Everyone’s favorite feel-good broadsheet, SubPrime Auto Finance News, reports that 13 members of congress have written a letter to Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, requesting another raid on TALF, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. The congressional bagmen “applaud the joint efforts of the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of Treasury to promote liquidity in consumer loan markets through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility.” Because making $200B available was an interesting start. “However,” continue the servants of the public trust, “we are concerned that the program may not sufficiently address the problems facing the domestic automobile industry.” Oh dear.

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The BBC reports that GM’s European division Opel has learned a valuable lesson from the German government. Insolvency law was “not set up for the destruction but for the preservation of economic assets,” German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said after meeting with Opel leaders. “The public perception is that insolvency is associated with going bust or bankruptcy, but that is wrong. We must grasp that to survive such a crisis, modern insolvency rules are a better solution than the state taking a stake.” Hint, freaking, hint. And just why is the German government so jazzed about seeing Opel restructure on its own? Accoding to the Beeb, “media reports suggest that the German government was angry that the bail-out proposal—which asked for 3.3B euros ($4.16B)—was simply a glossy 217-page brochure which read like an advertisement, rather than presenting any viable business plan.” Sound familiar? Apparently German members of parliament were also shocked to learn that Opel doesn’t own its factories (GM does) or intellectual property. As in GM has hocked all of its Opel IP to the US government as security for its own bailout. Classy. Now, as the worm turns, even the Canadians are saying they don’t want to go through with the bailout if it’s a “waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Dow Jones [via CNN Money] reports that FoMoCo and Ford Credit are prepared to drop precious cash to coax debt holders into converting their notes into Ford stock. Gory details of the deal are below the fold, but numerous sources are confirming that this debt restructuring is a condition for VEBA to accept company stock per its recent agreement. Plus it’s kind of an awesome PR move, in an “eat the weakest first” way. Ford is out doing all the things GM and Chrysler should have done: going to the mats with the UAW and restructuring long-term debt. The two firms actually receiving bailout money dither it away while playing catchup. Of course this doesn’t mean Ford is out of the woods yet, as $10.4B is less than half of Ford’s $25.8B pile o‘ debt. Plus, nobody has actually accepted the offer yet either.

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Without billions of bailout bucks filling the supposedly-Swedish brand’s corporate coffers, in the middle of a massive market correction, Saab’s a liability looking for one of those “born every minute” types. To that end, Saab’s CEO is doing a very bad job of convincing anyone that anyone wants to take the keys to Trollhättan from GM’s cold, dead hands. “There are about five [buyers] we want to talk to,” Managing Director Jan-Åke Jonsson Automotive News Europe. Huh? Would that be four? Or six? “There are a couple more we are also looking into.” Wait, that’s what? Something between six and eight? Wow! They love Saab! They really love Saab! Note to self: play poker with this guy as soon as possible. And when will Jonsson reveal his cards? “We should see which candidates are serious in the next week and a half.” Automotive News [sub] reveals the reason for all the Saab, lies and bankruptcy talk. “Sweden’s government has offered to consider loan guarantees for Saab if the brand can find a new owner to underwrite its business plan.” Sign here, we get the money, you get money. Sign me up!

Last October, I wrote a series of articles comparing economical family sedans from the Land of the Rising Sun. Numerous readers challenged me to perform a similar comparison of similar cars from American manufacturers. Define “American.” [ED: just step back from the can of worms and walk away.] This time ’round, I’ve tested the Ford Fusion S, Chevrolet Malibu LS, and Chrysler Sebring LX with automatic transmissions and common, entry level features. While I anguished to find positive or negative attributes that would distinguish one Japanese car from another, evaluating the relative virtue of the American’s was a slam dunk piece of cake. In distant third place: the Chrysler Sebring LX.

This morning’s Financial Times reports that the Kuwaiti-based investment fund that owns former Ford subsidiary and British exoticar manufacturer Aston Martin wants out. After two years at the helm, with the luxury car market disappearing down the worldwide financial rathole, they’re “considering” offering majority interest to whoever’s got the cash to buy it. “The investment group has received several expressions of interest in a stake in Aston Martin as a part of the company’s plans to restructure its debt, according to people close to the situation.” Yeah, I’m interested too; does that count? Sorry. Too negative. Right. Anyway, how’s this for vague?

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Toyota Financial Services has requested a $2B loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, a government-backed lending institution. TFS says it needs the money to cover the higher cost of borrowing in the US. According to Automotive News [sub], “Toyota may be the first of a string of Japanese companies with high credit ratings to turn to state-backed loans prior to the closing of books for the business year at the end of March.” Toyota’s “implied” credit rating based on credit-default swaps is considerably lower than its current Moody’s rating, as fears grow about liquidity problems across the automotive industry. The money will come from a $5B fund established by the Japanese government to provide liquidity for firms which operate abroad. These funds are said to come from Japan’s $1T+ in foreign cash reserves, the world’s second-largest foreign currency reserves after China. Nissan and Mitsubishi have also said they will apply for loans from this fund.

