BMW enthusiasts would have you believe that there’s only one “real” M3: the original 1986 model (codenamed E30). That bad boy began life as a homologation special for Group A Touring Car racing. As BMW updated the racer, the road car received power and handling upgrades. When the six-cylinder E36 M3 appeared in 1995 (US), enthusiasts derided it as too heavy and, well, comfortable. By the time the E46 M3 appeared in 2000, the ultimate driving sports sedan was considered a bit of a pig—by True Believer standards. In fact, the third generation M3 is an animal; it wants to be driven hard and put away wet. As you would when purchasing any German hot rod, tuck away a bit of money for repairs and consult a specialist before you plunge into an E46 M3. Consumer Reports put the E46 M3 on its reliability list, but a bunch of smaller stuff can and will go wrong, and your M car will need regular infusions of pricey fluids, pads and other consumables. Autotrader lists a Your Shitty Economy Car of the Week: a “pristine” (albeit white) dealer-sourced 53k-mile 2003 E46 M3 at a shade under $25K. So, about twenty large, then. Plus the turbo?

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Does this headline seem familiar? We noted a while back that British reliability records showed Chrysler and Fiat sharing space at the bottom of the rankings. Now, Glass’s Guide (via Autocar) has ranked British resale values by model, and Fiat’s Alfa 166 sedan takes dead last place. Not that this is entirely surprising; after all, reliability and resale tend to go hand-in-hand. The troubling part is that abominable resale values are already a major drag on Chrysler’s viability. How on earth is Fiat going to improve this desperate shortcoming for Chrysler, when it can’t beat the resale bug with its own products?

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Whatever happened to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? Robin Leach’s TV series motivated class warriors and aspiring entrepreneurs alike, fortifying the former group’s conviction that they had a sacred duty to redistribute wealth (if only on aesthetic grounds) while inspiring rappers, coke dealers and other venture capitalists to redouble their efforts to reach ever-greater heights of conspicuous consumption. These days we have federal stimulus packages and MTV’s Cribs, which doesn’t include a single golden bath fixture (or a single book, but that’s another story). Ah, but we pistonheads will always have Pebble Beach, where we can watch old money compete with modern-day robber barons to pocket the world’s automotive crown jewels. One can almost hear Robin’s Harrow twang calling the tune: “One lucky collector bought home this 1938 Bugatti Type 57C Special, Ettore Bugatti’s personal car, for $1.38 mmmmmillion dollars.” Leach-like, the majority of the MSM would have you believe the collector car market defies economic gravity. The New York Times sets us straight.

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Charities have been some of the loudest opponents of the Government CARS stimulus, voicing fears that it would cause car donations to plummet. “It varies by market, but there’s been an 11 to 12 percent drop compared with last year,” Volunteers of America VP (vehicle donations) Jim Hartman tells Reuters. “We started seeing it right away in July.” VOA and The Military Order of the Purple Heart each typically receive 40,000 to 50,000 vehicle donations a year. Purple Heart estimates its C4C losses at $105 million over 24 months. Hartman tells Reuters that a bill is pending in congress to increase vehicle donation tax credit caps to $2,500 from the current $500 limit.

The Chevy Impala already gets dumped on for being a fleet queen holdover, but a Kansas City Star investigation reveals that it might not actually be fleety enough for buyers like Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It turns out that Enterprise ordered 66,000 Impalas from GM without the side airbags that are standard equipment on all retail Impalas. Worse still, hundreds of these Impalas were sold with the side bags listed as standard equipment. Enterprise saved $175 on each Impala by deleting the bags, for a total of about $11.5 million in savings. Thanks to the misleading online sales though, Enterprise is offering to buy back the nearly 750 Impalas sold under false pretenses for $750 over Kelly Blue Book Value. Beyond that effort though, Enterprise is defending its standard safety feature deletion by arguing that it never violated any federal mandate. Congratulations, guys, you aren’t criminals. Meanwhile, when it comes to buying fleet vehicles, buyer beware.

The Cash for Clunkers (C4C) program is on its way to Senate approval, as your elected representatives have attached the bill to the $106 billion military spending bill. As the Detroit News reports, the C4C rider sallies forth into legislative battle in the same form as the House version: “Under the program, owners of cars rated at 18 mpg or less in combined highway and city mileage could turn them in for a cash voucher. Buying a new car rated at least 4 mpg higher would earn a $3,500 voucher; a 10 mpg improvement would earn a $4,500 voucher. Pickups would be eligible as long as the new vehicle has a mileage rating of at least 18 mpg and is at least 2 mpg higher than the old vehicle. A new truck rated at least 5 mpg higher than the turned-in vehicle would earn a $4,500 voucher.” One problem: the feds are not planning (i.e., budgeting) for success . . .

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Mr. Niedermeyer has crafted another “Curbside Classic” for your literary delectation and pistonhead perusal. I’ll publish the latest in his series tomorrow. Meanwhile, we’ve started our contest to “name that curbside classic.” This week’s booty: Mr. Herbert H. Blaha’s most estimable work Taschenwörterbuch der Kraftfahrzeugtechnik. That’s a German – English, English – German pocket dictionary of automotive engineering to you and me. [Also available from www.brandstetter-verlag.de.] So, first one to identify this week’s curbside classic gets the tome with which no transplanted Volkswagen technician (or owner, come to think of it) should be without.

