Regrets? GM's Vice President of North American Vehicle Sales has had a few. Then again, too few to mention. When quizzed about the wisdom of last summer's Fire Sale for Everyone, Monster Mark LaNeve said "Hindsight being 20/20, I probably wouldn't have done it." Probably? The campaign annihilated The General's fall and winter business and sealed GM's rep as America's largest discount car company. Which LaNeve now vows to fix by ignoring the connection between guilt and change and reanimating the company's short-lived "Total Value Promise" program.

Which is what, exactly? Although LaNeve's past rhetoric qualifies him for a job as the fifth Wiggle, and the specifics of the latest version of the Total Value Promise (TVP) await a Detroit unveiling, Monster Mark's been dropping hints. At the LA car confab, the slightly confessional marketing maven revealed the basics: lower sticker prices and a clear focus on comparative excellence. "We'll say, 'Best product, here's why," LaNeve said. "'Best price on an MSRP basis.'" What's more, "With every new product we bring to market, we'd like to price it very aggressively."

Not to coin a phrase, but the spin-out starts here. First of all, GM doesn't make the best products. While The General's camp followers will cry foul and cite various measurements placing GM vehicles head and fenders above the competition, the Chevrolet Corvette is the company's only undisputed class leader– and the $65k sports car division isn't exactly what you'd call crowded. Sure, GM's refreshed SUV's may turn out to be the business, but the majority of GM's products are also-rans. After all, if GM vehicles WERE the best of the best, the world's largest automaker wouldn't have to discount the damn things.

As for GM's plan to reduce advertised prices, well, we've been here before. In the brief period between Fire and Toe Tag sales, GM launched (pre-launched?) the TVP. Then as now, Monster Mark declared that GM's window stickers would be "closer" to the actual bottom line. The fact that this less-than-iron-clad "promise" was quickly and completely deep-sixed for yet another nationwide incentive campaign removed any chance consumers would believe GM's latest pledge. And why should they? You don't have to be a Keynesian economist to know that The General's inability to limit its supply guarantees a glut, which assures an eventual price cut. Lesson learned? Wait and prices will fall.

In fact, the whole concept of MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) has been thoroughly discredited. Thanks to a seemingly endless succession of nationally-advertised discount campaigns, consumers now operate on the basis that a vehicle's MSRP is only an inflated starting point, or, if you prefer, meaningless. No one pays sticker. No one. How do consumers compare vehicle prices when they're subject to an ever-changing farrago of incentives and finance offers? The savvy ones go to independent websites like www.kbb.com, press a few buttons and sort it out. Given the confusion, volatility and newfound transparency of car prices, GM might as well lose the sticker and simply direct consumers to an appropriate website.

Obviously, legally, they can't do that. Equally obvious, strict TVP adherence is highly unlikely, veering towards impossible. Think of it this way: if one of GM's competitors reduces their prices with an incentive campaign, a TVP-faithful GM could only respond by lowering their advertised sticker price. That's not a strategy bound to please recent owners or dealers, whose livelihood depends on trying to maintain as much of the inflated MSRP as possible. It also flies in the face of common sense: what's built must be sold. If discounts are what American consumers need to get the iron off the lot, discounts is what they're gonna get.

The biggest problem with TVP is that GM is, as always, hedging its bets. Note LaNeve's use of MSRP as a measure of relative price; GM is not promising to have the best price relative to the competition in absolute terms. By the same token, LaNeve said he would "like" to price new vehicles aggressively, not that he 'will.' In truth, there's only one alternative to the current rebate-driven set-up: the no-dicker sticker. If GM really wants to eliminate incentives, they have to say 'this is the price for this vehicle.' Period.

You could certainly posit that much of the Fire Sale for Everyone's success was due to the [perceived] lack of price negotiation. You could also credibly maintain that non-negotiable prices assured the Saturn brand's initial survival. But you'd have a hard time arguing that GM's management has the stones to weather the inevitable fall-out from a no-haggle pricing policy, as dealers scream bloody murder and duff vehicles pile-up in their thousands. Bottom line: expect GM's TVP to fade into obscurity for the second time, replaced by yet another round of rebates. And once again, Monster Mark LaNeve will be left without regrets.

When historians analyze GM's collapse, searching for the precise moment when The General jumped the shark, it will be like trying to pinpoint the onset of Alzheimer's. The world's largest automaker has been screwing things up so spectacularly for so long that even a $2b payoff to FIAT for signing the wrong bit of paper seems like a bump on the road to oblivion. What's more, GM's management is still busy making monumental mistakes. The Board of Bystanders' decision not to admit Kirk Kirkorian's proxy into their midst is only the latest and greatest example.

Unfortunately, I don't have any inside info on the failed negotiations between GM's largest private investor and The Powers That Be. I only know that last Tuesday, after GM's Board rebuffed Captain Kirk's nominee Jerry York, the billionaire investor sold 12m GM shares. The move cut his stake from to 9.9 to 7.8 percent and sent GM's stock into freefall (down to an 18-year low). Some financial experts see it a tax dodge. Others look at Kirk's on-again, off-again romance with MGM and predict his return. TTAC's Deep Throat figures this is it: Kirk's outta here. In any event, Kirk has sent both GM's board and the markets a clear message about GM's future, or lack thereof…

When Kirkorian began his buying binge, GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz displayed his usual penchant for mindless optimism: "He smells a turnaround." Meanwhile, the octogenarian investor was, sensibly enough, plotting to wrest control from Lutz and the other corporate officers who'd mishandled GM's mighty engines, limiting the ship's maneuverability, condemning it to a Toyota encounter of the iceberg kind. Equally obvious, a seat on the Board was the only way Captain Kirk could oust Rabid Rick Wagoner from the bridge, and maybe, just maybe, save the ship from a watery grave. (For those of you keeping metaphorical score, the Titanic had an antiquated rudder.)

