Well we all knew it was coming. Were auto sales going to be great in the month where Lehman Brothers went into C11, Merrill Lynch had to be bought out, the taxpayers rescued AIG, and the government started voting on $1.3 trillion in spending and bailouts? Uh, no. But that didn’t soften the blow. How could it? Sales are awful for all the manufacturers, even the bright spots are dim. What does it all mean? It means the end of the era. But hey, Lamborghini has a new concept car. That makes everything okay, doesn’t it?

The Citroen GT, new Lamborghini, BMW X1, and Ford Mustang have all been “featured” in a series of teaser photos and videos over at some “other” automotive websites. They show nothing. A wheel, part of a bumper, a section of a taillight. The goal is to get the car into the news and readers’ minds, and it’s successful from a PR standpoint at doing that. But it’s also successful at pissing me off. The teasers don’t really give an indication of what a car is going to look like, which leads me to find them completely useless. I’d blame the manufacturers, but since they all do it, that’s totally futile. Rest assured, however, that when all these cars make their proper and full debuts, we’ll have pictures for you – including many shots from the Paris auto show, which begins in just a few days, thanks to our European correspondent Martin Schwoerer.

Meta media mining can make one a bummed-out blogger. I know I kinda lost it with the AutoWeek/Danbury pimpatorial. But I have this deep-seated sense of fair play that I can’t shake any more than an Amish person and their booty. If you want to know the engine propelling this site’s editorial, it’s my conviction that people deserve the truth. I’m not saying they want the truth. If there was a great hunger for unvarnished automotive editorial, we’d be one of many websites devoted to skewering four-wheeled sacred cows– despite the malevolent influence of automotive PR. Of course, that would also mean that we’d have less meta media mishegos to mine for our… minions? No, the Best and Brightest. We here at TTAC never forget the first part of that title. We know that the majority of our readers are motivated by a personal morality that compels them to do, see, discover and discuss the right thing. In these dangerous times for our economy and society, we must continue to tell the truth about cars, car making, car selling and car buying. And let the chips fall where they may.

As you’ve no doubt read, your duly elected representatives have rejected the proposed $700b Wall Street bailout plan. What happens next is anyone’s guess. Congress will undoubtably go back to the drawing board and try again. The stock market will either recover, tank some more or stay the same. The U.S. economy will either recess, depress or re-decompress. However this plays out, one thing is for sure: the days of “Zero Percent Financing for Anyone With a Pulse” are done. Dead. Finished. Over and out. Credit’s tighter than a superglued lug nut. At the same time, the market’s awash with used vehicles that no one wants. Millions of “average” people are backwards on their car loans– and scared. Even if residuals rebounded and zero percent abounded, the manufacturers can’t lure them into more debt. So they will do the right (only?) thing:nothing. They will simply pay down their existing car loans and run what they got. Meanwhile, the domestic automakers will deflate, dehydrate and die. The U.S. car market will eventually recover, but it won’t look anything like it does today. And TTAC will be there to chart the changes.

I don’t have anything else to say. Lieberman thinks the Hyundai Sonata (decent car, really) handles better than the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S. I think Lieberman has been hitting the wine early in anticipation of the Jewish holidays. There are, however, some cars with great enthusiast reputations that some of us are just not on board with. Lieberman doesn’t like the MINI. I don’t get the fuss over the 1-Series, Nissan 350Z, or even the Nissan GT-R. P.J. McCombs just doesn’t love the Lexus IS-F. Jay Shoemaker doesn’t dig the Maserati GT. And so on. It just goes to show, there’s nothing truly objective about cars. Even the truth. Especially the truth.

And so ends another week in the autoblogosphere. Of course, the fact that I just wrote that virtually guarantees some gi-normous auto-related story is about to break. (Lest we forget, GM always dumps its worst news into the ether on a Friday afternoon, giving the Wall Street Money Men sufficient time to commit Domicide on a few million brain cells.) I apologize for not posting the three finalists’ entries for the Muscle Car writing contest last week. My best laid plans have gone awry, overtaken by the scale, scope, severity and speed of recent events. I’ll put the unedited rants up this weekend. Meanwhile, I appreciate our entrants’ patience. And your patronage. While I enjoyed writing for TTAC before we had readers or commentators, I get a huge kick out of editing our most excellent contributors’ material and reading the Best and Brightest’s take on all things automotive. The TTAC team’s fought hard to get where we are today. We will continue to maintain our standards of writing, integrity and vitriol during these strange ass days. We’ll will continue to do everything we can to deserve your valuable time, and invaluable trust.

