First, the upsides. When I helped a pal who owns a kindergarten schlep some cinder blocks, I got unprecedented, appreciative smiles from a group of young mothers (I disapprove of porno jargon, so I won’t use the term “MILF”, but you know what I mean). I was expecting to see a lot of hate, but the only person who screamed at me was a fuzzy-bearded hippy. The TDI has oodles of low-end oomph, so it provides the particular pleasure you get from driving something that is both massive (2.4 metric tons) and muscular, especially when it’s full of stuff. This Q7’s 0 – 60 time of 8.6 seconds belies its 500 NM’s of torque. Basically flawless handling intensifies the elephant-on-dancing-shoes effect. And even when I drove it Teutonic-aggressively, I got at least 16 MPG.

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The auto industry and auto exports have top billing in China’s current 5 Year Plan. (Yes, for sentimental reasons, they still have one of those.) Yet when it comes to the car export part, China is still light-years away from fulfilling their master plan. The Vice Director General of the Department of Mechanic, Electronic and Hi-Tech Industry, Ministry of Commerce, made the startling admission. “China’s auto exports are still in the early stage, leaving a large gap in global exports,” Zhou Shijie told Xinhua. Translation: China’s auto exports are in the doghouse of the export powerhouse. “It is difficult for export companies to master the vehicle entry policy in foreign countries.” Translation: Our cars failed miserably in crash tests, we have trouble with pesky U.S. FMVSS and European ECE regulations, which we can barely comprehend (let alone satisfy). We’re fed up and we’re not gonna take it. No, we’re not gonna take it. Uh-oh.

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The Motley Fool says satellite radio is too big too fail. Kidding! But point taken. “In reality, there’s no good reason for the government to step in and save satellite radio. It’s a terrible business that’s done nothing but pile up losses and disappoint shareholders. It can’t compete with the Internet, podcasts, or MP3s. The business destroys value. If the government were to loan it money, it would never see that money again. Bailing out satellite radio is a ridiculous notion. No one — not even the politicians in Washington (let’s hope) — is considering it. Yet Washington is considering a hefty bailout for U.S. automakers — an industry with much more in common with satellite radio than anyone would like to believe.” The rest of the piece argues against a Detroit bailout. It should give the American automakers’ political supporters pause’ it ends with an increasingly familiar call to readers to contact their reps to oppose the bailout. Take it from someone who surfs for a living (Jesus, is that what I do?): there’s a growing groundswell of public opinion against throwing money at Motown.

The news that GMAC’s mortgage unit Residential Capital (a.k.a. ResCap) might go belly-up (AP via Yahoo) is shocking only because General Motors is the one saying it. What exactly was the captive finance arm of an auto maker doing so heavily into the mortgage business in the first place? Oh well, if Porsche can make a fortune gambling in the markets, why not everyone? The modern mortgage origination, funding and servicing business is so complicated as to be almost inscrutable. To wit: “ResCap said it posted an additional $200 million in collateral with Fannie Mae and sold off the rights to collect payments on $12.7 billion in loans, or 9 percent of the total amount it collects for Fannie Mae. Had ResCap not acted, Fannie Mae could have severely curtained its loan purchases from ResCap.” I really miss the days when home loans were made by banks using their capital plus deposits and were held, service and managed by said same banks. We may yet go back to the future on that one. Meanwhile, GM dropped a second bombshell in the same SEC filing by saying “that Delphi Corp., its former parts-making operation that was spun off in 1999, is unlikely to emerge from bankruptcy protection in the short term and may not be able to emerge at all.”  TTAC called it.

Well, well, GM CEO Rick Wagoner had a little chin wag with the boys over at Automotive News [AN, sub]. “General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner says GM’s financial distress is so dire that it must line up financial assistance from Washington before President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January. ‘This is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently,’ Wagoner said.” And that’s just for starters. “Now is the time to ‘overshoot, not undershoot; when it comes to assistance for the auto industry,” Wagoner pronounced, revealing that he’d rather be safe than sorry with your money. Makes sense to me, in a “TTAC earns a rep writing Gneneral Motors Death Watches” sort of way. In exchange for the money, Rick’s “willing to offer the government preferred stock, set limits on executive compensation and speed the introduction of fuel-efficient vehicles.” How… beneficent. And last but not least, Wagoner reckons the man who’s steered GM straight into the iceberg is the best guy to, uh, keeping ramming the ice. “Wagoner said he is not prepared to resign in return for government aid. ‘I don’t think it’d be a very smart move,’ he said.'”I think our job is to make sure we have the best management team to run GM. It’s not clear to me what purpose would be served…'” Love the ellipsis guys! Did Rick’s voice really trail off into silence? Nice touch.

When we read over at Automotive News [sub] that GM is asking employees at the Vehicle Engineering Center in suburban Detroit, the proving ground in Milford, Mich., and the desert proving ground near Mesa, Ariz to take December 22nd and 23rd off, we wanted some answers. After all, GM spokesman Dan Flores’ claim that “it’ll give us significant savings in utilities and facility expenses,” is hardly credible. Sure, GM is trying to make $5b in cuts by the new year celebrations, but cutting two days of salaried work surely isn’t a cost-effective solution, is it? Well, we reached for the big red phone and were lucky enough to be connected directly to Rick Wagoner himself. What follows is a transcript of our conversation.

