The birthplace of TTAC, pistonheads.com, reports that the Land Rover Defender has finally left the ramparts. I’m sure the Defender will have plenty of defenders, but I will not be amongst them. Setting aside the idea that the Defender could behave like a modern car on a normal road (a preposterous suggestion), the 25 to 61-year-old vehicle’s main selling point was its go-anywhere ruggedness and simplicity of repair (a necessity as much as a virtue). It’s been completely trounced by Toyota’s off-roaders in both not to say all departments. I’ll give the Landie its narrow track and relatively light weight, a boon to anyone who’s ever had to literally pull a vehicle out of the muck, but we are talking about a hand-built automobile with about as much passive safety as a camel. OK, less, given the relative speeds involved (close call) and all the Defender’s sharp bits. As for the future, “Apparently [the new Defender] will use either the platform from the current Range Rover Sport and LR4, (which doesn’t fill us with confidence for its mud-plugging ability, but Land Rover insists that the new car will be just as able in the rough stuff), or a significantly more advanced version of a ladder-framed vehicle.” Or, alternatively, nothing.

The Detroit News reports that car dealers are trustworthy enough (or, more likely, influential enough) to be exempted from the House Financial Services Committee’s recently-passed version of the Consumer Financial Protection Act. The bill, intended to prevent another credit crisis through federal regulation, would have made dealers subject to Consumer Financial Protection Agency oversight had Rep John Campbell (R-CA) not introduced an amendment [PDF] exempting them. David Westcott, chairman of National Automobile Dealers Association’s government affairs committee applauded the move

It makes sense to exclude dealers. Dealers had absolutely nothing to do with the credit crisis. The overwhelming majority of committee members clearly understand that CFPA jurisdiction over dealers is unnecessary and that increased uncertainty in the auto marketplace would limit consumer finance options and increase car buyers’ costs

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Because of an unusual concentration of radio and television broadcast antennae in and around the Detroit suburb where I live, just about every car company and automotive electronics vendor that does business in North America tests their cars for resistance to radio frequency interference in my neighborhood. Ford in particular seems to like the testing location – it’s only 20 minutes from Ford facilities in Dearborn and convenient to do worst case real world testing.

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Ever have someone test drive your car and then seriously piss you off? Lowballers. Nickelshitters. Liars and scum aplenty who think they have the right to NASCAR your car? Phony little fruitcakes who drive to your place in a complete POS-mobile and then whine about a loose cupholder? Unfortunately, I’ve seen it all in the retail world and as an auto auctioneer… and I’ve created a few healthy coping mechanisms.

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So, after years of toil, you’ve arrived – a six figure salary, 80 hour workweeks, and Blackberry-enhanced vacations. But it’s not all toil at the executive level – you get to dump the Accord, and drop 50 or 60 large on a first-class luxury sedan.

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My name is Robert Farago and I invented the nickname “Maximum” Bob Lutz. I crowned Bob with the title at the New York Auto Show, standing next to GM’s all powerful Car Czar at the urinal. I had no idea that a man could take that long to take a piss. You could spend GM’s entire development budget on niche vehicles in the time it takes Maximum Bob to empty his bladder. With similar results. I’m not saying Maximum Bob is old and decrepit, but when he offered to prostrate himself in front of the Presidential Task Force on Autos, he was asking them to fund an operation.

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Officials in College Station, Texas used $20,000 in taxpayer funds in an attempt to influence residents to vote against a referendum that would ban red light cameras from the city. The city mailed to every voter a multi-color, bilingual brochure entitled “Red Light Cameras: Voter Education” in the hopes of convincing them to support a program that generated $905,688 in revenue for fiscal 2009. “A petition was filed by a citizens’ group asking the city council to let voters decide whether to keep or eliminate the red light camera system,” the brochure explained. “This item will be on the November 3 ballot.”

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Forget the rice paddies and straw hats. Think Autobahn, and a testosterone-driven car on your tail, with his (it’s always a he) brights on. China is Bimmer country. The robust sales of BMW in China over the first nine months of the year made the Middle Kingdom the fourth-largest market for the Bavarian maker, Bloomberg reports.

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A certain website that concerns itself with facts about automobiles, had opined more than a month ago: “Once matters move to Brussels, they come to a crawl. Whoever wins the German elections has all the time they want to dispose of Opel. If it goes kaput, they can blame the Americans and Brussels.”