I believe the current economic crisis is the inevitable result of easy credit. Leading this charge (in all senses of the word): the U.S. government. Uncle Sam and his state, county and city-based cousins have been living beyond my means for decades, lavishing tax money on lobbyists’ love interests like Hugh Hefner doling-out big-breasted Bunnies to a grotto full of coked-out film producers. Yes, voters enable this behavior. Yes, companies and private individuals have also been on a drunken spree. But at this time, when two aspiring presidents are yakking about the importance of leadership, neither Senator nor ANY of their cohorts are discussing the importance of reholstering the federal teat. I find it astounding that the House of Reps can slip $25b low-interest “loans” for a doomed domestic auto industry into a housekeeping bill. It’s emblematic of all that’s wrong with our current system: digging ourselves deeper into debt to get ourselves out of debt, without making the tough choices that balancing the books requires. These days, when GM sneezes, America says bless you! And hands it The Mother of All Tissues. That ain’t right.

Maserati has a new version of the Gran Turismo called the “Corse.” (Check it out at AutoFiends). It’s stripped out, no sound insulation, racetrack ready. Lieberman tells me it’s like a Porsche GT3 RS or an Aston Martin V8 Vantage N24. I initially thought that these cars were pretty silly. When you’re talking about that level of money, you don’t need the car to be street legal. Sure you could drive it home from the racetrack, but would you want to? I saw the episode of Top Gear when James May drives one and sweats his walnuts off. These cars are just brutal; so I figured you would stick it in a trailer and haul it home behind your Escalade. Sure, I have plenty of friends that take their personal cars to and from autocross. But that’s a different story. But I have realized the benefit for manufacturers selling cars like these. First, they are profit machines because customers pay more and get less. But more importantly, they let buyers feel closer to the racecars and the brand’s supposed sports car credentials. Think of it as buying a set of kitchen knives because Gordon Ramsey uses the same ones at home. It’s all about what your car is capable of (I mean, I don’t usually drive 155 in the U.S.). And in this case, the special racing-spec version of already expensive cars are just what the millionaire toy collecter ordered.

The name “Lagonda” is one of those car brands you hear tossed around in historical context like the proverbial football. But I was the bad athlete in elementary school, and so no one threw me the football. Apparently Aston Martin, which owns the name, is going to start cranking out cars with the Lagonda badge again. Until recently, I had no real idea what a Lagonda was, is, or is supposed to be. So first thing’s first: prewar Lagondas. From the company’s first car in 1907 until World War II, Lagonda made the kinds of cars you sort of imagine when you think “sports car” and “prewar.” Some models were better than others, some had 1.1 liter 4-cylinder engines, others had 4.5 liter inline sixes, and even some had 4.5 liter V12s with a 5000 rpm “redline.” Many of these cars were even designed by W.O. Bentley, the founder of Bentley Motors, who was pushed out of his namesake company. And during that prewar era, Lagonda was (arguably, to history geeks) a real competitor to Bentley and Rolls-Royce. After World War II, the British car industry started to implode, everybody was merging, and Aston Martin bought Lagonda. And then Aston more or less croaked the Lagonda brand. They produced some of their prewar cars into the 1950s, and also did the original “Rapide” – which essentially looked like a four door Aston DB4. Very cool, but only 50-some cars were ever made. And then Lagonda became the badge for the crazy four door Aston Martin sedans from the 1970s and 1980s that we’ve all seen. And now you know.

I love The Autoextremist. What a great name! Sure, it’s better suited to a championship wrestler than an automotive analyst. But it’s also entirely, deliciously misleading. Peter DeLorenzo’s views on car sales, marketing and branding are about as “far out” as Brooks Brothers’ plaid pants. Even though Motown execs must surely view Peter as the nutter in the attic, DeLorenzo is always pulling for the home team. But I think he’s gone too far this time. In rant #464, Sweet Pete’s sweet on the Bavarian outside the gates. Specifically, BMW NA Prez Jim O’Donnell. After doing the WTF routine on the German brands’ model proliferation, DeLorenzo lauds the Bimmer suit for trimming imports by 44k, cutting leases by 10 percent, reducing spending on incentive marketing and spiking the marque’s blow-out December sale. (We’ll see about that one.) Supposedly, all these moves indicate genius. DeLorenzo reckons O’Donnel wants to return BMW to its upmarket– or is that four-cylinder downmarket?– roots: “hallefrickinluja.” Meanwhile, back in the real world, O’Donnel is doing sweet FA to trim BMW’s bloated product portfolio or reposition the brand and the measures Pete describes are a reaction to declining market conditions and the credit squeeze. If the Autoextremist wants to give credit where credit’s not due, he should applaud GM CEO Rick Wagoner for putting GM dealers out of business trimming The General’s dealer count. In other words, if the truth doesn’t hurt, it may not be the truth.

