Automotive News [sub] reports that Chrysler’s unsecured creditors have requested permission to sue Daimler for gutting Chrysler’s “most valuable assets” during its sale of the company. The request alleges that “unidentified assets” were lost in Daimler’s 2007 sale of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management, for which creditors are seeking $3 billion in compensation. If granted, the damages would eclipse the $2 billion granted to secured debtors during Chrysler’s bankruptcy sale. “This is completely without merit and we intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” say Daimler spokespeople, and we can’t help but feel that they have a point. What mythical assets were present for Daimler to squirrel away by the time they sold to Cerberus? Did Daimler mismanage Chrysler? Sure. Did they loot assets? For that to happen, there would have to have been valuable assets in place to begin with. Best of luck with that, Chrysler creditors.

As evolutionary as the changes to Toyota’s third-generation Prius may seem on the surface, beneath the familiar sheetmetal lurks enough new technology to justify over 1,000 new patents. The Wall Street Journal reports that through three generations of the Prius, Toyota has generated over 2,000 patents on hybrid technology, half stemming from the latest generation alone. Toyota’s hybrid patent filing nearly doubles the number filed by Honda, its closest hybrid competitor. And the WSJ casts this “thicket of patents” as Toyota tightening its stranglehold on the hybrid market.

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There’s a nasty, drag-out fight going on between current Tesla Chairman and CEO Elon Musk and his predecessor, Martin Eberhard, over who deserves credit for birthing the electric roadster. Musk has posted a lengthy defense of his position at the Tesla Motors blog, and according to him, Eberhard is the bad guy. Lots of e-mails attached. Ugly stuff.

According to SEMA, legislation has been introduced in the Oregon House of Representatives at the request of Governor Ted Kulongoski to ban aftermarket parts if alternatives are available that “decrease greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.” In reality, Oregon H.B. 2186 (pdf) merely states that the “Environmental Quality Commission may adopt by rule the following to help this state achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.” The specific option that SEMA is steamed about states that “Restrictions and prohibitions on the sale and distribution of after-market motor vehicle parts, including but not limited to tires, if alternatives are available that decrease greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles,” may be enacted.

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Now that President Barack Obama has decided to let California raise America’s fleet-wide fuel economy regs to something like a 42mpg average, the automakers are howling with righteous idignation. Not. How could they? Not only would that be impolite to the incoming adminstration, environmentalists, the Democratic party and mother Earth, but GM and Chrysler are now more-or-less owned by the same federal government that just told CA to go for it. The New York Times dusted off ye olde “greedy American automakers are dragging their heels over higher mpg vehicles” template, but really, their heart just isn’t in it. But you’ve gotta give the Gray Lady credit for digging up a least one hysterical Neanderthal. Yes, it’s our old pal David E. Cole, whose Center for Automotive Research (CAR, geddit?) created the widely-quoted and entirely specious study that justified the Motown bailout buffet in the first place (if they go down, 42b workers will hit the soup lines). You can guess what David said, but it’s still fun to read. And wait ’til you don’t hear what Detroit doesn’t say…

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Or so argues a study from Science Daily (via The National Motorists Association). Thomas Garrett, assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Gary Wagner from the University of Arkansas Little Rock, looked at revenue and traffic citation data from 96 North Carolina counties collected from 1990 to 2003.. Their conclusion is that as the economy weakens, local governments seek to replace lost tax revenue with increased traffic tickets. “There is ample anecdotal evidence that local governments use traffic tickets as a means of generating revenue,” wright Garrett and Wagner. “Our paper provides the first empirical evidence to support this view.” How? According to the data, “a one percentage point decrease in last year’s local government revenue results in roughly a 0.32 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets in the following year.” Though they admit that the numbers seem small, Garrett and Wagner call them “statistically significant,” noting that they controlled for demographic and economic differences in the sample. The study will be published in the Journal Of Law And Economics, and will shock readers who haven’t read TTAC’s coverage of the ongoing speed camera nightmare.