The Opel matter finally moved to Brussels. EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said, she could set aside her considerable qualms about the GM-Opel-Magna-Sperbank deal, if only all parties involved would send her a simple letter that certifies that the deal had not been reached under political pressure. All parties involved, meaning GM, the Opel Trust that officially owns Opel, and the German government. Scout’s honor. Cross your heart, and swear to … exactly.
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Home game machines are no good. Playing something that realistic makes the need for cars disappear

So goes the Gawker hive-mind translation of a quote, attributed to an unnamed Toyota executive by Masahiro Kawaguchi, in an editorial published by the Mainichi Newspaper of Osaka (got that?). Best of all, Kawaguchi’s piece apparently goes on to attempt a further causal link to Japan’s falling population. “Guys used to work hard at their job so they could get a stylish, cool car for girl’s to ride in,” he argues. But isn’t the connection between falling car sales and a falling population easy enough to establish without blaming videogames? And what about the geographical arguments for an inevitable leveling-off of car sales in Japan? Or perhaps Mr Kawaguchi was subtly blaming some other, non-car-related “realistic video game” for a declining birth rate. Either way, the comment reflects a gnawing paranoia that is no longer unique to the auto executives of Japan: how do we sell cars to young people in mature markets? I always thought they used video games.

Volkswagen and Porsche are about to make it official, as Volkswagen has now bought nearly 49.9 percent of Porsche. And though we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea, there are some troubling indications for the future of the Porsche brand in particular. As usual, the worries begin with an executive (in this case, VW/Porsche’s Michael Macht) explaining exactly how the company will be able to have its cake and eat it too.

Porsche needs to become a strong pillar of VW, as well as having its own production and research and development capabilities. It is important to 
use synergies as well as having independence… Any new model would have to be exclusive, sporting and make a good business case. In any segment Porsche has to be the most exclusive, as well as being the best quality and capable of delivering the best driving experience

Unsurprisingly though, these fine sentiments are mere prelude to the nasty reality.

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Changes are coming to GM’s corporate ranks, likely as soon as government pay regulations are put into effect. CFO Ray Young’s departure is already a sure thing, and former car czarlet Steve Rattner has revealed that Fritz Henderson is an interim placeholder in everything but title. Oh, and Bob Lutz won’t last forever (gosh, that will be a sad day, won’t it?). Meanwhile, GM’s promote-from-within approach to culture change practically guarantees that some other denizen of the RenCen will move up at some point. Sweeping generalizations about GM management aside, is there anyone we should be particularly worried about? Autoextremist Peter DeLorenzo seems to think so. In his latest “rant” about Chevrolet’s decision to review its ad account, he skewers a particular GM executive in terms that make one almost believe he has given up his recent, lamentable role as GM’s resident cheerleader.

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Roast chicken, roast lamb, roast pork, roast beef, roast….Lutz? That’s right. The car world’s most favorite big mouth is going to get it shut, at least for an evening. Bob Lutz is being roasted in the name of the arthritis foundation of the United States. Maximum Bob is going to check his ego in at the door and have people shout barbed comments at him and all he can do is smile (a bit like when our own “Bob” Farago met him). In the past, comedy roasts have produced some great comments, my favorite being when Lisa Lampanelli said that Danny Bonaduce was the the only person in room who was in a good band (Gene Simmons was the guest of honor). Some comments have been very, very great but we couldn’t possibly print them on TTAC! So the question of the day is this: If you had to write one joke for Bob Lutz’ roast, what would it be? Here’s my entry: “It’s nice to see Bob Lutz and arthritis coming together. Normally, when Bob Lutz and cars come together, all the driver gets is rigor mortis!”. Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

[Ed: Roasters are said to include Fritz Henderson, Ed Wellburn, Jean Jennings, Brian Nesbitt and Brent DeWar… Jason Vines will be the MC. When asked if  a certain Robert Farago could contribute, either in person or in a video appearance, organizer Michelle Glazier said “We’re more or less selling things, not slamming things.” Pity.]

OK, so we pulled the Cruze wagon picture because it was a photoshopped fake [Hat Tip to Jalopnik for catching it]. So here’s a different yellow hatchback that also won’t be coming to the American market (thanks for nothing, Roger Penske and Carlos Ghosn). It’s a RenaultSport Mégane, and according to Autobild it’s a two-liter turbo four hot hatch with 250 horsepower.  To be perfectly honest though, we’re not entirely sure the picture hasn’t been run through the old shop of photo.

Edmunds Editor-in-Chief Karl Brauer apparently shares our ambivalence about GM’s in-car nanny, Onstar. And not for paranoid reasons either. He explains:

See, I like to think of myself as relatively self-sufficient. Sure, I’ll ask for help but I have to really need it first. However, on a semi-regular basis, when I’m in an OnStar-equipped car I find myself unintentionally activating the system, which in turn causes tremendous guilt because I feel I’m bothering an OnStar employee who could be helping another driver, maybe even someone with a true emergency.

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