feds will only provide funding for Opel if Magna is the preferred bidder (over remaining rival RHJ International SA). So why didn’t GM bite the proverbial пуля?

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The AP [via Google] reports that 13.9m shares of Old GM were traded last Thursday alone, raising the obvious question: why? “There are people who think they are buying the new General Motors. Stop. You’re not. You’re buying the detritus,” says Harlan Platt, a finance professor at Northeastern. And Old GM’s spokesfolks agree. “We’re not in any way promoting the trading of it,” says Old GM spokesman Tim Yost. “We have no legal right to stop the trading. That’s well beyond the purview of any given company.” And though some are trading Old GM for short-term profits, a number of traders seem to be buying Old GM stock out of ignorance or unfounded optimism. One Detroit-area investment advisor explains: “the thing about people in the Detroit area is we’re homers,” he said. “We want to root for the home team. A lot of times people will do that, more with their heart than with their head.” But does Detroit’s hometown loyalty extend far enough to motivate people to buy stock in a liquidating company?

Excited about the new Saab 9-5? Saab has put up a count-down timer on their homepage, for those in need to see exactly how far away the official unveil will happen. Meanwhile, the deal is still, as I wrote earlier, uncertain to say the least.

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Ford has roughly $18 billion in the bank. The company’s CEO has slowed The Blue Oval’s cash burn to about a billion a month. If you take away $10 billion—the amount of float needed to keep the lights on—Crazy Henry’s mob has eight months to stop the arterial spray of red ink before contemplating C11 (or a “proper” bailout). Volvo’s sale looks like it will give them another month (about a billion). Although Ford tapped the credit markets for $1.6 billion in May, another offer may not be greeted with open arms. So let’s call Ford’s drop-deadline a year, maybe 18 months. Oh, did I mention a $5.9 billion dollar Department of Energy “retooling loan?” That’s worth another six months on our timeline. But that’s different. “Ford is the only one of the Big Three U.S. automakers that hasn’t taken government bailout money or declared bankruptcy,” NPR declares, disingenuously. “Ford is still losing $1 billion per month, but it has money in the bank and hopes to be making money by the year 2011.” The media meme in a nutshell. In an interview with publicly-funded radio, Ford’s CEO connected the dots between perceived purity and customer conquest, and hinted that yes, they did stick their noses in the taxpayer trough.

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News is flashing across The Swedish Wire that GM and Koenigsegg have reached a final agreement on the future of the Saab brand. A share transfer agreement has been signed for an undisclosed sum and equally undisclosed technology and service understandings. Koenigsegg and its consortium partners are still waiting on $593 million worth of financing from the European Investment Bank. More details as they become available.

A group calling itself Consortium Jacob AB is making a last-minute play to keep the Volvo brand out of Chinese hands. The alt. Geely newbies consist mainly of Swedish owners, fronted by former Volvo CEO Roger Holtback. Despite the late entry into the auction, Ford has promised to treat the all [mostly?] Swedish bid seriously. The Swedish government’s “manager for affairs of the automotive industry” at the Industry Dept., Jöran Hägglund, gave the group the green light. Allegedly, Volvo’s union of engineers got the ball rolling. So, now, show me the money . . .

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In an interview to Just Auto [sub], Swedish Industry Dept.’s state secretary Jöran Hägglund declared that Volvo will have new owners by the beginning of that most magical of years, 2010. “Ford has a lower pace than GM-Saab, but we believe a deal should be closed come this year’s ending.” says Hägglund. Last week ago, Swedish newspaper Industry Daily reported that Volvo will be parted-out to Chinese automaker Geely, Ford (maintaining a minority stake to protect access to safety technology and prevent China syndrome) and a mystery Swedish investor. Quoting “inside sources,” Auto Motor & Sport identifies Volvo AB as the Swedish part of the proposal. Volvo AB is the divested truck/buses etc. division of “old Volvo;” they’re supposedly buying a piece of ye olde mothership to control the carmaker’s Swedish genes. Profits? Jovisst. Industry Daily’s source says Ford will put the devil in the details by the end of August. According to AM&S’s information, this is a done deal.

The New York Times reports that GM will offer 2.5 billion shares of common stock in July 2010, just a year after emerging from government-backed bankruptcy. The news comes from regulatory filings in which GM says it will also begin sharing financial data after the third quarter. The Wall Street Journal voices serious doubts as to whether GM is ready for such an offering, pointing to its weak showing in the current cash-for-clunkers bonanza, falling sales, and product weakness. Meanwhile, PTFOA chair Ron Bloom tells the NYT that a Chrysler IPO is further off. “I don’t think Chrysler’s IPO is a 2010 event,” Mr. Bloom said at the Center For Automotive Research’s conference in Traverse City. “I think it’s a little further off. But again, that will be the board’s judgment.”

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Wall Street Journal reports that GM will be allowed to carry-forward $16 billion in net losses from “Old GM,” creating a massive tax shelter. Normally this isn’t allowed to happen as the tax code has specific provisions to prevent firms from buying other firms strictly for their tax losses. Under normal conditions, tax losses die with the old firm when it completes its bankruptcy proceedings. Not so with GM, which sought preservation of tax losses as part and parcel of its 363 sale. “The result seems to retain the cake while eating it,” says Duke law professor Jeffrey Coyne. “They get to sell quickly and without the many procedural protections because this is not a plan. They get to keep the [net operating losses] using a provision that requires the transfer to happen as part of a plan.” And yet another hidden bailout sneaks through, unlikely to ever appear in a final accounting of the cost of rescuing GM.

The WSJ [sub] reports that $3.5 billion of GMAC’s nearly $4 billion in second quarter losses are the result of one-time reincorporation costs, however a significant government investment also helped hide the losses. And is leading GMAC towards full-on nationalization. Per the WSJ‘s report:

The Treasury Department said in May it would swap $884 million of its existing $5 billion preferred-stock investment for common stock, giving the U.S. government a 35.4% equity stake in the lender. This stake could increase to more than 50% if GMAC, amid potential mounting losses and meager capital levels, converted the government’s investments into common equity.

The loss also comes despite GMAC’s floating of $3.5 billion in bonds backed by the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. “As long as they can keep the federal government’s support in place, they’ll be in fine shape,” one bond-rater tells Bloomberg. “They’re a ward of the state.”

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Ford applied for $11 billion dollars from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program (ATVMP). It received $5.9 billion, payable over 25 years. They are applying for another $5.1 billion. The mainstream media meme—that The Blue Oval Boyz are “pure” capitalists untainted by the stink of federal handouts—is bunk. Lest we forget, the DOE loans were the original bailout: a thinly disguised attempt to channel funds to the domestics. The money pays for retooling that the recipients would otherwise have to fund—freeing those funds for other purposes. Keep the lights on kinda stuff. When the “viability” requirement made the DOE loan a moot point for Chrysler and GM, THEN they headed off for “bridge loans.” Which became an investment in shares or, in Chrysler’s case, a partial write-off. Oops! Question: does anyone believe the DOE loans will help ensure that Americans drive more fuel-efficient vehicles? Anyway, Ford is on the take. Period.