A 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.

More belt tightening in Japan: A year ago, Suzuki entered the World Rally Championship. Yesterday, they said they would stop competing in the series from next year “due to the cost burden,” as the Nikkei (sub) has it.  Fuji Heavy Industries, the manufacturer of Subaru, is also considering pulling out of the WRC. This follows Honda’s recent decision to withdraw from Formula One racing. The annual cost of staying in WRC racing is estimated to be in the $50m ballpark. Every Yen saved is a Yen earned. Everybody is waiting for more expensive shoes to drop in Formula 1, where the price of admission is $500m. All eyes on hapless Toyota. For starters.

BYD bullish on cars: China’s BYD Co. aims to double sales of automobiles next year, defying the gravity of the auto market, Gasgoo reports. BYD plans to sell 350,000 vehicles in 2009, up from a total of 180,000 cars it plans to sell this year. In 2007, BYD sold about 90,000 vehicles. What is hurting BYD is the slowdown in worldwide mobile phone sales, for which BYD supplies the bulk of the batteries.

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Chrysler’s co-Prez Jim Press has forced Automotive News [AN sub] to back away from an earlier story. Ish. This morning’s article claimed that Press’ recent appeal to Chrysler dealers– to order pre-built cars from a pool of 12k vehicles– constituted a return of the dreaded “sales bank.” But a funny thing happened on the way to the retraction: AN discovered further depths to Chrysler’s misery. According to Press, canceled orders account for the “fence units” in dispute (not driveways). The cancellations came from store owners who couldn’t obtain floorplanning loans (to cover inventory costs), dealers who went bust, fleet buyers who got cold feet and “vehicles left unsold from dealership sales promotions.” So what’s the difference between “overstock” and a sales bank? Jim Arrigo and Hayden Elder, co-chairmen of the Chrysler Dodge Jeep national dealer council, set us straight. “When we were doing sales bank, there was a lot of pressure,” said Arrigo, owner of Arrigo Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep in West Palm Beach, Fla. “It’s totally different this time. There isn’t somebody calling up.” Who’d listen? And what’s the bet that those 12k units are the tip of the iceberg?

According to Yahoo! Finance, “General Motors Corp. said in a regulatory filing Monday [full text after the jump] that it and GMAC LLC agreed to temporarily adjust the financing company’s terms for making advance payments to the automaker for the wholesale financing of vehicles sold to GM dealers.” Zooming in… “GMAC typically pays GM the invoice amount for each vehicle shipped by the automaker to a GMAC-financed dealer on the first business day following the vehicle’s shipment.” Closer… “Under the deal, GMAC won’t be required to pay the invoice amount until that amount is due from the dealer, which will allow GMAC to defer payment of up to $1.5 billion in cash due to GM until Dec. 30. GM will have a security interest in the financed vehicles during the shipping period.” Holy brink of bankruptcy Batman! Clearly, GM intends to use federal bailout bucks– should there be any– to prop-up GMAC. Never mind that, this move virtually eliminates GM’s cash flow (such as it is). I mean, GM won’t get paid for these vehicles in months. If ever. And if GMAC is down to its last $1.5b of liquidity, this little paper shuffling exercise ain’t gonna save nothin’. Bye-bye GMAC, arrivederci GM. Drink up lads. Last orders.

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Another email from a GM insider: “Meet Rick, unassuming book worm with a penchant of fixing all things mechanical. Rick was a 12 year veteran of GM, spending 7 years as a journeyman Machine repairman. Due to a constantly shrinking work force, Rick soon had to relocate. Luckily, Rick’s first transfer kept him in his skilled trade and fortunately keep another well rounded expert in mechanical issues with the Corporation. Rick was content with the move but according to him ‘I wouldn’t wish that shit on anyone.’ Little did Rick know that the plant he just re-located to was soon announced that within 8 months it would cease production. Left with the option of hoping like hell another plant needed manpower or immerse himself in the job market, OL’ Rick again rented a U-Haul. It was in October 2003 that I had meet Rick. It still leaves me missing his daily ‘Hey dude, if its done this way, shit would be better’ remarks.

