“GM has received the first tranche of $4B from the Federal Government and we look forward to working with the government on all elements of the loan agreement and our viability plan. We appreciate the Administration extending a financial bridge to GM at this critical time for the U.S. auto industry.

“GM remains committed to providing great cars, trucks and crossovers, as well as leading technologies, to our customers. We are committed to successfully executing the plan we submitted on December 2 and remain confident in the future of General Motors.”

It got a little quiet recently about Chinese automakers ogling American automakers-in-distress. London’s Financial Times (sub) decided it’s time to rekindle the flames. “China is the world’s second-largest car market,” the pink sheet writes today, “and rumors swirl ceaselessly about a Chinese carmaker buying Chrysler or General Motors. It is a remarkable transformation and one that cannot be halted, even by the global economic recession.” After waxing prose about the end of the “stratospheric double-digit growth of recent years,” and snidely remarking that “industry analysts are still expecting high single-digit growth for 2008 and possibly 2009 as well. Much of the rest of the global car industry would be happy to see such numbers,” the FT gets right to the point:

“No one expects the Chinese government to step in with a Washington-style bail-out, but last month Chery announced that it had arranged RMB10b ($1.46b) in financing from China’s Export Import Bank to fund overseas activities, and then immediately said it was calling off a small-car partnership with Chrysler – fueling speculation that Chery’s real intent was to buy the troubled US carmaker.”

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A – due to worldwide holiday inertia – very short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. Until Jan 4, 2009, WAS is being filed from Tokyo.

Hyundai sees trouble ahead: Hyundai’s Vice Chairman Choi Jae Kook gave employees an uplifting New Year’s speech, writes Bloomberg. Choi said, Hyundai expects global industrywide vehicle sales to fall at least 7.7 percent next year. Sales may fall below 60 million from an expected total of about 65 million this year, “Next year will be a critical time for all automakers as there could be a big industrywide shake-up” amid slowing sales and overcapacity, Choi said. Global industry capacity stands at about 90 million vehicles a year, Choi said. That is an untenable capacity utilization of 66 percent. Hyundai and Kia have a combined annual capacity of 5.3m vehicles. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Hyundai’s “total global sales in 2008 reached 4.8 million vehicles, down from 3.96 million units in the previous year.” Of course, this doesn’t make any sense, but other news outlets print it anyway.
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Auburn Hills, Mich., Dec 31, 2008  –  “We recognize the magnitude of the effort by the Treasury Department to complete these multiple financial arrangements quickly and sequentially. The discussions relating to Chrysler LLC have been positive and productive, and we look forward to finalizing the details of our financial assistance in the immediate future.”

You just know they’re going to get it wrong. And so they do. Number One: Full-Size Pickup Trucks. Huh? If any market segment is likely NOT to restore The Big 2.8 to glowing good health, it’s the PU segment. But no. I mean yes! “The Dodge Ram is new for 2009, as is the top-selling Ford F-150, while the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra twins combine to sell more than any of them. With the Toyota Tundra in retreat and Nissan ready to surrender the segment (they’ll be getting their next generation of Titans from Dodge), cheap gas should keep buyers putting their money into these profit centers.” And if the housing market stays in the toilet, the market remains saturated with trucks or the price of gas goes up? * crickets chirping * No wait! Number Two: American Muscle. Huh? Talk about carving-up smaller pieces a decreasing pie. Nope. Fox is saying halo to the new Camaro, Challenger and Mustang. “Forget for a moment all of the goody two-shoes environmentally conscious cars Washington wants the Detroit 3 to build: These are the ones that look best in the commercials and get shoppers into showrooms. They may not sell in huge numbers, but you can’t pay for the kind of pride they bring to a brand’s image.” Apparently, you– I mean “we” can. Number Three…

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And here’s the kicker: the French Interior Ministry described the night as “rather calm and without major incident.” Dow Jones [via NASDAQ] gives us the exact stats: “The interior ministry had earlier said 445 vehicles were set on fire overnight, but later revised that figure to 1,147. The number of arrests and cars torched topped last year’s tally of 259 people detained and 372 vehicles burned.” So, uh how could that possibly be construed as a calm? It all depends whose car is set alight. “‘There were very few targetings of fire trucks and clashes with security forces, in particular in the suburbs,’ noted the interior ministry in a statement. When clashes occurred, they were ‘brief and sporadic,’ it added. There was no damage to buildings.” Oh, that’s alright then. And how did the Parisians authorities accomplish this little feat? “France mobilized 35,000 police and 50,000 firefighters to maintain order during the New Year fete.”

