Bloomberg reports that Source Interlink has gone Tango Uniform. You may know Source Interlink as the publisher of Motor Trend, Automobile and [a claimed] 73 other publications. Not to mention [a claimed] 90 websites. Like the formerly octo-branded GM, Source Interlink simply bit off more than it could chew—and then discovered there wasn’t enough to eat. “The company listed debt of $1.9 billion and assets of $2.4 billion . . . US magazine advertising revenue in the first quarter fell 20 percent from a year earlier, according to the Publisher’s Information Bureau, an industry group. US auto sales tumbled 37 percent in March. Source Interlink hasn’t reported a profit since the second quarter of 2007.” This after spending $1.2 billion to buy a package of titles from PrimeMedia in 2007. As for the future . . .

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Or so says Automotive News [sub] Executive Editor, Edward Lapham, in a brief aside. According to Lapham, Chrysler is ramping up a major ad campaign (a fact that remains unconfirmed by Chrysler) that steals from the $5 billion supplier bailout fund. “Through its ad agencies,” writes Lapham, “Chrysler is lining up major media that are willing to accept a price cut of 2 percent in exchange for assured payment under the federally funded critical-supplier payment plan.” Because Chrysler wanted to see if its post-bailout supplier relations could possibly be worse. Although to be fair, those two percent savings do add up . . . to about 30 pieces of silver.

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It is often said that a man’s home is his castle. The Supreme Court has upheld this rule many times. Police may only search upon probable cause or a warrant from a Judge. When, however, can the police search your car incident to a traffic violation? Just about always, claimed the police. Not so fast, rules the Supreme Court. In a close decision, the nation’s highest court reined back the ability of police to make warrantless searches in auto stop cases. Make no mistake, you are not “home” when you are in your car, no matter how much time you spend there or what you do there. Indeed, you have a greater right to privacy walking down a street.

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Loose cannons. Where would TTAC be without them? Now that GM Car Czar Bob Lutz has his bankruptcy-proof pension to think about (no thanks needed for the early heads-up, Bob), the man of Maximum has somehow learned to shut the f up. Bob “Operationally Bankrupt” Nardelli hasn’t said boo to a goose since telling the feds he wasn’t earning any salary for driving Chrysler into the history books. Ford’s Presidente del Americas Mark Fields is flying low, maybe even commercial. The head of the Presidential Task Force on Autos, Steve “Chooch” Rattner, is as taciturn as he is tyrannical. These days, GM’s VP (“Very Profitable”) Mark LaNeve is about as good/bad as it gets. At least until last night, when former Ford CEO Bill Ford played BMOC (big man on campus) at the green love-in known as this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Green conference. The MSM has yet to chronicle the PC hoedown. But according to earth2tech.com (who supplied our headline quote), Former FoMoCo CEO Bill Ford’s mea culpa was mucho maxima.

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In general, TTAC does not cover motorsports. But we’re on the ball when it comes to the business of automotive sponsorships for sports of all sorts. We recently reported that Ford—Detroit’s last man standing—is a major sponsor of curling. The wisdom of that choice has become clear, as the the Men’s Curling Final was one of the most exciting ever played. As The Canadian Press reports, “It was a game for the ages. The final game of the Ford World Men’s Curling Championships came down to the last rock in the 10th end to break a 6-6 tie between Canada’s Kevin Martin and David Murdoch of Scotland.” Nail-biting stuff and perhaps symbolic of Ford’s last ditch struggle to stay out of bankruptcy court.

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I’ve never noticed Poornima Gupta’s byline before. But I’ve sure noticed it now. The Reuters story “Ford says has no interest in Chrysler brands” could well be the most inane piece of non-journalism I’ve ever seen emerge from an auto show. This is news? C’mon. It’s not even grammatical (go get ’em, Jeff!). “Ford Motor Co (F.N) has no interest in acquiring any Chrysler assets or brands if the automaker is forced into bankruptcy, the president of Ford’s Americas unit said on Wednesday. ‘We’re focused right now on merging Ford around the world right now. We’re focusing on Ford, so no,’ Mark Fields said on the sidelines of the New York International Auto Show.” Seriously. She asked him that question? What ChryCo brands did she think Ford should pick-up? With what money? Still, I like this bit: “‘We do have a significant amount of liquidity and based on our assumptions … we have no plans to access any of the emergency taxpayer funds,’ Fields said.” Define “emergency.” And anyone who uses the phrase “slash cash” gets a mulligan. Or is that a mullet?