Covering Detroit’s massive health care liabilities is perhaps the single greatest challenge facing those working on the auto industry bailout, reports the Washington Post. Detroit retirees in particular represent a huge commitment, as current health care benefits include dental, vision and prescription drug benefits for the low price of $11 per month. And as the automakers burn through their cash, they must come up with some way of maintaining or cutting benefits in the face of rising health care costs. GM currently carries $20B in health care obligations, over ten times its market capitalization. Chrysler owes $10B and Ford owes $3.2B of its total $13.2B VEBA commitment this year alone. With bailout plans calling for automakers to inject equity rather than tight cash into the VEBA system, a number of unintended consequences are being forecast.

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That ain’t me talkin’ (no, no, no, it ain’t me, babe). The headline comes straight to you from CNNMoney, with a little help from Chris Isidore—a reporter who literally laughed down the phone a year or so ago when I suggested GM would go Tango Uniform. So, from what industry could Mr. Isidore find anyone with a shred of credibility—without a bust of Lenin on their desk—who’d argue to nationalize GM (other than the people who’ve already done it)? Rail!

Larry Kaufman, a former rail executive and consultant, argued in a railroad industry newsletter Monday that the U.S. Railway Association, the special government agency set up in 1974 to deal with bankrupt railroads, is a good model for saving the U.S. auto industry…

Kaufman suggested that a special government agency would help the companies continue to sell cars while they reorganize because it would assure consumers that the companies and their warranties were not about to disappear.

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This morning’s Automotive News [sub] carries a highly critical report on Toyota’s reaction to the worldwide automotive meltdown. The bottom line: the Japanese automaker is too damn slow and overly cautious. “Toyota Motor Corp. is famed for its advance planning, obsessive attention to ‘what if’ scenarios and continuous improvement,” Hans Greimel writes. “Yet with the market collapsing, the world’s top automaker is stunned to a near standstill by an astonishing plunge from record profits to record losses in 12 short months.” That’s quite a statement, especially as it seems to be based on a single analyst’s analysis. Greimel trots out JPMorgan’s Takaki Nakanishi, who complains that there’s “nothing remotely innovative” in ToMoCo’s recent plans to cut $5.11 billion in fixed costs by the end of the year. What, no feng shui?

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I could write a book about Detroit’s decline. It’s a complex story of greed, arrogance, intransigence, incompetence, ignorance and more greed. Hopefully, a book reviewer wouldn’t boil it down to “Detroit built gas guzzlers when everyone wanted alternative energy cars.” That’s a misleading simplification that takes us to the wrong morality play: Motown as mustache twirling planet killer faces well-deserved comeuppance at the hands of kindler, gentler foreign car companies. In fact, Detroit built plenty of higher mileage vehicles (just not many good ones) and spent billions (many of them yours) exploring alt-power vehicles. Their product lineup conformed to all US fuel economy legislation (unlike several fine-paying foreign manufacturers). In terms of self-destruction: production efficiency, labor relations, reliability and branding are far more significant. But the big, stupid, insensitive greedy planet-killer meme is more politically effective. Just ask the president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel . . .

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Sunday? Sunday! That’s the day The Detroit Free Press chose to tell the world that GM’s recent accounts contain a time bomb: the revelation that the company raided—sorry, “borrowed from”—its employee pension fund to buy out United Auto Workers employees and pay into their health care fund. Even though we’ve become used to gigantic numbers, the sums involved are staggering. “Details are emerging about how General Motors Corp.’s U.S. pension funds went from a $20-billion surplus at the end of 2007 to a $12.4-billion deficit 12 months later.” I make that a $32.4-billion swing. It’s also approximately $11.4 billion more than GM’s CFO estimated its pension deficit, as declared in The General’s December pre-bailout report.

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Holy trough snuffling, Batman! That’s one piggishly large salary. Not in absolute terms. In absolute terms it’s a pittance. Lest we forget, try as we might, Tom Cruise scored $20m for Eyes Wide Shut. And that was back in ’99. And you could make a case that that GMAC CEO Alvaro de Molina’s ’08 compensation package was money well spent. After all, Big Al Jr. was at the sub-prime specialist’s helm when it scored $6 billion from Uncle Sam’s magical bottomless pocketbook AND de Molina got the Fed to throw out the rule book and make GMAC a bank instead of forcing it to file for bankruptcy as they’d promised. Reuters! Break it down!

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Former Ford CEO Jac Nasser’s abrasive public persona during the Firestone tire debacle makes him the most memorable chapter in the Ford Explorer story. Like many famous Blue Oval products, the bean-counted SUV that rode on “traction B, temperature C”-rated donuts suffered a never-ending assault from the Big Chief himself. And now that the Explorer is gasping for breath, waiting for a Flex-based CUV to snatch its storied past, its nice to know the original never forgot its mission.

What do you do when you’re out of time? Get rid of all your clocks! GM has already taken the humiliating measure of cutting clock maintenance from the RenCen budget, and Chrysler is now following suit. William Wolf of Chrysler Paint, Pilot and Facility Operations notes over at Chrysler Blog that “every little bit helps.” But Wolf wasn’t satisfied with the mere $10K in savings that cutting clocks yielded. Eliminating rooftop parking to save plowing costs will save over $300K, while halving the number of fluorescent bulbs at the Auburn Hills Chrysler Technical Center will yield $400K. And despite the bitter Michigan winter, Chrysler has dropped the temperature at the CTC by four degrees, saving $70K annually. And yet, somehow, not everyone’s happy.

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