Click on over to Chrysler’s blog for a look at the anger unleashed by the ailing automaker’s full-page (and Google key word) “Thank You” ads. (Either glasnost has suddenly infected ChryCo’s secretive owners or, more likely, the site’s moderator took the week off.) The first comment by RightKlik.net: “Hey Chrysler! You’re not welcome. You took my hard earned tax dollars without congressional approval. This is not the time for a ‘thank you.’ This would be a good time for a refund…and an apology.” With a few notable though still critical exceptions, it gets progressively angry from there. spalind: “Bunch of scumbags…Nardopey and Cerberdolts can stick it…the VAST majority of the American public is against any sort of bailout for you or GM and yet you steal our money anyway…Are you and the other CEOs and investment bankers going to come bail me out when I lose my job??  Didn’t think so… I’ll NEVER buy a Chrysler or GM product–EVER–and either will any of my current or future family members I will make sure of it…” There is only a handful of positive response, like this one by corie: “think the Thank you was a great idea. It would be nice for every person connected to employment in the automotive industry to say thank you to every person driving an american made car. Thank you to those who BUY AMERICAN!” But as this non-scientific sampling indicates, there’s a bailout blowback blowin’ in the wind. When GM, Chrysler and then Ford return to the well, they’d do well to play their PR cards more carefully than this early and deeply reviled attempt.

Believe it or not, we’ve already had this debate. In December 2007, we hashed it out and decided on “Priora.” But a TTAC reader wishes to reopen that can of worms (castigat ridendo mores). So here goes… “I had Latin in high school, so when I saw TTAC having the plural of Prius as Priora, my pedantry went on instant alert. While I admit, a priora, that it sounds good, it isn’t right. Actually prius is an adverb, so it can’t have a plural. But the related noun form is prior, prioris, 3rd declension. According to my Bennett’s New Latin Grammar (CR:1956), the plural of liquid stem (ending in -l or -r) 3rd declension nouns is -es (that’s a long e, with a bar over it). So it should be Priores.” Personally, go sum rex Romanus et supra grammaticam. Your thoughts?

Clearly, The Big 2.8’s head honchos did themselves no favors by swanning into DC for a federal teat suckle on big ass private jets. And Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s family outings on the company Gulfstream G500 were a bit OTT for a company on the ropes. But used judiciously, there’s nothing wrong with private jets per se; they can greatly increase an executive’s ability to get information from front line troops. By not sticking-up for private aviation, by slinking back into town via hybrid, the Big 2.8’s CEOs threw a valuable industry into disrepute. No, I mean the private aviation industry. AIN Online reports that “H.R. 7321, the auto bailout bill, which would have prohibited the financially strapped automobile manufacturers from owning outright, leasing or owning any interest in private passenger aircraft, as long as the government debt was outstanding; and required the manufacturers to sell or divest any aircraft or interest that was owned before the bailout. Even though the bailout bill failed, the damage was done. “Jeff Beck, a Gulfstream contract pilot, had one word to describe the state of the economy and the fallout following the GM and Ford announcements: bad. ‘As soon as [people] started talking about the auto executives and their private jets, it just killed the contract pilot business and the aviation business,’ Beck said. A number of other flight departments followed suit, Beck said, and now there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around.” Needless to say, there’s yet more perfidy here in GM and Ford’s craven capitulation to the congressional class worriers.

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Accidents more than doubled at the Houston, Texas intersections where red light cameras are installed, according to a study released Monday by Rice University and the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). This result posed a dilemma for TTI and the city of Houston which had requested the study. Houston Mayor Bill White was furious when he saw the report’s draft text in August. He banned the document from publication and ordered a re-writing of the text that would reflect a more positive result. To accomplish this task, White was able to turn to the study’s primary author, Rice University Urban Politics Professor Robert Stein. Stein’s wife, Marty, is employed by the city of Houston as a top aide to the mayor. Stein’s newly revised report now concludes that “red light cameras are mitigating a general, more severe increase in collisions.”

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Now that the frog– fog of war is beginning to lift from the deal between the federal government and troubled auto and mortgage lender GMAC, a few key facts have emerged. First and foremost, Business Week (BW) reminds us that the U.S. Treasury’s $6b “investment” in GMAC leaves it as the lender’s largest shareholder. Not to put too fine a point on it, the federal government owns GMAC. Second, BW reckons that means a boardroom shake-up is on its way. “GMAC’s 12-member board of directors, of which [J. Ezra] Merkin is chairman, is expected to be clipped to seven directors. Cerberus has four executives on the current board, but will get only one voting director on the new board… GM will go from having four voting executives on the board to just one, nonvoting executive.” In other words, GM can’t manipulate GMAC to move the metal. Or can it? More [non-Dodge] ramifications after the jump.