In a follow up to E. Niedermeyer’s previous post, details have emerged about the scheme to give rebates to buyers who trade “clunkers” for new, fuel-efficient vehicles. FT.com (Financial Times) reports that the program will cost taxpayers about $4 billion and will spur, according Brian Johnson, an analyst at Barclays Capital, the sale of 3 million units in the “near term” (whatever that means). With the US’ SAAR projected at approximately 9 million, this is a very optimistic prediction.

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The Automotive Lease Guide is slashing projected residuals for 2009 GM and Chrysler vehicles, reports Automotive News [sub]. ALG says that their new 36-month projections reflect the brands’ “uncertainty,” heralding the arrival of yet another dire consequence of bankruptcy that the bailout was supposed to prevent. Oh well, what’s a few billion among friends? Now let’s take a look at the nitty-gritty.

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“Cash for Clunker” policies have been enacted in a number of developed countries as a conveniently “green” way to stimulate new car sales. The idea is sold as a greenhouse gas-reducing measure which provides tax credits for removing older, less-efficient models from the road. Of course the point isn’t to get people out of cars or permanently reduce the number of GHG-emitting vehicles: to claim credits, you typically have to buy a new car. Texas already has its own take on the debt for more debt swap. And now the Congress– well the auto industry anyway– wants a piece of the action. Hence the Accelerated Retirement of Inefficient Vehicles Retirement Act of 2009.

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America is not the only country whose government is Hell bent on supporting an auto industry past its prime. Take Germany. Bitte. Last autumn, the German government announced it would suspend registration taxes on cars to support new-car sales. The moved shaved between $200 (for small cars) and $2000 (for more prolific carbon belchers) from the price of admission. Net result, sales-wise? Nichts. Never mind. Yesterday, Germany’s government felt inspired by the French example to introduce incentives for motorists to scrap their older cars. Now, any owner of a nine-year-old or older German ow-tow-mobile car can collect around $3,000 (€2,500) if he or she junks his or her car and buys a new, hopefully more fuel efficient model. Hmmm. Corporations account for over 50 percent of Germany’s new cars sales. Looking at the other half, few motorists who drive a genuine clunker can afford a new car, with or without incentives. And those who can usually purchase a cheap, non-German car. In light of these inconvenient Aufrichtigkeits, PricewaterhouseCooper’s estimates that the scrapping incentive will add 300k sales to the moribund annual total sounds like a load of baloney. If so, all that remains is greenwashery (“at least we got some of those clunkers off the road”) and expensive government activism. Look for an American version in the next Congressional bailout budget.

CNW Research’s of Brandon, Ore, is in the business of tracking “consumer confidence, new-used floor traffic, manufacturer and dealer incentives, and used vehicle sales by channel.” In their daily work, they stumbled across a disturbing trend. As every grizzled veteran of this industry remembers, when the economy is down, used cars do well, because folks can’t afford new ones. People hold on to their ride much longer, which lowers the supply of used cars. Fewer new car sales mean fewer trade-ins, which lowers the supply of used cars. Or so the wisdom of the grizzled veteran goes. This time, it’s different. Sales of used cars fell 20.7 percent in November, compared with the period a year earlier. That’s still benign compared to the 37 percent hit the new cars took. But it disturbs the veterans nonetheless.

CNW expects 2008 to come in 36.6m units sold, down 11.5 percent from 2007. That would mark the lowest levels since the 1982 recession. Whoa: November new car sales also were the lowest since 1982. Are people tired of cars, whether old or new? Have we just been catapulted back to the bad early Reagan years?

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The Automotive Lease Guide has released its projections for the vehicles most likely to retain their value three years from now, and they’ve awarded the top honors to three compact(ish) cars, the Scion xB, the Honda Fit and BMW’s MINI. The MINI took the overall prize, with ALG predicting that a new Cooper will retain 64.5 percent of its retail value after the average 36-month lease. The xB won the mid-compact category with a projected retention of 63 percent of its new value, while the Fit topped the compact class with a residual value estimated at 59.8 percent. ALG president John Blair tells Automotive News [sub] that price, design, new-vehicle incentives and fleet sales all went into the projections, with special consideration paid this year to Detroit’s woes. “The public needs to have confidence that the companies are solid and they’re going to be around to service the vehicles and provide a pathway for warranty work,” Blair said, by way of explaining why US firms ranked so low in the rankings. Read More >

With the economic downturn, recession, depression, or whatever you want to call it, we already know that new car sales are taking a long vacation from existence. And cars like the Ferraris and Alfa 8Cs of the world shouldn’t have too much trouble selling, since there are still millions of millionaires. But how about the muscle cars? By and large, the boom in muscle car prices was the result of nostalgic shoppers, laying out significant – but not exorbitant – sums for the dreamcars of their youths. We’re talking about people that had been buying and selling drivable muscle cars in the $20k to $50k range, not just the Barret-Jackson shopping insanity. With financial “gurus” like Jim Cramer telling punters to cash-out all their investments, we can expect a glut of reasonable condition cars on the market, as folks look to pick up more money before the storm. And then consider that in the context of a hugely reduced buyers’ market: how many people are looking for five-figure toys these days? I’m far from an expert, but I’d guess we will see something on the order of a 60 percent drop in the market values of cars like Camaros, Mustangs, Chevelles, and Pontiacs. The rarer and collectible models will no doubt fare better, as these tend to go to buyers that do more polishing and less driving (if ever). While some sellers may decide to hang on to their cars because there are so few buyers, there will still be plenty of cars on the market. It’s a buyer’s opportunity, no doubt about that. If, like me, you’ve ever just wanted an AMC AMX in the driveway, the next few years might be the time, should you be employed.