We obviously were micromanaging our cash — down to the penny, down to the minute — because that was our lifeblood

GM Spokesman Dan Flores in an Automotive News [sub] story on GM’s decision to pay suppliers weekly instead of monthly. The savage irony? By making payments monthly, GM actually had a harder time managing its dwindling cash pile during the bad old days referenced by Flores. And now? “We’re not going to save money by doing this,” says Flores. “But it’s a better, more reasonable, smarter way to run the business.” On the downside, the changes won’t mean suppliers will get paid any sooner as GM plans on maintaining the 47-day lag between supplier delivery and payment. Plus ça change…

I think the competitors like BMW have spent a fortune to pick up the market share they picked up (through leasing). … We’re not going to go in and offer giveaway leases with a premium brand.

Cadillac sales boss Ed Peper in a Wall Street Journal piece detailing Cadillac’s inability to sell (and now, lease) its vehicles. “Our business used to be about 65% leasing,” one Cadillac dealer explains. “We’re currently running at about 5% lease [and] we are continuing to lose people who we used to be able to go from one Cadillac lease to the next.” Despite the Beemer-bashing, Peper says Cadillac is looking at increasing lease percentages by “getting more aggressive with leasing each month.” After all, it’s not that Cadillac doesn’t want to lease. The problem is that GM doesn’t have a captive lender anymore who is willing to subsidize the leases that Cadillac’s business depends on.

Elon Musk and Martin Eberhard, two of the co-founders of Tesla announced today that they have resolved their dispute.

Tesla Motors statement announcing that the firm’s feuding founders have decided to play nice with each other instead of suing each other. “Without Martin’s indispensable efforts, Tesla Motors would not be here today,” says Elon. “As a co-founder of the company, Elon’s contributions to Tesla have been extraordinary,” says Martin. Aren’t they adorable?

Silicon Valley believes itself different from Detroit. From anywhere, really, In fact, they’re masters of the friggin’ universe! Detroit? Detroit’s automakers must die! Will die! Are dying. Die Detroit, die! Long live . . . Tesla?

“I do not believe that the U.S. auto business can be competitive,” said Ray Lane, a managing partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, told Automotive News [sub] “I don’t see any of these new car companies based in Detroit.”

I’m optimistic we can pay off the loans faster than people think. Payment is due in 2015. We want to do it much faster than that.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson breaks our incredulity meter at the Frankfurt Auto Show. And how does Fritz propose pulling this coup off? “Creating value for our shares is the best way the taxpayer will be repaid,” he explains. In other words, Henderson expects GM’s Summer 2010 IPO to reflect the $68B market cap valuation it needs to pay back taxpayer loans. Meanwhile, GM’s Chairman reportedly puts the odds of success on any timeline at 60-40. Paging Optimist Prime . . .

We were surprised by how little had been done in the past 24 months. It will be a slow progress in the beginning but we will see significant improvement in 2010…. If the numbers end up being as we see today, there is a good chance we will have to put additional stress on the manufacturing system. But it’s too early to tell.

-Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne in Automotive News [sub, available sub free at CNN]. Is Marchionne just blaming the most convenient possible scapegoat, or did he really take Chrysler on a taxpayer-funded platter because he actually thought Cerberus was doing a bang-up job?

So, you thought your $14,312,130,642 “investment” in New Chrysler bought you some accountability, seeing as it’s your tax money? Here’s your Frankfurt wake-up call from Uncle Sam’s appointed/anointed ChryCo CEO, via the Associated Press:

Marchionne said Wednesday that Chrysler’s new business plan won’t be released until November, and declined to discuss the forthcoming model lineup.

From The Detroit News:

When employees rent cars they “should be a GM brand whenever feasible,” the expense rules said. But they are also “to be the lowest cost vehicle.”

GM’s constant reference to the “perception gap” is, without doubt, the most galling thing about the company. Despite sucking-up over $62 billion in taxpayer money, the nationalized automaker continues to insist there’s nothing wrong with our products. Oh no, American-consumers are a bunch of [Jap-loving] idiots. If if they would just open their minds they’d see that they’re idiots. And buy our cars. And save the company. And keep Mexicans Americans employed. And get their taxes back. Now, adding insult to insult, they’re launching a taxpayer-funded ad campaign based on that premise: “May the Best Car Win.” Note to New GM: it HAS been winning. Ipso ’effing facto. Now LEAVE IT ALONE. But oh no. In fact, the car Czar who drove GM into the dirt is flooring it, betting the company’s future on this series of comparison ads. And he’s got a new name for “the perception gap” not because he understands the problem but because he’s bored with it.

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Getting involved in European companies is likely to bring a complexity of personnel management that will blow their minds.

European auto analyst Graeme Maxton in an Automotive News [sub] report on potential issues with Chinese buyouts of western auto brands. “I’m not sure they can handle a brand like Volvo and turn it around,” adds an anonymous “senior executive working in China with a major U.S. automaker.” To be fair, Maxton concedes that auto-sector mergers are difficult under any circumstances, but that doesn’t stop AN [sub] from trotting out an ominous quote from BAIC chairman Xu Hey, who blames “western discrimination” for China’s trouble wooing established brands.

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According to The Brisbane Times, Holland is fed up with drug-related tourism. Moves are afoot to restrict dope and hash-peddling coffee shops to domestic clientele. You can understand the local’s frustration, what with non-Dutch automobiles clogging their roads in their occupants’ efforts to spend billions of Euros in-country.

Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, two other southern border councils, announced last year that their eight coffee shops would be interdicted from selling cannabis from next Wednesday in a bid to push back some 25,000 drug tourists per week.

This should make an end, the mayors explained, to the long lines of foreign cars on their roads, hundreds of youths hovering outside coffee shops on weekends, and illegal drug dealers attracted by their presence.

Participating in GM’s global technology development and purchasing organizations secures important economies of scale for Opel/Vauxhall and other GM brands. For example, vehicles that represent new propulsion technologies, such as the Ampera extended-range electric vehicle, can only be brought to market in a joint effort.

“GM operates many joint ventures around the world and has proven in the past that this business model delivers the right balance of independence, innovation and synergies,” said John Smith, GM Group Vice President Business Development. “All parties will work hard to close the deal as soon as possible,” he added.

GM straps on the rose-colored blinders and dangles the Volt in its presser on today’s agreement to sell Opel to Magna and Sberbank. Ironic counterpoint after the jump.

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Under certain of these scenarios, GM will be able to return a high percentage of the total funds advanced by the taxpayers, and Chrysler will return the money invested as part of the restructuring. Other scenarios, which in Treasury’s view are more likely, show much lower recoveries for the initial loans made to GM and Chrysler.

—Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the future of the bailout. The search for a one-handed economist continues . . . .

“We’re building more than one car; we’re building a brand,”

McLaren boss Ron Dennis, on the announcement of the one car that McLaren is bringing to market in 2011, the MP4-12C. By 2015 McLaren hopes to offer a 911 competitor and a Carrera GT-class super-duper car, bringing total volume to 4,000 units per year, reports the Times. The MP4-12C is named for Dennis’s 1997 Formula One-winning race car, and will be rocking all the mid-engine V8, adaptive suspension, carbon-fiber chassis, gullwing doors and seven-speed accoutrement one expects at a $250k price point. Meanwhile, the designer of McLaren’s first road car is betting on tiny city cars. And it’s tough to tell which of the two is crazier.

“If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.” Doug Larson, author of Don’t Shoot the Decoys: Original Stories of Waterfowling Obsession.