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New Year’s Day is taking a bizarre turn, as Ford reveals the new Shelby Mustang GT500 Shelby Mustang Cobra Shelby Mustang GT500 on the same day that it’s advising motorists how to deal with what it calls “chuck holes.” Is that a regional thing, and what do woodchucks have to do with pavement other than, how do I put this.. splat? Anywho, here’s FoMoCo spinmeister Wes Sherwood’s take on pothole etiquette. “If safe, don’t swerve to avoid potholes. Swerving can create a situation where the front wheel and tire on the car can impact the edge of the pothole at an obtuse angle, which might do more damage than hitting it squarely. If safe, don’t brake just because you see a pothole: heavy braking compresses the front suspension of the car and will have a tendency to force the tire and wheel down into the pothole, instead of gliding over.” Oh, BTW: “To give drivers a fighting chance with monster potholes, [Ford] engineers tune shock rebound rates to keep the wheel and tire suspended so it can glide over the pothole, preventing the tire from dropping down into it and impacting the edge of the tire and wheel.” Gliding over potholes. Well I never!

The Mercury News‘ police blotter reports that “Twenty-two new cars parked at a Honda dealership in Redwood City were keyed over the Christmas holiday.” The attack has the hallmarks of the previous assault on innocent Audis. “A similar case occurred earlier this month at an Audi dealership in Concord, where employees discovered Dec. 13 that nearly 100 cars had been keyed overnight, police said.” The anti-Ingolstadt vandalism racked-up a reported $800k worth of damage. The Honda assault will hit-up the Honda dealer’s insurance company for something between $20k and $30k. An anti-import backlash or just plain nasty? “Redwood City police Detective Cochran said he is not aware of any connection between the two cases.” [thanks to Herr Schmitt for the link]

These highly-horsed Mustangs are a handful. I think I’ve called them death cars. But it appears that issue has been addressed. The official New Year’s Day press release tells us that “the 2010 Shelby GT500 is an estimated 2 miles per gallon more fuel efficient on the highway.” No wait. That’s not it. “The design team, with a nod to the original Shelby Cobras from the 1960s, takes those design cues even further with nuanced improvements in both the coupe and convertible, each of which boasts a more-refined interior.” No wait; that’s the bit where they piss on the 500KR. “Spring and dampers have been optimized for better roll control, giving customers more confidence when braking, accelerating or turning. The new chassis tuning takes its philosophy from the KR program, with a greater emphasis placed on primary body control. The team also stiffened the steering shaft.” Not convinced? “Another obvious difference for the Shelby is the addition of racing stripes, which also will now be available on the convertible. ‘Racing stripes made their mark on 1960s-era Ford performance vehicles,’ Hameedi notes. ‘That’s something we feel is a key part of the Shelby performance DNA – maybe more so than some of our competition.'” Failing that, “Standard safety equipment includes: dual stage front air bags, side-impact air bags and Ford’s Personal Safety System.”

Washington Post Harold Myerson’s column starts by presenting readers with a stark choice: nationalization or more rigid regulation. Things get interesting in a car-oriented sort of way when Myerson talks about Motown’s simmering antipathy towards the southern senators who almost denied them their $17.4b suckle on Uncle Sugar’s teat. “If Abraham Lincoln were still among the living as he prepared to turn 200 six weeks from now, he might detect in the congressional war over the automaker bailouts a strong echo of the war that defined his presidency. Now as then, the conflict centered on the rival labor systems of North and South. Now as then, the Southerners championed a low-wage, low-benefits system while the North favored a more generous one. And now as then, what sparked the conflict was the North’s fear of the Southern system becoming the national norm. Or, as Lincoln put it, a house divided against itself cannot stand… “But, just as Lincoln predicted, the United States was bound to have one labor system prevail, and the debate over the General Motors and Chrysler bailout was really a debate over which system — the United Auto Workers’ or the foreign transplant factories’ — that would be. Where the parallel between periods breaks down, of course, is in partisan alignment. Today’s congressional Republicans are hardly Lincoln’s heirs. If anything, they are descendants of Jefferson Davis’s Confederates.” That’s just WAY out there.