Autocar slips this little nugget in an alarming alarmist story that Ford will run out of cash by May: “Ford has already pulled all of its UK advertising across all mediums until the end of the year.” I’m Googling like mad, but can’t find any corroboration. If true, this is some SERIOUS SHIT. Meanwhile, TTAC’s Ken Elias debunks Autocar’s assertion that FoMoCo will be out of dough by the spring. “AutoCar’s analysis on Ford’s cash flow is incorrect. For the year to date, Ford has used $15.7 billion in cash, although only $2.9 billion relates to pre-tax losses. The bulk of the cash used to date reflects mostly restructuring efforts due to constriction in working capital ($6.7 billion) and funding the required VEBA to the amount of $4.6 billion. Since these are mostly one-time items, the cash burn situation at Ford does not appear as dire as that of GM. Any stabilization of Ford’s North American business will stem its cash outflows.” Thanks for the heads-up Ken.

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 British Government’s love for cameras of all kinds is well known, and its passion for speed cameras is a story we’ve followed at TTAC for some time. Until now, the news we’ve reported has been consistently bad, unless you happen to be a big fan of increasing government surveillance for revenue-building purposes. But the Times of London reports the speed camera onslaught may have reached its zenith, as the town of Swindon has become the first British municipality to ban the automatic speed traps. The Tory-led council of Swindon banned the devices, for a variety of reasons, although it seems that the “blatant tax on motorists” angle may have taken a back seat to the camera’s half-million-dollar annual maintenance costs in the decision. Hysterical opponents of the move wail that the council would have “blood on its hands” when the first person is killed by a speeding driver.

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A Shropshire, UK speed camera escaped serious damage last week after a vigilante attempted to set it on fire. The Shropshire Star reports that “A tyre was placed on top of the camera in Dawley Road, Arleston, shortly after 4am and a blanket draped over the top. The arsonists then poured a full can of petrol over the top and set it on fire. Sub-officer Alan Wilson, of Wellington fire station, described it as a ‘deliberate attack.'” Ya think? The plan failed, however, when the fire burned upward without generating enough heat to damage the camera housing. “Fortunately for us [the local fire department], and for those who pay for them [the people caught by the camera?], it went upwards and didn’t damage the speed camera. We think it is still working.” Don’t let the English understatement fool you; Big Brother is mighty miffed. “We would appeal for anyone with information in relation to the incident to come forward.” And no wonder…

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A British Broadcasting Corporation News broadcast showing speed camera traps causing crashes has now been made public. The April 21 BBC report was meant to highlight government efforts as part of a European “crackdown on speeding” using video excerpts from the Norfolk Speed Camera Partnership. The excerpts unintentionally showcased motorists’ panic when surprised by a “talivan” operating from a freeway overpass. “He jams on his brakes when he sees the speed truck,” BBC News reporter Mike Cartwright said in describing an October 3, 2005 incident. “He smacks into the barrier and amazingly slides in between those two cars there and nobody was hurt — a very lucky escape indeed for all the drivers involved in that.” A second video taken June 18, 2007 shows a vehicle surprised by a speed camera on a wet road. “And the same thing here,” Cartwright said. “The guy jams on his brakes and he goes up the embankment.” Shortly after the news program aired, the BBC removed all copies of the footage from its website. Motorist Keith Jones enlisted the help of the Association of British Drivers to urge the BBC, the Norfolk Speed Camera Partnership and the UK Information Commissioner to release the publicly funded tapes under open records laws. The government authorities refused to do so, citing “technical difficulties.” Speaking of which…