Yesterday, we reported that the European Commission threatened to drag Germany in front of the European High Court again– if Germany dares to pass a revamped Volkswagen Gesetz (VW Law.) Yesterday evening, the German parliament flipped a whole aviary worth of birds in the direction of Brussels, and passed the face-lifted law with an overwhelming majority. Result for the time being: VeeDub’s soon majority-owner Porsche will have to kowtow to the state of Lower Saxony, owner of a paltry 20.1 percent of the shares. Porsche must ask for their OK on major issues. On one issue, Porsche doesn’t even need to ask. Lower Saxony will say “nein, nein, nein” to Porsche booking VW’s profits as theirs. Und now European Trade Commissar Charlie McCreevy will file papers “before Christmas,” and the contemptuous Bundesrepublik Deutschland will face the judges of the European High Court. Again. The court will rule (anybody guess how?) Germany will have to implement the wishes of the court again (anybody guess whether they will?) The never-ending saga continues. In the meantime…

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Last year, Premier Jean Charest’s fellow Québécois faced the worst winter the Province had seen in over five decades. So he directed his government to make winter radial tires mandatory. From December 15 until March 15, snow shoes for you, eh? Two weeks ago, I spoke to a mechanic in Nashua, New Hampshire who lamented a shortage of winter tires. New Hampshire being almost Canada, I should have twigged. Then, two days ago, a Montreal tire shop was burned to the ground in what the Montreal Gazette called a “supicious tire fire.” Still didn’t click. Finally, the Canadian press put two and two together for me, declaring that Quebec’s winter tire law is causing a shortage and, c’est vrai, a tire war in the province. This being the first year such a law has been in place for any Canadian province, the demand for tires in Quebec has inevitably led to shortages in neighboring provinces and bordering U.S. states. In case anyone in the Northeast needs winter tires for a Ford Mustang, I happen to have a pair that I’d part with for, say, $20b dollars. U.S.

A few days ago, Porsche’s Wendelin Wiedeking sent a letter to Germany’s parliamentarians, urging them to say “Nein” to Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to Braunschweiger Zeitung [via Automobilwoche sub], Wendy was not what you’d call enamored with a new version of the “Volkswagen Gesetz” (VW law). That’s the legal power bestowed upon The State of Lower Saxony to control VeeDub— despite the State’s [now] relatively measley 20.1 percent holding. Last year, the European Court struck down the law– in the interest of free trade, Mutter and Apfelkuchen. The ruling opened the door for Porsche to ride to the rescue of VW, supposedly shielding VW from gang-rape at the hands of Kirk Kerkorian, Cerberus and a RICO of takeover-artists. And yet Berlin has no plans at all to scuttle the Volkswagen Gesetz. Porsche can own as much of VW as they want. With the law on the books, Porsche can’t fight the power from Hannover or Berlin.

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In a country of a billion souls, where billionaires waft in their Quattroportes alongside whole families in Chang’an Altos, justice is not easy to come by. The absolute power of China’s central government is two-sided sword: capable of rapidly enacting transformative change, but also equally capable of drawing the instant ire of hundreds of millions. Thus, to deal with a boom in car ownership and its attendant congestion issues, Beijing has turned to the only fair method of government to force drivers from the road: a lottery. Yesterday, Beijing’s government announced that cars with license plates ending in 1 or 6 would be banned from the road for a day. And just like that a fifth of Beijing’s 3.5m (and counting) cars were off the road. Autocar reports that tomorrow numbers 2 and 7 are next.

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Translation: NHTS = National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They’re the federal agency in charge of setting and enforcing federal fuel economy regulations, amongst other things, as directed by the U.S. Congress. CAFE = Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Those are the fuel economy rules which dictate the combined (i.e. overall) fuel economy of a car manufacturer’s entire U.S. product line. 4.5% p.a. = the annual overall efficiency increase that the NHTSA will require from manufacturers selling cars in the United States. 2020 = the year during which people stop giving a shit about fuel economy because everyone’s driving plug-in electric hydrogen fuel cell CNG diesel hybrid vehicles. 39.4mpg = the completely unrealistic end-point when you do the math at 4.5 percent per year. And get this my beleaguered auto-building brethren: it’s actually a higher number than that stipulated by Congress. Equally important, we still don’t know how the standard will be calculated. Auto industry reaction after you go ahead and jump.