In fairness, Lieberman might say he’s not grumpy about the Audi S4 having only 333 horsepower, since the last generation S4 with the V8 cranked out 340 ponies. That’s a decrease dude, and in the car biz it’s nearly unheard of (unless you’re Acura, in which case it’s typical to botch successive generations of a model). So what gives? The new supercharged V6 has a little more torque than the outgoing V8, better fuel economy, and is a little lighter. But what’s really going on here, in this writer’s rarely humble opinion, is that Audi is repositioning the S4. Where it used to be a dead on competitor for the BMW M3, they’re pitching it now at the BMW 335i. The real Audi competition for the M3 is the RS4, which matches the M3’s insanely high-revving V8 and approximates the horsepower at 420. In the meantime, the S4 does what the 260 horsepower A4 3.2 can’t – go toe to toe with higher horsepower cars from the competition. The big question then is whether Audi will be able to price the S4 low enough to make it a viable BMW 335i/Infiniti G37 alternative. My gut says no, not gonna happen. The S4 will price itself out of the competition.

In today’s podcast with Jonny Lieberman (now featuring cross posting over at Autofiends.com), we discuss Lamborghini among other topics. Lieberman has a raging semi for the Italian bull brand, and I think that among the new ones they’re just ok. While I’m glad Lamborghini exists to make stupid, brazen, crass cars, I’d never own one. And certainly not as a daily driver. Old ones, sure, but the new Audified Gallardo? It’s got a ten cylinder tractor engine. So while a number of folks are reporting today on the rumor that Lamborghini is planning a front engined four door sedan along the lines of the Aston Martin Rapide and Porsche Panamera, I’m not interested. The only four door Lambo for me is the LM002 – also known as the Rambo Lambo. Otherwise, they can take their “nuclear frog green” paint color and sod off. Listen near the end and Lieberman even skirts my question about whether he’d prefer a Lambo sedan or a Lambo shooting-brake. One thing’s for sure though: Pebble Beach 2050 is going to be fantastic.

We’re trying something new here at TTAC. Some folks really love the Farago + Berkowitz podcasts that focus more on industry and on what’s in the TTAC news. Others said that while they liked those, what was really up their alley were podcasts where I just had your average bar talk with Lieberman about cars. So why not both? While we don’t plan to have, say, eight divisions of podcasting, this way you get up to 20 minutes per day of TTAC podcasting, plus your choice of focus. And on the topic of doubling, the Berkowitz/Lieberman car chats will be posted over on Lieberman’s main master – Autofiends.com – as well. In today’s cast with Robert, we hit on the Mazda2, Edmunds, and Rick Wagoner.

People say it’s great to be a weatherman because you get to be wrong most of the time and still get paid well. That’s the only other job besides being a GM executive for which your company can totally tank – as a result of your action (or inaction) and stick around and pick up millions upon millions of dollars in compensation. If you think about it, people like Bob Lutz aren’t the smartest people in the world (that didn’t take too much consideration); they’re just the luckiest. So that’s my new goal  – be Bob Lutz. Or maybe Richard Fuld, or Rick Wagoner. Meanwhile, in today’s podcast Jonny Lieberman and I talk about Bentleys, Kias through Koreatown in LA, and mullet cars.

Alright, that’s a little misleading. You can still pick up a regular V6 Mustang from Hertz. And I’d imagine you always will be able to. But they aren’t offering the Hertz Shelby Mustang GT-H anymore than Coke still sells Coke 2. Between their popularity, the upkeep, the abuse, and the limited production runs, it makes sense that Hertz couldn’t keep it in the stable forever. But the Corvette as their fun sports car replacement? While I’m a huge (HUGE) Corvette fan, it does seem strangely defeatist for Hertz – a Ford vassal – to be renting off Corvettes when Ford has trillions of Mustangs that would fill the role. Even if the Mustang GT can’t hold a candle to the Corvette from a performance standpoint, so what? It’s part of the Ford family. Meanwhile, I’m not complaining. I’ve got my 436 hp toy booked for Tuesday.