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Pistonheads paints actor Daniel Craig’s pass on a free Aston (any Aston) as some sort of prima donna-ish behaviour. After all, A FREE BLOODY ASTON, MATE! “The actor reckons it doesn’t make sense to drive an Aston in London – which seems rather a churlish excuse considering Aston has reportedly given him a set of keys to its toy cupboard. ‘I could drive faster and more furiously on the track than anywhere on the road. I live in London and it doesn’t make sense to drive an Aston Martin there. I’ve nowhere to park it,’ Craig recently told reporters. Has our Mr Bond lost his mojo, we wonder?” Oh please. As our Adrian Imonti wrote, “Driving in London just for fun is as sensible as rollerblading on the autobahn.” And as I pointed out in March, London now charges £120 ($202) for a parking ticket. That’s if you don’t get towed. And don’t forget the congestion charge. Or insurance cover. Or the cost of parking. And road tax. Yes, yes, Craig can afford all that. But the hassles are immense, from actually finding a space to remembering to pay for everything. And then’s there’s the traffic itself. It’s much quicker to walk, hop in a limo or take a taxi (God forbid a celeb should ride the Tube). A free moped. Now that would be a different story.

As bailout fever sweeps the globe, no automaker wants to be the only manufacturer on the block without a fat government check. Automotive News Europe [ANE, sub] reports that Jaguar/Land Rover CEO David Smith recently hit up UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for a few bob. “The bold and concerted actions announced by our government this week to unblock the banking system and the vital first cut in interest rates from the Bank of England are welcome, but we still need to take action to stimulate the real economy,” Smith tells ANE. Smith declined to put a number on just how much “action to stimulate the real economy” Jag/Landie required. And though the boss of the proud British marques hit the right PR notes with his use of the term “our government,” he was also being a bit misleading. After all, has Old Blighty forgotten that Jaguar/Land Rover now belongs to those upstart Indians at Tata? Sure, the two brands build cars in England (for now). But is Downing Street really going to break out the bankroll to help Mumbai’s bottom line? Not bloody likely.

Autocar‘s Steve Cropley doesn’t discuss the US market much, focused as he is on European happenings. But the man who called Rick Wagoner’s take on ethanol “crisp and lucid” (and blacklisted our own Robert Farago from Autocar’s pages back in the day), now agrees that a US automaker will almost certainly cease to exist. Unfortunately, his belief in this inevitability is borne not of clear-sighted analysis of Detroit’s predicament, but of a deep and abiding love for all things GM. Speculating on rumors of a possible GM-Chrysler hookup, Cropely suggests that Chrysler should go down and be subsumed by the General. “My own impression,” writes Cropely, “is that, even when times are as tough as this, a GM led by Rick Wagoner and the fine teams that he’s assembled, stands a better chance of making the cars we’ll need tomorrow than what I’ve seen of the modern, Cerberus-controlled Chrysler. All GM needs is time to implement its bold plan followed by some faith from car buyers.” But Cropely’s analysis is not all GM fanboyishness. “The Chrysler marque itself stopped meaning very much to me 20 years ago,” intones Cropely. “I mean, who cares if the Voyager and PT Cruiser live or die?” [Note to Steve: they are dead, and nobody cares.] Picking Chrysler to go belly-up is hardly a bold claim at this point, and arguing that GM is the firm to fix it is beyond absurd. Still, add another post-Detroit Three pundit to the Cassandra list.

The financial conflagration which started in the US has spread around the world. Bloomberg tells us that in the UK “despite an easing in prices at the gas pump, sales of new cars in September tumbled, falling 21.2% from the same month a year ago. That was even worse than August, when sales were down 18.6%.” Porsches are apparently the SUV’s twin sister over there with a 33.3% sales plunge. But apparently the UK‘s art market is strong: “Stuart McCullough, board member for sales and marketing at Bentley said in an interview last week that some customers were putting off delivery because they didn’t want to make such a lavish and visible purchase when many consumers faced tougher times. ‘We are seeing buyers not taking delivery of our cars, but continuing to invest in the art market’, he said.” You do have to wonder how Sir Stuart knows this. Do his customers invite him into their homes for private showings of their art? Perhaps he will find a still hot selling Smart Car mounted on a pedestal as an object d’ art.