According to Google Analytics, thetruthaboutcars.com has bested the 1 million unique visits per month threshold by 819 visits. Although we’ll dip back down below the mark as our average gets dinged by the weekend fall off, huzzah! We achieved this milestone via 562,744 readers generating 2.28 pages per stop-on-by, racking-up 2,285,492 monthly page views. (Despite the picture, I trust we’re piqued, rather than peaked.) Not bad for a website that began life six years or so ago with zero visitors and no page views. Anyway, it’s not all about agglomerating eyeballs. Our average time on site stat (a.k.a. “stickiness”) clocks-in at 3:29. And we have 11,569 subscribers to our New Content Notification System—who don’t flip out when I send multiple email alerts by mistake. And there’s my real source of pride: TTAC’s engaged, alert, informed and passionate community of writers and readers. It’s you who “own” the TTAC brand of no-holds-barred rants, reviews and blogs. In the upcoming weeks, I will perform my duties with due diligence, protecting my many masters, knowing that positive changes are afoot. Until then, thanks to all of you for reading—and telling—the truth about cars.

When Barack Obama made his state of the American auto industry speech, industry watchers lampooned the President for being the “Salesman-in-Chief.” More than a few members of the automotive punditocracy supported the idea, but said BO made a bad job of it. The Autoextremist led the charge, lambasting the Prez for using the word Voldemort—I mean “bankruptcy” in public. The Detroit News auto editor has followed the president’s lead, switching from cheerleader to salesman. And a damn good one too! (By his own admission.) “When you cruise around Macomb County in an ‘Inferno Orange’ Camaro SS. People make U-turns and follow you into parking lots. They ask if they can sit in it and want to know all the trim levels. Chevy was kind enough to drop one off for me over the weekend, and I probably sold more of the muscle car for the General than any Chevy dealer in town.” Hang on; did Chevy drop off a person or a car? [apologies to Jeff Puthuff] So . . . Manny ends his tired-aid by with a small dick joke.

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Regular readers know that I’m resolutely anti-auto show. Long before the current international auto industry meltdown led Nissan, Mitsubishi, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Porsche et al. to pull out of the North American International Auto Show, I proclaimed the events an enormous waste of time, money and effort. And boring. And outmoded. And so I will again, as I go talking-head-to-talking-head with CNBC’s resident Motown apologist Phil LeBeau (8:30 p.m. EST). In terms of autoblogospherical representation, CNBC is usually Jalopnik’s patch. I’m guessing Ray wasn’t ready to step up and criticize his bestest best friends at this most wonderful time of the year. Either that or he’s speed dialing CNBC right now, and I’ll get a call any second telling me to stand down. UPDATE: view the segment here.

On Sunday, GM CEO Fritz Henderson went out of his way to avoid waving the American flag in his desperate attempt to sell the idea that his employer had a future building and selling cars in the US market. Well, duh. Ford, GM and Chrysler are not exactly in the best position to go all protectionist, given the huge number of parts and vehicles the ailing American automakers imports from abroad, discounting (and how) the vehicles they want to keep selling abroad. But The Detroit News boldly goes where Rick Wagoner’s clone fears to tread. All columnist Marney Rich Keenan’s “Buying American cars: It’s finally catching on” needs is an exclamation mark. [And an accompanying image that’s not a photochop.] Say it ain’t so, Joe! In this case, “Joe” is Keenan’s culture-loving brother, makes the connection between purchasing American cars and GM’s support for the arts. Which will no doubt be toast as the Presidential Task Force on Autos gets stuck in. Anyway, here come the usual suspects . . .

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Ad Age only lists GM and Chrysler’s ad spend for all of ’08, before the ailing American automakers bellied-up to the federal bailout buffet. But the writing’s on the wall for a number of media who depend on the two teat sucklers for ad cash. The carmakers’ $3B ’08 combined ad spend has already been slashed. When Chrysler and GM go Tango Uniform, well, there’s a black hole out there with their name on it. At risk ’08 ad bucks: Car and Driver ($20.6M from GM), Automobile ($15.4M from GM), Motor Trend ($6.1M from Chrysler). If you’re wondering why the buff books’ reviewers treat GM and Chrysler products with kid gloves, I’ve just shown you the money. And here’s a pdf charting the ch-ch-ch-changes from 2007 to 2008, in terms of the two automakers’ percentage of the buff books’ total ad take [NB: ’07 was a very good year, for small town dealers, with perfume in their hair, until they came undone.]  Steve Parr, president of Source Interlink Media, is non-plussed, allegedly.