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As a number of you saw, I drove and review the 2010 Ford Mustang GT. I really liked it. Good car, etc. Naturally, of course, I expected TTAC’s so called “Best and Brightest” to discuss the finer points of my review. After all, Ford has sold nine million Mustangs and I just called the new one the best ever. This after they put me up in a fancy-schmantz hotel and fed me great food and free booze. More scandalously, the new for 2010 Mustang still sports a (gasp) live rear end. And I loved it. Glowing review, etc. But, instead of focusing on the latest pony car from my friends at the Blue Oval, the conversation degenerated into, “My Crown Vic can out tow your Camry.” No, really — that’s what people were talking about. And you know, if that’s what the people want, that’s what we’re going to give ’em. In the blue corner, hailing from Georgetown, Kentucky and weighing in at 3,280 lbs, the sleeper from the far east, the barbiturate to my Viagra, sexless on wheels, Toyota Camry! And in the red corner, a car so great it’s no longer sold to the public (unless you live in Kuwait), featuring both Watt’s linkage and a four-speed automatic, the car that’s older than some of our readers, Ford Crown Vic! Let’s make this a fair fight. And then let’s never speak of either car again.

If you journey to the Detroit Auto Show this winter, you will get a chance to see the new Mercedes A and B Class models. I know, I know. Who cares, right? (No points for guessing Automotive News [sub]) Especially since the Benz Boys will be headlining their Concept BlueZero hybrid/alt-fuel roadshow at the wasteland formerly known as the Detroit Auto Show. But did you know that all of those fancy futuremobiles will be based on the “sandwich board” platform which first debuted in production on the original A-Class? Apparently it makes for a lot of flexibility with powertrain choices. The new A and B will ditch the intriguing but space-limiting concept for a standard FWD layout, but at least the B and “likely” the A as are headed stateside sometime in 2011. Absent a GM bankruptcy-triggered end of times, of course. And though we won’t be in Detroit to snap our own photos of these Euro-hatches (right, boss?), their American ambitions bring up a wrinkle on the stimulating discussion on our national ambivalence towards compact cars. Read More >

Last night’s TopGear (which will air in the U.S. by 2015 or on your computer now) featured Jeremy “The Gentle Giant” Clarkson driving the Tesla Roadster. His observations?

The good: Same time around the track as a Porsche GT3. No gas. Very fast in straight lines. Looks good. Very fast in straight lines. Cheap to fill up compared to a gas/diesel car.

The bad: Handling only so-so, because of the low-resistance tires and the 1000 lbs added by 6831 batteries in the middle of the car. Ample road noise. Green-ambiguity of electric cars & power production.

The ugly: After caning it, Clarkson got 55 miles of range. In a 13 amp UK socket, he estimated a 16 hour recharge time. Tesla had to bring two cars. One overheated while driving (on the track), the other’s brakes “broke” while it was recharging.

Clarkson calls the car a stunning “technical achievement” but finishes by saying it is “completely irrelevant” as he previews a later segment on Honda’s fuel cell car, the Clarity FCX.

Toyota had planned on beginning production of Priora at its Blue Springs plant in 2010, but those plans are now on hold indefinitely, according to the AP (via CNN Money). According to ToMoCo spokesfolks, construction of the plant is 90 percent complete, but installation of its machinery and tooling (the “most time-consuming elements”) has been delayed. And what of the 100-odd folks hired to oversee construction and install human resources plans? “Those people’s jobs are safe, and we’ll find things for them to do,” says Toyota’s Mike Goss. With weak sales affecting even the once-hot Prius, Toyota is responding quickly by holding off on a hiring binge until the market begins to recover. Consider the Tundra lesson learned, but in tough economic times those jobs will be missed. As will the $239m state incentive package, not to mention the $235m in tax revenue that the plant is expected to bring in over its first ten years of operation.

The NY Times explores one of the great riddles of the automotive world today, namely Detroit’s near-pathological inability to consistently produce quality compact cars. Scribe Rob Sass revisits the development of American compacts, and concludes that in addition to being hurt by low historic concern for fuel economy, compacts “had the bad luck of being produced by chronically undercapitalized independent automakers. These compacts were not particularly thrifty, had no distinctive engineering features and rather than being stylish but sensible, they were simply cheap and frumpy.” And as appealing as many classic American compacts now are as collectibles, the argument rings true.

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A British eBayer, selling a rather unusual car for the UK, describes one of the many flaws of his Ford Thunderbird 3.8:

SIDE WINDOW SMASHED DUE TO SOMEONE SMASHED IT.

