Think you have it figured out? Hit the jump for the answer…
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One of the most important lessons to come out of the last two days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls is that blaming individuals for unintended acceleration is too tough a task for our elected representatives. And yet the more we learn, the more necessary it seems to take human error into account when dealing with unintended acceleration. Nothing illustrates this quite like the case of the very first witness to give testimony before congress. Rhonda Smith of Sevierville, Tn told the House Energy Committee, under oath, that her Lexus ES350 became “possessed” and that its brakes and transmission failed to respond at precisely the moment that the car accelerated out of control. “Shame on you, Toyota, for being so greedy,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. But it turns out that the shame belongs almost entirely with Ms Smith.

The Wall Street Journal [sub] [via Jalopnik] reports that, despite her traumatic and inexplicable experience, Ms Smith sold her dangerous, out-of-control ES350 to another family, which has since put 27,000 trouble-free miles on the vehicle (according to just-auto [sub], Toyota has since taken possession of the vehicle). Which means she either lied under oath, or displayed a disregard for the safety of others that puts Toyota’s missteps into stunning context. Or both. In any case, her behavior adds to our growing suspicion that the vacuous, disingenuous, and self-serving congressional hearings have been the best thing to happen to Toyota PR since the recalls began. Shame on you, Rhonda Smith, shame on you.

It was bound to happen.  Combine the irresistible force of the Datsun 240 Z with the charming demeanor of TTAC’s “LeMons Racing Experience” (LRE) team captain, Troy Hogan, and we were bound to win something.  And that point was the February 2010 running of the 24 Hours of LeMons in Houston.

We didn’t win the race, unless in 28th place counts as winning. But this time we got a prize, the highly coveted Index of Effluency now rests on our mantle:  and it is the top prize in LeMon Land. To quote judge Murilee Martin,it is “the pinnacle of all LeMons awards….(given) to the team that accomplishes the most with the crappiest car.”  While we always had the latter, the former is the textbook definition of “added perk.” And our new paint job (fashioned from the Paul Newman-era BRE racing livery) certainly looks trophy-worthy. The $1500 worth of nickels didn’t hurt either, even if we shouldn’t put them on the roof of the car for photography.

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UAW members protest a Modesto, CA Toyota dealer, as part of the union’s wider effort to punish Toyota for its decision to shut down the NUMMI factory in nearby Fremont [via the Modesto Bee]. “We are not telling people not to buy Toyota products,” explains one worker. “We’re telling people that Toyota needs to be a responsible corporation and keep jobs in California.” And though there couldn’t be a better time to blame Toyota for just about anything, the NUMMI plant was closed because GM ditched the joint venture during its bankruptcy and government bailout. Toyota, like GM, was faced with overproduction in the US market, and because GM had pulled out of NUMMI, the plant was an obvious candidate for closure. So really, these protesters would have some sinister version of GM’s logo on their sign if they were really interested in fairly assigning blame for the NUMMI shutdown. However, their UAW pension fund owns 17.5 percent of GM, so simply blaming Toyota is a lot more convenient. Especially since Toyota is already attracting so much well-deserved (if wholly-unrelated) negative media attention.

TTAC officially retired its Tesla Deathwatch series over a year ago, after the firm delivered its 100th Roadster. Indeed, we’ve generally turned away from the “Deathwatch” tag in recent months, as the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler have removed the immediacy of many of their original criticisms. Over the years, the Deathwatch label has been a challenging mistress, often confusing readers as to TTAC’s intentions: though they were intended to document the slow-motion bellyflop of America’s automakers, they’ve often been interpreted as a sign that TTAC actually wishes tragedy upon the automakers it identifies as being in danger of shuffling off this mortal coil. Incidents like the one today, in which three Tesla employees were apparently killed when an light aircraft owned by Tesla senior electrical engineer Doug Bourn crashed into a Palo Alto neighborhood, serve as an important reminder that nothing could be further from the case. TTAC criticizes automakers because responsibly buying, owning and operating motor vehicles requires that consumers be well-armed with the facts. When real tragedy strikes the companies that build the vehicles we discuss here, our thoughts go out to the families of those lost, and we hope that the company’s operations soon return to some semblance of normality. Today we mourn for Tesla’s as-yet unidentified employees (apparently CEO Elon Musk was not on board) who will not be at work tomorrow, working on new ways to respond to criticisms and improve the firm’s products.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that “a couple of years ago,” Seminole County’s Lake Mary High School made the curious decision to ditch its previous mascot (now known as “the old goat”), and adopt the Dodge Ram logo as its own. Chrysler only just found out, thanks to a local tipster, despite the logo’s presence on gym floors, t-shirts and athletic uniforms. Needless to say, a cease-and-desist showed up, and Lake Mary will be having to live with “the old goat” from now on. As Chrysler’s lawyer puts it [via Overlawyered]:

