After Peter DeLorenzo’s fusillade, Autoblog’s TTAC upbraiding comes as something of a relief. As we’ve been picking on Sam Abuelsamid for some time (in the most morally self-righteous sort of way), I suppose it’s only fair that he takes his shot at our generally, shall we say, “skeptical” attitude towards a Detroit bailout. Of course, he can’t mention us by name… “Those cheering for Detroit’s demise may want to reconsider,” the headline chides, ever-so-gently. Bless. “Many analysts and commentators have seemingly been cheering for the imminent demise of the Detroit-based automakers. Something that needs to be realized amidst all this talk of low-interest loans and bailout money is how interconnected the auto industry is and how it affects our economy as a whole.” Not to offend Sam’s delicate sensibilities, but I don’t recall many commentators– here or otherwise– saying “fuck ’em.” But hey, he did say “seemingly,” and we like that kind of humility. And it could be, yes, wait, it is, time for an Autoblog Cassandra Watch! “Yes, the Detroit 3 have made a lot of stupid product decisions over the years and wasted a lot of money, but allowing the free market to pull them under will create a ripple effect that reaches more than just the shores of the Detroit River.” Nasty free market! Don’t you just HATE IT? Well, some people do. They may want to reconsider. You know; take a look around and ask themselves, well, how did I get here?

Former AutoWeek scribe Jeff Sabatini is now driving a keyboard for The Wall Street Journal. While our own JL loved the Honda Fit, Sabatini sees the model as the motorist’s Messiah. “While conventional wisdom says that cheap gas should damp enthusiasm for a compact fuel-sipper, I’m not going to be deterred. The Fit is unquestionably my favorite car, a vehicle that’s the best all-around transportation available from any auto maker at any price.” Wow, talk about showing some love! “Well equipped Fits may just outdo the Mini Cooper for the cheap to buy, fun to drive, feel good drive of the year. Move over BMW, the new kid is strutting his stuff. While the iconic BMW 2002 remains a cult classic because it does much with little, today’s BMWs are porkers best suited to poseurs. The Fit has recaptured the cheap to buy, cheap to run, fun to drive crown in part by being ‘nearly 1,500 pounds lighter than, say, a BMW 5-Series, that perennial best-car-on-the-road contender.'” Jeff then takes both the Big 2.8 and Honda to task for not building more Fit-like whips…

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First, again, my public thanks to our former Managing Editor Justin Berkowitz. In the interests of keeping the business afloat, TTAC has cut the ME position from our roster. Although Justin will continue to contribute to the site, we can no longer afford his full-time services. As and when we can, I’d be delighted to renew our more intensive association. Secondly, a TTAC commentator has complained that we’re heavy on the politics/business, light on the actual car coverage. And it’s true. As I survey the autoblogosphere this morning, there’s nothing but TTAC-worthy headlines everywhere (except for AB, obviously). While I will charge our freelancers with amping-up the [strictly-defined] auto news, I’ve decided to pursue the bailout story/U.S. auto market collapse full-throttle. It’s a story in which we’ve developed considerable expertise, and one that needs an independent voice. As someone with a lot more insight that I said, this too shall pass. But until it does, TTAC’s going to cover developments as best we can, on your behalf. Thanks again for your patronage and support.

[UPDATE:: OK OK. Forget the subscription model. Jeez!]

CNN reports that the U.S. said goodbye to 1.2m jobs in 2008. One of them was mine. Last week, TTAC’s corporate mothership took a hard look at the books and concluded that the Managing Editor position is not part of TTAC’s best financial interest. This isn’t specific to The Truth About Cars. Advertising-driven websites follow a very young business model; when sites like Facebook and MySpace are having a hard time drawing in advertisers, you know it’s tough for everybody else. The Truth About Cars, as always, will keep going and be strong. While it doesn’t benefit me personally, this is the kind of decision we always criticize car manufacturers for not making: the right one. We all love The Truth About Cars, or at least many of us do, and for it to stay around, it has to be fiscally responsible. As a result, they’ve given me a jump start in looking for the next step in my career. Which is okay. Meanwhile, I’ll still be doing blog posts, reviews and the occasional editorial for TTAC. In all honesty, I can’t help but tell the truth.

Whether or not you like to read car magazines on the throne, it looks like the only paper with a future is rolled up beside the bog. Starting with the January 5, 2009 issue, AutoWeek will switch from a weekly to a biweekly magazine. According to the pub’s press release, less is more. “This change gives us the opportunity to grow as a brand,” opines brave-faced publisher Keith Crain, “and increase our reach to enthusiast consumers, making AutoWeek much more than just a weekly.” (Or, in fact, less.) Needless to say, AutoWeek will not become AutoBiWeek (although one wonders if that name might open-up new profit opportunities). “Modifying the frequency of the magazine’s distribution allows us to focus on more comprehensive editorial features and vehicle reviews. We look forward to providing lengthier and more comprehensive pimpatorials, although our paper quality will go down the toilet. So to speak.” I just made the last two sentences up, obviously. But not this: “I’m thrilled to be able to make a great brand better,” said AutoWeekEditor and Associate Publisher, Dutch Mandel. “The changes demonstrate our commitment to evolve in an ever-changing world. Our readers now demand news the moment it happens, which we provide to them at autoweek.com. These changes will allow us to deliver more in-depth coverage in our products. Our readers will be excited and pleased.” In fact, they already have a new strapline with which they can take delight. “AutoWeek is America’s only fortnightly automotive enthusiast consumer magazine.”