Winner.

A new study of alternative energy strategies by Stanford professor Mark Jacobsen [via Green Car Congress] ranks corn-based and biomass ethanol as among the worst alternatives to fossil fuels. According to the study, “the Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.” These results were calculated by comparing wind-powered battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), wind-powered hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), concentrated-solar-powered-BEVs, geothermal-powered-BEVs, tidal-powered-BEVs, solar-photovoltaic-powered-BEVs, wave-powered-BEVs, hydroelectric-powered-BEVs, nuclear-powered-BEVs, coal-with-carbon-capture-powered-BEVs, corn-E85 vehicles, and cellulosic-E85 vehicles (listed in order of the study’s calculated impacts).

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“Jet Gate” was a bit of an embarassment all ’round. Even Detroit’s fiercest critics (oh me! pick me!) understand that a business jet is an acceptable expense when you’re running a multi-national corporation. Provided, of course, you use the jet to get an efficient, realistic, first-hand look at conditions “on the ground” within your far-flung Empire; from factories to suppliers to dealers. Rather than, I dunno, ferrying the wife and kids back and forth to Seattle. Or flying to one location that’s well-served by commercial traffic. Anyway, Detroit’s chastened uber-suits made a big show of selling the jets (how’s that going guys?) and wheeling into DC (for round two) in their companies’ most fuel efficient products. Well, not the most efficient. That would have hurt. And now, thanks to The Detroit News’ Charlie LeDuff, TTAC can  reveal that Mr. Mulally and Mr. Wagoner’s drivers– yes, drivers– “split the job.” What’s more, “Those who drove the executives to Washington flew home to Detroit, while those charged with driving the executives back flew one way to Washington to pick them up.” LeDuff says “In the end, it would have been cheaper to fly the jets.” But we couldn’t possibly comment.

“It’s cheap – not, perhaps, recession-bustingly so, but under £10,000 ($15k) It has some of the dash and cheek of the Mini, but none of the ubiquity, and is roughly two-thirds of the price. And it’s the future of driving. As a US Government report into the motor industry has stated: ‘The shift in consumer preferences towards smaller, more fuel-efficient passenger cars appears to be permanent.’ (The report said this in 1980, a year after giving Chrysler $1 billion of bail-out money to arrest its spiral towards the plughole. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.)”

An eye-watering death scent surrounds Chrysler going into this week. With a last-ditch bailout likely to focus on GM, and even the hometown cheerleaders kicking around the idea of throwing ChryCo in the volcano, Auburn Hills has all but given up on trying to staunch the flow of bad news. Of all the Chrysler-related bad news, nothing jumps out like the persistent rumors of Pentastar dealers offering two-for-one deals on Auburn Hills Iron. We first heard of this happening in the UK with overstock Avengers, but the phenomenon is spreading to the states. Automotive News [sub] reports that If you buy a 2008 Dakota for $27,590 at Bettenhausen Dodge in Tinley Park, Ill, Mr Bettenhausen will throw in a lightly-used 08 PT Cruiser for your trouble. “The automotive business is no longer about how much money you can make,” says the Bettenhausen. “It’s about minimizing losses. We need to get ourselves to a breakeven point in this challenging market.” Especially when Chrysler’s right there to twist the knife. Automotive News [sub] reveals that the Chrysler Sales Bank is back to plague dealers with yet more inventory they can’t sell and don’t want.

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John L. Perry’s column on Newsmax.com is way out there. But his comparison ‘twixt the Motown bailout and Charles Ponzi’s infamous con game (whereby the first in bilk the last out) isn’t entirely forced hot air (i.e. all heat and no light). “Under a Ponzi scheme, the sheep get fleeced because they want to play the game. They convince themselves they’ll get rich quickly. Otherwise why part with a single dollar? In fact, the crook running the Ponzi scheme has a hard time beating off the gullible, who can’t wait to be gulled. Under the Detroit scheme, every opinion poll taken — for whatever that’s worth — shows American taxpayers overwhelmingly do not want their tax dollars spent this way. Apparently, they don’t know what’s good for them.” In other words, no, the bailout is not a Ponzi scheme. It’s worse. “In a collapsed Ponzi scheme, the crook in the private sector can go to jail. In a collapsed Detroit scheme, no one in government goes to jail.”