As I am sure you can appreciate from your years of work with the board, control of use of a mark by enthusiastic students and parents is quite simply not practical, and I know the school and board would not want to be in the position of censoring student expression associated with the design,

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Russian President Vladimir Putin first showed off his badass camo Lada Niva early last year, in an attempt to boost the fortunes of the floundering state-supported Russian automaker AvtoVAZ. What Putin didn’t reveal until just now is that his Niva isn’t exactly stock.”I won’t hide it [anymore?] , the car I bought has an Opel engine,” he tells the WaPo. “It turns out that it’s more powerful.” Now wonder Russian parliamentarians are starting to advocate dumping AvtoVAZ on Renault, which in turn is drawing a familiar homerism from local pols in Russia’s Detroit, Tolyatti. In other car-salesman-in-chief developments today, Barack Obama revealed that he believes GM is a world-class automaker because his Cadillac is so badass.

The fine city of Eugene, Oregon seems to think so. You’d think they had already heard of the famous case of Santa Cruz V. Mr Twister. Apparently not. [Hat Tip: Charles]

Can you identify this vehicle? I couldn’t at first…

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It turns out the old girl just needed some new paint. Chrysler Group marketing boss Olivier Francoise takes us through the high points of the Chrysler lineup… in under two minutes. Yup, that about covers it.

I don’t watch “24” but apparently GM’s dead brand Pontiac Pontiac “received $256,200 in exposure by 8 total sequences, including one verbal mention” on the season premiere of the Fox terror drama according to Front Row Marketing and TVbythenumbers.com. Your tax dollars hard at work building equity for dead brand? Out of morbid curiosity, are there any 24 fans out there who can tell us what these references were? [Hat Tip: Graham Smith]

Shortly after GM’s bankruptcy, we wondered why so many people were still trading “old GM” stock. After all, old GM stock is in a liquidation company with no chance of ever emerging from bankruptcy.  In order to clear up any confusion, the SEC forced GM Liquidation (then GMGMQ) to change its ticker to MTLQQ. Apparently that didn’t work. CNN Money reports:

On Jan. 11, the first day of the big auto show in Detroit, about 41.6 million shares of MTLQQ exchanged hands. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the volume of Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) combined that day.

Holy fiduciary responsibility, Batman! The report goes on to note that MTLQQ is the ninth most-researched stock of 2010 at CNN Money, beating stocks like Microsoft and ExxonMobile. TTAC has expressed skepticism in the past about GM’s forthcoming IPO on silly grounds like the firm’s lack of profit, turmoil in overseas divisions, weak sales and questionable strategy. Frankly, this news makes us question whether any of these things matter. If a 70 cent (but worthless) stock in a company that has no bearing on New GM can rack up that kind of trading volume, clearly there are some unfathomable dynamics at play. Maybe a $60b GM IPO market cap is possible after all!

If Borat jokes aren’t your thing, at least stick around for the amazing pronunciation of “double overhead camshaft” at 1:42. Jenkouye!

Sort of. At least she might have if my esteemed fellow bloggers had let her get a word in edgewise. No wonder GM seems to have such a low opinion of the “well informed.”

Anyway, the clip’s money quote comes at 1:47, when Docherty lets out the classic Freudian slip: “the last competitive product I spent a couple of weeks in was the Acura TSX.” Whoops!