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I get Twitter: it’s stalker heaven. Those who love to stalk, stalk. Those who benefit from stalking, get stalked. And those who aspire to being stalked pretend they’re being stalked. Given the onanistic undertones to this e-symbioses [sic], I’m not sure if tweeting at Twitter makes me a twat. It’s a question that leaves me pondering the possibility that my level of twatedness is independent of my tweeter (etc.). Meanwhile, I’m using Twitter as a kind of RSS feed with ‘tude tags. In addition, I’ll continue to tweet teases to tantalize TTAC’s, uh, readers. Oh, and I got the Skype thing happening. So podcasts are back. As I mentioned before, there will be some big news next month in terms of functionality. For now, a big shout out to Bertel for his contributions to the cause, and our regular writers for feeding the beast from the goodness of their heart and the ducts of their spleen. (Any tweeting advice is most appreciated.)

Our Twitter handle: TTAC. Go figure. And there’s a bit more housekeeping I need to share with y’all. Our man Niedermeyer (the younger) is heading over to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a couple of weeks. He’ll be posting car-related material from the country whose motto is Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc (Independence – Freedom – Happiness). During that time, our posting pace may slow slightly. Your patience and support are, as always, most appreciated. Hey! With the big GM news on Monday, we ALMOST made a million uniques per month this week: 996,962. With a bit of luck, we’ll crest that number during the next shoe dropping debacle. I hope to have some other big news for you next month, including enhanced features for Friends of TTAC (Người bạn của TTAC). At the very least, we’re talking avatars and the ability for you to see all comments on all posts on one page, with instant access to the relevant thread. Of course, you gotta donate some money to the cause for those bells and whistles, but you don’t gotta do nothin’ to get the same TTAC for nothin’. Meanwhile, please use the comments below to give us a heads-up on what you’ve been enjoying on the site recently and, yes, what sucks. Which means the anti anti-flaming TTAC policy is suspended FOR JUST THIS POST. Go play. Have fun.

I’m down with Eddie on this one: how can you tell the difference between April Fool’s Day and the normal cavalcade of pap? The above bon mots arrive courtesy Jim Press, via the Detroit Free Press. The paper reassures its remaining readers with the news (well it’s news to me) that the shockingly bad March sales numbers—down 36.8 percent overall—are actually good. “Industrywide auto sales are usually about 20% higher in March than in February, largely because March is a longer month and people begin to buy more cars as the snow melts and spring arrives. But this year, industry-wide auto sales increased 24.5% from February to March, according to Autodata Corp. of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.” That’s what I call a stretch. Reuters journeys all the way to Italy to find its silver lining, revealing that the government’s market distortion has created a 0.24 percent rise in new car registrations. And The Gray Lady feels compelled to dignify the Chrysler–Fiat link with pre-pack PR. “‘We’re not doing this because we’re good Samaritans,’ Mr. Marchionne told a New York Times reporter in an interview this year.” Sometimes old news is the only good news, I guess.

Why, that news is so good that the Freep is happy to throw ChryCo the irony-free headline. April Fools! Sales are actually down 39 percent compared to March 2008. It’s just that Chrysler hasn’t topped 100k monthly sales since September. Does this look like a turnaround to anyone? Bueller? Jim Press? “The market is starting to show small signs of life which need to be nourished like seedlings.” What a touching image. Tiny seedlings struggling to life under a pile of government cash. Please, describe these plucky little plants for us, Mr. Press. “The fact that we exceeded 100,000 units for the first time since last fall is encouraging, and evidence that our improved quality, improved mileage as well as value represented in Employee Pricing Plus Plus are just what the doctor ordered for recession-wary customers who are reluctant to make long-term purchases. It’s too early to see a trend, but spring shows signs of hope.” If showing signs of hope is your job description, perhaps. But how did the federal proclamation (PDF) of “the poor quality of [Chrysler’s] existing product portfolio” affect the sales seedlings?

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