TTAC: At this festive time of year, Mr. Scrooge Wagoner, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time, is it not?

Wagoner: Why? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

TTAC: Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.

Wagoner: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides, If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!

TTAC: You… you’re not serious, right? Surely you’re better than that?

Wagoner: I’m too old and beyond hope! Go and redeem some younger, more promising creature, and leave me to keep Christmas in my own way!

TTAC: Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

Wagoner: Bah, Humbug.

Assuming Detroit is about scarf several billions of your children’s children’s children’s tax dollars, I think you have a right to decide what strings should be attached to the bailout bucks. So, what strings do you think should be attached to the bailout bucks? Although Washington and Detroit see all three ailing American automakers as much or a muchness, TTAC readers are well aware that there are three types of epic failure involved. In GM’s case, it’s everything: models, brands, dealers, advertising, management, product development, you name it, they’ve screwed it up (with the possible exception of pickup trucks). Some kind of wholesale management slaughter– from mid-level all the way to the Bored of Directors and every Wagoner, Lutz, LaNeve and Henderson in between– would at least give me some sense of vindication (and it IS all about me, no matter how much I protest). How you can restructure GM without playing the Chapter 11 “get out of 50-state franchise law and UAW contracts free” card is beyond me. But perhaps not you. (OK, now it’s about you.) In Chrysler’s case, how do you prevent those rat bastards at Cerberus making a penny on this deal at any point ever? And if GM’s glue-on-the-hoof, what of Chrysler? Personally, I’d rather invest in Tesla. But as Pooh says, what to do? What to do? Or is that Eeyore? Ford is the Golden Child. Or, more precisely, the kid who’s coughing but not showing any other signs of plague. Yet. Seems to me they’re on the right track, but running out of rail. And maybe we should get rid of those pesky Fords who call the shots at Ford (I originally typed “shits” but that’s just my subconscious talking). Or not. I dunno. I’m thinking about all this for an editorial. Little help?

Poor Mark LaNeve. It’s bad enough that he’s gonna be fired soon for having overseen some of the worst sales declines in GM history, including a 45 percent plummet last month. Now, those twisted bastards over at Toyota won’t even let him enjoy a freaking football game without publicly humiliating and annoying him with those damned “saved by zero” ads. Luckily, LaNeve always has a sympathetic ear over at the Detroit News. Or six. No fewer than three scribes get credit for giving voice to LaNeve’s tortured soul in a terse paragraph that tugs at the funnybone heartstrings. “I’m a football fan,” LaNeve told DetN during the weekly GM sales call. “I saw (“saved by zero” ads) 52,000 times,” he reportedly “moaned” of his Sunday otherwise well spent. Well, I guess you gotta say something during those sales calls. Y’know, once you get past the “we’re down 45 percent” bit. (Warning, Video NSFS (Not Safe For Sanity))

Iʼm about as attracted to vans as Evangelicals are to the Church of England. But there’z one MPV Iʼve always found retina-candy, due to its flowing lines and aggressive stance: the Mazda Premacy. Mazda launched the original Premacy at the same time as the Zoom-Zoom ad campaign that’s become the core of the Mazda design philosophy. Strange and original organic shapes are little by little finding their way from concept (Kiyora, Kazamai, Furai, Taiki, Hakaze, Ryuga, Nagare) to production. For the practical part of this chop, glass stripes in the roof complement the large windows, to create an open-space feel. The cutout in the A-pillar solves the huge  (small?) visibility problem endemic to MPVs. For the Zoom-Zoom part, I wanted to make the new Premacy look fresh and include some of the details weʼve seen on the show cars– but not more than the market is ready to bear. The grille is all-new, mixing their new reverse pentagon with a more traditional air intake. Also on the zoom-zoomish side: the lower breathing holes and the organic pattern creases on the side. Wide wheel arches add some muscle and tells everyone (who cares about such things) that this is a Mazda.

Nobody should be too surprised that Avengers aren’t selling particular well in Britain. Relaunching the Dodge brand a year ago hasn’t exactly paid off for Chrysler. But at least now they’re getting some media play from it… although not the good kind. Autosavant reports that Dodge is rapidly becoming a joke famous in Old Blighty for offering its butched-up Sebring sibling at literally half of its MSRP. In all fairness, the deal was offered at retailer website Broadspeed.com, and apparently Chrysler is actually unhappy about the development. After all, the the British list price for a fully-loaded Avenger 2.4 SXT was already low for its class at $28,700. Broadspeed’s $14,200 deal on the same car did work, however (if only at the expense of Chrysler’s little remaining dignity), as the entire inventory sold out. Autosavant does note that  “rumours suggest the dealers who supplied the cars did so without the consent of an angry Chrysler UK, which is currently expensively promoting another Dodge, the Journey, in prime-time TV commercials.” On the other hand, at least the Avengers are gone now, rapidly depreciating in the hands of British bargain-seekers who will likely be derided in the thoroughfare for their choice in vehicles. And we’re left to guess at just how low Chrysler (or their dealers) will stoop next.