We’ve already put Detroit Free Press writer Mark Phelan through the Cassandra-o-meter— and found his logic more than slightly wanting. Today’s column reveals that Phelan’s cluelessness runs deep. Contemplating the collapse of the GM – Chrysler merger, Phelan says “Finding a foreign buyer to provide advanced engineering for sophisticated small vehicles in exchange for access to Chrysler’s U.S. dealer network and expertise in trucks, minivans and big cars is the best option.” Of course, Phelan’s theory assumes that an automaker would want to buy Chrysler. While everyone and their proverbial mother believes that Jeep is some kind of brand babe, other than that, what would be the point? How do we prod thee with a ten-foot pole? Let me count the ways. First, the U.S. automotive market is dead in the water. Second, any automaker stupid enough to assume tens of billions of dollars of ChryCo debt and obligations to a union (whose primary expertise is in wresting said benefits from overpaid execs), not to mention a roster of uncompetitive products and nothing in the propduct pipeline (although I just did), is also hurting in the worldwide auto industry meltdown. Third, if said automaker wants a piece of Chrysler, they’ll wait for the now-inevitable Chapter 11 or 7 and buy the best bits for pennies on the dollar. Phelan’s take? A ChryCo sale (as such) could happen. But that would suck. “Even in that best of all possible worlds, however, Chrysler will be a smaller company than it is today. It will have fewer plants and employees, but it can remain a major contributor to the U.S. economy and an important center of engineering and design expertise for a healthy global company. We can hope Chrysler’s next owners will value it more than the last two did.”

I know Autoblog and TTAC are the Michael and Garth Knight of the autoblogosphere, but I can’t help but reach out across the e-aisle to happily married blogger Alex Nunez and extend him an invitation to live blog auto-related TV shows for TTAC, should AB seek to purge itself of its only writer with cojones (willing to draft 18-wheelers for mpgs, no less). Once again, Nunez nails it. His haiku-like (haiku-esque?) summation of the new but not improved Knight Rider is nothing short of genius. For example, “8:25: Time to defuse KITT, but it’s complicated, natch. I somehow missed the part where he turned into a convertible. Billy’s magic parabolic mic is is recreating the shooting, because you can do anything in Knight Rider, except the one thing that NEEDS to be done at any given moment.” Or “8:49: Blah blah blah, it’s all a setup. Mike wants to stop downloading KITT. It’s too late. We have a Sexy Cheerleader Zoe doppelganger. And she has a gun to Billy’s head. Do it.” Folks, it just doesn’t get any better than that. Kudos.

The New York Times wants everyone everywhere to drive fuel-efficient automobiles or, preferably, take the subway. The Gray Lady’s Op Ed staff view SUV and pickup drivers as intellectually, politically, environmentally and morally corrupt. At the moment, the Times has won the day; new federal regulations force automakers to sell fuel-sippers or die– at least until they can figure-out a way to queer the system. But don’t expect magnanimity from the Big Apple Boyz. They see Ford’s new F-150, one of America’s most popular vehicles, as recidivism of the worst sort. “We fear that a $1.50 drop in gas prices was all it took to blunt Detroit’s newfound fervor for energy efficiency. Just a few weeks ago, the Big Three American automakers convinced Congress to give them $25 billion in cheap loans to retool their plants to make fuel-efficient cars. Then, with nary a blush, the Ford Motor Company introduced the new star in its line: the 2009, 3-ton, 16-miles-per-gallon, F-150 pickup.” The nerve! The fact that the new F-150 is the most fuel-efficient full-size pickup truck on the market doesn’t seem to matter. Ford– and by extension Detroit– just aren’t trying hard enough…

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Buyer’s remorse is setting in for many of this year’s sudden converts to the gospel of fuel efficiency– if Jonathan Welsh of The Wall Street Journal is to be believed. Of course, some of that might have to do with buyers’ choices. “Fran MacDonald got better fuel economy and maneuverability in traffic when she downsized from her Buick sedan to a tiny Chevrolet Aveo. But the small car was noisier and didn’t ride as smoothly. And then there were the hand-crank windows. ‘I was driving with my mother, and she asked me to put the window down,’ Ms. McDonald says. ‘When I told her she’d have to do it herself, she said, ‘Well, I don’t see a button.'” Once again, a craptastic GM vehicle disappoints and discourages. Fran obviously did zero research before making her purchase. Has there been ANY source which doesn’t rate the Aveo the class dunce? Another unhappy camper is ex-Chevy Suburban owner Blake Schomas, who went for a slightly more efficient Chrysler Pacifica– only to discover that their family of four (plus a friend or two) means no room for luggage. Kind of hard to take the gang on a skiing adventure that way. Others like Rebecca Lindland ditched her Chevy Trailblazer for a MINI, only to discover it was way too small for her tastes. Tacking back the other way, she traded the MINI on a BMW X3. Mr. Schomas, on the other hand, is probably stuck with that Pacifica for a long time. The moral of the story? Darwin wasn’t kidding.

So conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh is a big “friend” of GM’s. Thanks to pressure from Ralph Nader’s org on the FCC, El Rushbo decided it was in his own best interest to stop slipping mentions of GM products into his dietribes [sic]. These days, the segments promoting the General’s vehicles are separated from the main program- ish. But the question of conflict of interest rears its ugly head once more, as Limbaugh claims that he bought a listener a Chevy Tahoe, Elvis-style. According to the headline at rushlimbaugh.com, “It’s Official: Rush Buys Chevy Tahoe for Kerrville, Texas Caller.” Yada yada yada Zicam (don’t ask) go get a car on me. The transcript leads me to believe that the whole deal is a lightly-disguised marketing stunt– and contains some awesome unintentional humor: “She said, ‘I’ll pick one that I would normally buy.’ I said, ‘No, pick what you want. As long as it’s a GM car, pick what you want.’ So she finally picked a green Chevy Tahoe. She picked a green Chevy Tahoe. I don’t think it’s a hybrid. I’m not sure if she got the hybrid or not, but I do know that she drove off the lot with it yesterday. She and her husband have a brand-new green Chevy Tahoe, and the Kerrville, Texas, paper had been running stories on this. It’s the cutest thing. It is just the cutest thing.  So they were just… They didn’t believe it.” The question is, do we believe that Rush paid for this out of his own pocket? Make the jump to read the rest of undeclared pimpatorial.

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BBC Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson better watch out for truck drivers from now on, after making an on-screen joke linking lorry drivers to murdered prostitutes. The Times— the boradsheet that prints JC’s columns– describes the on-screen palaver thus: “The controversial broadcaster made his comment on Sunday night’s programme, on BBC2, as he and fellow presenters James May and Richard Hammond found out what it was like to drive heavy goods vehicles. Bemoaning the constant need to change gear, Clarkson said: “This is a hard job and I’m not just saying that to win favour with lorry drivers, it’s a hard job. Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day.” The BBC responded with their usual combination of condescension and weasel words: ‘The vast majority of Top Gear viewers have clear expectations of Jeremy Clarkson’s long-established and frequently provocative on-screen persona. This particular reference was used to comically exaggerate and make ridiculous an unfair urban myth about the world of lorry driving, and was not intended to cause offence.” Well, fair enough. As the Times points out, “Notorious prostitute killers Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and Steve Wright, also known as the Suffolk Strangler, were both lorry drivers.” More worryingly, the BBC has “convinced” YouTube to remove the video clip in question from general circulation.

With the proposed GM-Chrysler merger effectively off the table, automotive colmunists are slowly returning to the task of facing reality. Needless to say, they don’t like what they see. Though Mark Phelan may smell the smoke on the breeze as well as the next Detroit cheerleader, he obviously still figures a pom-pom in the hand is worth two in the bankruptcy court. Stuck with three sickly children who won’t all make it through this dark night of the industry, Phelan verbally douses Chrysler in 57 sauce and calls out the wolves. “If I were the U.S. Treasury Department, I’d offer GM executives $10 billion, on the condition that they walk away from Chrysler and never look back,” goes the first sentence of his latest opus. “Or $15 billion, $20 billion,” begins the second. His point? That a merger between GM and ChryCo would be disastrous. And though he acknowledges the real reasons for this (overlap, baby), he doesn’t stop there. “Cerberus’ ownership of Chrysler is a strip-and-flip operation,” raves Phelan, adding “Chrysler’s leaders spent much of the nine years they were part of DaimlerChrysler approving vehicles that didn’t stand a chance in the market.” Sure, there’s no use in arguing that the Sebring and Compass aren’t evidence of a company that practically wants to fail, Phelan isn’t feeding his beloved Chrysler to the wild beasties for the sheer fun of it (that’s our job). It’s all about saving Ford and GM.

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As Detroit remains bogged down in the Russian winter of their hubris and mismanagement, Nissan is launching a counter-offensive. Not only is Nissan joining Toyota in launching zero-percent financing on select models, they’re even launching factory leases at a time when nearly every finance company is running away from the lease business screaming. Automotive News [sub] reports that zero-percent financing is available on Altima, Rogue, Sentra, Versa and Murano, with all the “qualifying buyers” mumbo-jumbo that could keep many from the deal. Nissan is also launching factory-subsidized $199-a-month leases on the Altima sedan and Rogue, as well as extending a $339-a-month lease offer on its newly redesigned Maxima. If you just want a deal on basic transportation and don’t care much about financing, Nissan is also rolling out a stripped Versa sedan with a MSRP under $10k. “We are making a bold statement to our customers and to our dealers that we’re here for them,” says Nissan Division Vice President Al Castignetti. “If you need financing, we have it. If you want to lease a vehicle, we have it. If you need to buy an inexpensive car, we’ll have it for you.” While feasting on the dying corpses of the Detroit Three.