I am not a paranoid survivalist libertarian who constantly checks the horizon for black helicopters. (I only scan the skies for a few days after posting a General Motors Death Watch.) But, as a former U.K. resident alien, I’ve been following the erosion of civil rights and the concomitant rise of police power in Britain ever since the first speed cameras appeared in The Land of Hope and Glory. Between then and now, the right to remain silent has been abridged and the UK has become the world’s most surveilled nation. And now the gazettelive.co.uk reports that “Specialist Cleveland Police officers took part in a ground-breaking blitz against criminals using the region’s road networks. Officers from Teesside joined colleagues from six other UK forces and more than 20 other European countries [Italics added] to take part in Operation Orbit.” Six? Or seven? “A ring of steel was provided by seven police forces at locations on the ring-roads of York, mainly the A64 and the A1237,” revealed Sergeant Jason Wathes, leaders of the Cleveland Police Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) interception team. And the justification? “Sgt Wathes said the initial objective was to target thieves, drug-runners and those carrying weapons. But motorists driving without tax, insurance or otherwise disqualified were also stopped. ‘We know who the criminals are, but we can’t always secure prosecutions. But we can apply traffic legislation to target the criminals and disrupt them from using the roads.'” Oh, that’s alright then.

For the second time in just over a year, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority has busted Lexus for making unsupported “green” claims in an advertisement. The Guardian reports that a recent ad for the Lexus RX400h has been pulled for implying “that the car caused little or no harm to the environment and gave a misleading impression of the car’s CO2 emissions in comparison with other vehicles.” The ad which asserted that the hybrid RX was “perfect for today’s climate (and tomorrow’s)” caused four complaints to the ASA, which apparently is enough to get an ad pulled in the Land of Hope and Glory. Meanwhile, Lexus said that the use of the word “climate” in the ad was meant to operate at “two levels.” As Farago says, irony is a bitch.

While American automakers struggle to find something small and profitable to sell, the UK has been forcing people into teeny tiny passenger cars for decades. As a result of high gas prices, speed camera fines, insurance, VAT, insane repair and maintenance rates and motoring taxes that would make an American drive his car straight into Boston harbor, British motorists can choose from a huge range of really small, really slow, really frugal cars. AutoExpress, which never met a car it didn’t want to take home to mother, offers a run-down on its top five four-wheeled “penny pinchers.” Despite the fact that some American pistonheads [claim to long] for small, cheap, fun, Euro-style cars, the chances of these glacial yet parsimonious machines making it In The Land of the Free are somewhere between “not on your Nelly” and “only when U.S. gas prices triple.” Still, it’s nice to know they’re out there, somewhere.

UK privacy campaigners have been sounding the alarm ever since Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras were first introduced into The Land of Hope and Glory. Recent revelations by The Guardian prove the truth of the old adage “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean everyone’s not out to get you.” “A national network of roadside cameras will be able to ‘read’ 50m licence plates a day,” the paper reports. “Enabling officers to reconstruct the journeys of motorists. Police have been encouraged to ‘fully and strategically exploit’ the database, which is already recording the whereabouts of 10 million drivers a day, during investigations ranging from counter-terrorism to low-level crime.” And the hits keep happening. “Senior officers” had promised the data would only be stored for two years. The Home Office has now admitted that it will keep the info on file for five. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the database would give police “extraordinary powers of surveillance.”  In fact, “This would never be allowed in any other democratic country.” From his lips to your ears.

I’m not quite sure why I continue to cover the UK’s anti-speeding jihad. These posts never get much attention on this side of the pond, even though The Land of Hope and Glory’s obsession with speeding (and speeding revenue) is either a hateful harbinger of what’s to come in The Land of the Free, or a simple, stark warning: DON’T GO THERE. Either way, Pistonheads reports that “yellow vultures”– so-called SPECS cameras which average speed between point A and Point B– are set to replace radar or induction loop-based speed cameras. While safety campaigners and government accountants welcome any system where speeding motorists can’t “cheat” (slow down at the camera site and then speed up again), it’s the next step in Big Brother surveillance. And I happen to agree with the Association of British Drivers, who claim that fixating on your speed, rather than maintaining overall situational awareness, leads to more accidents, not fewer. Not to mention disrupting the “natural” traffic flow, creating accidents when motorists trying to overtake slower vehicles intent on obeying the letter of the law.