The year was 1948 and well, Tucker happened. There are many sides to Preston Tucker’s story. One is essentially what Francis Ford Coppola portrayed in his biopic, Tucker: The Man and his Dream, where a man with a better idea is prevented from fairly competing by the two-headed serpent of Washington and big business. The flip side is that Mr. Tucker was a scam artist that conned would-be stock holders out of $15m by selling them accessories for a product that didn’t exist. He was indicted for fraud, you know. But what really sank Tucker? Ironically, it was the “Tuckermatic” transmission. Most likely because of his racing background, Preston Tucker stuck a helicopter engine in the back of the Tucker Torpedo. Initially air-cooled, the flat-six produced a whopping 372 lb-ft of torque. Enough torque to rip the guts out of most transmissions in 1948. Tucker decided to address the problem with his Tuckermatic, a slushbox that sported only 27 moving parts– 90 less than conventional cog swappers. Only he never bothered to put a reverse gear in the prototype tranny. The press not only had a field day writing about “the car that couldn’t backup.” The Tucker brand lost much of its luster. Sure, he eventually threw a Cord automatic into his Torpedo. But the damage was done. Despite building 51 prototypes, many alleged that P. Tucker either never intended to mass produce the cars or that he was in so deep with on the development end of things he never got around to buying the necessary machines and tools to fire-up an assembly line. Any of this sound, well, shockingly similar to what’s going on at Tesla? While the details are obviously different (Washington and Detroit getting anything accomplished? Ha ha ha ha ha) the large strokes are, well… Promise one transmission, deliver another that prevents the car from achieving its advertised performance potential. Claim that development mules are actually production cars. Collect large amounts of money from investors only to play fast and loose with the books. Tucker and his six co-defendants were eventually cleared of any and all wrong doing, but the damage (and Tucker) was done. How far behind is Tesla?

Edward Lapham, executive editor of Automotive News, is so not a cheerleader anymore. In fact, the TTAC convert now reckons it’s going to be Lord of the Flies in Detroit. Lapham gathered this insight from an ex-GM exec who “has moved on to bigger and better things. Well, OK, at least better things. The exec has done enough since leaving GM that he has a broader view of the world.” [ED: is that code for some kind of deviant sexual practice?] The exec predicts that automakers, suppliers, and dealers were not likely to react to the current crisis by forming an alliance and working together to save their collective rear ends. Instead, each player will look out only for itself. For dealers, this means “wanton, willful, premeditated starvation.” GM won’t have to buy out weak dealers. It will simply feed them fewer and fewer models, and all but the strongest will die. My take: this should come as a surprise to no one who has studied the industry. Even in the best of times, Detroit’s senior executives have failed to build mutually-beneficial relationships with the unions, suppliers, dealers, car buyers, or even corporate middle management. And bad marriages rarely get better when debt piles up and bankruptcy looms.

Co-dependent relationships are never pretty, and they usually end only when one half ends up in prison, the poorhouse or the morgue. With GM seemingly headed towards all three at once, its once-captive credit arm, GMAC, swears it will no longer play Tina to the General’s Ike. Automotive News [sub] quotes GMAC CFO Robert Hull as saying his firm plans to “shift GMAC from its captive roots to an independent deposit-funded lender and servicer.” As we reported earlier, changing GMAC’s status to a “Bank holding corporation” will give it access to the $700b TARP fund, but it also means that GM will have to exit the building. As in sell off its remaining 49 percent so that GMAC can rejoin society as a full-service bank, complete with FDIC insurance, credit cards, and a little dish of Werthers Originals by each teller. So GMAC will get taxpayer-funded security, and GM might even get a little cash out of the deal… but who loses? Why, the dealers, of course!

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Recently-increased emissions standards (along with CAFE requirements) have received quite a bit of attention from Detroit’s blame-everyone-but-us squad. But bailout-begging agendas aside, just how hard are the new(ish) EPA standards to meet? Not that hard at all, according to an EPA report covered by Green Car Congress. The Office Of Transportation and Air Quality’s Report on Engine and Vehicle Compliance (pdf) for 2007 shows that the overwhelming majority of vehicles on the market actually meet or pass the EPA’s Tier Two Bin Five standard in current form. In fact, most US-market cars and light trucks currently boast a 46 to 90 percent compliance margin, meaning the amount by which they actually exceed EPA requirements. Under the EPA regime, models which “over-comply” with standards earn their makers credits which can be applied to under-conforming models. Of the 40-odd manufacturers on the market, five (Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Toyota) had a positive Tier Two emission limit credit balance for 2007, while only Aston Martin carried a net-negative credit balance. The credit-positive firms tended to certify most of their vehicles at Bin Five levels, while adding a few sub-Bin Five (higher standard) vehicles to gain credits. Those which merely met the standard certified at a mix of Bin levels which added up to an average of Bin Five. That wasn’t so hard, was it?