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If there’s a product recall that illustrates a particularly important point– like the GM hot fluid windshield wiper story (I’m getting to it)– TTAC will cover it.  Otherwise, no; if we didn’t cover all recalls, it would look like we were picking-on a particular manufacturer– and we can’t have that now can we? But this recall story from mylemon.com works for me because, well, it’s someone else’s blog. AND it fits into a genre that normally annoys the pee out of me, that helps lift TTAC’s numbers every year (i.e. our forthcoming Ten Worst awards). AND it makes me wonder how a lawyer who runs a site called mylemon.com can drive anything other than a lemon. AND the story lets me play around with this gallery thing, which is also annoying the pee out of me right now. So, here are David J. Gorberg & Associates’ rogue’s gallery, for which the Lord should make him truly grateful.

A senior Edmonton Canada police officer was back in court yesterday, as trial court proceedings began to determine whether his authorship of a fraudulent memo on behalf of a photo radar firm constituted a crime. Detective Thomas Bell, 50, is one of several Edmonton Police Service officers who accepted lavish gifts and other benefits between 1998 and 2004 from Affiliated Computer Services (ACS). That’s the same company that received a police recommendation for a no-bid contract worth $90m to run the city’s speed cameras. Bell’s downfall came when he put his name to a memorandum designed to single-out ACS as the only firm capable of operating the lucrative speed camera program. As reported by the Edmonton Journal, an anonymous March 2004 email from within the department kicked-off the investigation into Bell. According to reports, over the last year– while Sgt. Bell was in charge of the speed enforcement unit– ACS sent the officer on several junkets, and blessed Bell with free lunches, dinners, golf tournaments and banquets. (Former Deputy Police Chief Darryl da Costa narrowly escaped internal punishment for violating ethics rules for taking free hockey tickets and meals. The statute of limitations had expired by the time the allegations surfaced.) If convicted of breach of trust, Bell would face a maximum sentence of fourteen years in prison. [click here for the full story from TheNewspaper.com]

Oh man, this is getting ugly. After Porsche’s Turbo and GT2 lost their fastest ’round the ‘Ring record to the Nissan GT-R, the German automaker was… skeptical. So they bought a GT-R in the U.S. and ran the Nürburgring to verify their Japanese rival’s claim. And so they didn’t, failing to get within 25 seconds of GT-R’s ‘Ring highly hyped lap time. Porsche attributed the GT-R’s triumph to non-standard tires, which would nullify the Nissan’s “fastest production car” lap record. Cornered at the Paris Auto Show, Nissan’s European spokesman Neil Reeve said “Quite simply we’re not going to get into a war of words with Porsche.” And then did exactly that. “The final word from us is that it was done on absolutely standard tyres which are available to customers in the showroom. They’re not trick tyres – absolutely standard tyres, normal road tyres. The GT-R comes with Bridgestone and Goodyear (Dunlop). One tyre gives slightly better times around the ‘Ring. We did it on Dunlop. They’re available with the car.” When car.com.au‘s Andrew Heasley pushed him for an explanation, well, read between the lines. “We absolutely maintain (that) Tochio Suzuki – the chief test driver on the GT-R program pounded thousands of laps – he got to know every inch of Nurburgring (circuit) and how the car performs on the Nurburgring and hence set that fabulous lap. More than that, I can’t speculate. I can’t explain why they couldn’t match the time.”

The Newspaper steps up to the platform and says, “You must be joking son, haven’t we paid our dues?” (Steely Dan fans need apply). In other words, Maryland, Tennessee and Missouri are all contemplating adding highway speed cameras to their revenue generating highway safety schemes. “Officials from Maryland, Missouri and Tennessee joined Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D) at a two-day event designed to promote the use of speed cameras on freeways throughout the country.” Although the Newspaper doesn’t tell us any more about this highway hoedown (‘ho down?), it does give us a heads-up on Illinois’ entirely predictable plan to extend speed cameras from their current construction work sites to the rest of the state’s highway network. The good news? The Newspaper reminds us that democracy knocked-down Connectitcut’s highway speed camera scheme, so the Prairie state’s plans may also get scuttled. And, with a bit of luck and a few of your emails, MD, TN and MO’s scameras may never see the light of day. Not that I’m not objective on this issue…