And why not? You don't have watch all 357 Dallas episodes to know that a company's future depends on the character of the people running it– or that some people will do anything to maintain control. Wagoner's "I'm going to bring Bobby down if I have to destroy Ewing oil to do it" response to Kirkorian's play was predictable enough, but the Board of Bystander's negative reaction was surprisingly [Cliff] Barnesian. Clearly, they excluded Mr. York to protect Wagoner's mob– which is a bit like backing a flyweight boxer and his fawning entourage over a highly decorated lieutenant commanding a heavily armed, battle-scarred SWAT team.

Now how did THAT happen? You'd be forgiven for thinking that the simple fact that GM's stock price has dropped $20 (and counting) since last January would have motivated The General's Board of Bystanders to activate Rabid Rick's bankruptcy-proof retirement package, STAT. Again, we may never get a clear picture of Rabid Rick's anti-York maneuvering (never mind view the incriminating negatives). But at least we can get a little insight into the Board's myopia, thanks to Slate's Daniel Gross.

Gross recently reported that GM's Board has two gold-standard retired CEO's: Sara Lee's John Bryan and Northrop Grumman's Kent Kresa. And then… Philip Laskawy ran scandal-plagued accountants Ernst & Young. George M.C. Fisher, former chairman and CEO of Eastman Kodak, failed to reverse his company's declining market share. Former Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer did so well during his tenure that company founder Ben Rosen bought a full-page New York Times ad to diss him. And former ABB head Percy Barnevik was recently forced to return 60% of his $88m pension.

GM's board also includes five active execs: Armando Codina (Republican fixer, Board of Directors-aholic, Florida real-estate maven), Erskine Bowles (ex-Clinton Chief of Staff, twice failed senatorial candidate, President of the University of North Carolina), Ellen Kullman (safety minded DuPont Veep), Karen Katen (Pfizer Drug Lord) and Stan O'Neal (Merrill Lynch's cost-cutting 'Mr. Ruthless'). Other than Rabid Rick Wagoner, Stan the Man is the only CEO in the bunch who's run a publicly held company. He's also the only GM Board member to have revived a publicly held company. And, one surmises, he's the only board member with an ounce of common sense.

After all, this is the motley crew who believe it's a good idea to keep Rabid Rick Wagoner in the Gulfstream G5 style to which he's become accustomed. More to the point, these are the same group of misadventuring misfits who can't recognize a good man when they see one. Well, OK, maybe York's not a "good man" in a Grosse Point golf club kinda way. But he's a devastatingly effective corporate leader: a West Point grad that kicked IBM and Chrysler's ass into shape by paring waste, reorganizing resources and asking questions no one else dared ask. Turning down York's guidance to thwart Kirkorian's ambitions and protect Wagoner's ass was a– if not "the"– seminal moment in GM's long, sad saga. One the company will not live to regret.

For those of you who've just joined us from Wall Street, welcome. We've been waiting for you for a while– long enough to wonder if GM's stock price got lost in hyperspace. I guess you guys needed some kind of sign to find your bearings. Something like Toyota's announcement that they're gonna Avis The General in '06, ending GM's 70-year run as the world's largest automaker. Or Rabid Rick Wagoner's post horse departure barn door closing homily: "I'm not conceding anything to anybody." No matter. Now that you're here, let me tell you a story…

I was scanning Wardsauto.com the other day when I came across a "good news" piece: "Crucial GM Fullsize Truck Program Launches Early". Well, OK, it MIGHT be a good news piece, you know, if The General's SUV cavalry racks-up the sales GM needs to die another day. Obviously, it's a bit of a long shot, what with SUV's being a dead genre guzzling. But hey; it is what it was. Anyway, mid-way through Ms. Priddle's puff piece, a thought occurred to me: is it really a good idea to rush the GMT900 vehicles (Tahoe, Yukon, Escalade, Suburban, Silverado, Sierra, etc.) to market? What if they're not ready?

It's not inconceivable. The Pontiac Solstice was due to hit the forecourts in June, promised for November, still isn't widely available and already appears on bulletin boards with a laundry list of complaints. Let's face it: GM has a bit of a history manufacturing, dare I say it, crap. Oh wait; Ward's says the "new" trucks will use 60% of the old trucks' components. And according to Gary White, GM's Fullsize Truck Vehicle Line Executive, the GMT900's are "entering the world with higher quality than the ones they replace." Now THERE'S a reassuring thought.

But let's get to the point. Check the article's last paragraph: "'No one's going to ride a 1-trick pony today,' White says, noting GM could have spent an extra $2 billion for marginal additional improvement to the GMT900 lineup, but recognized the money is better spent elsewhere for a balanced product portfolio." Now ask yourself a question: what the Hell does THAT mean?

The first part of White's quote seems straightforward enough. White's saying his handiwork's got to be safe, reliable, comfortable, attractive and frugalesque. (By implication, yesterday's 'one-trick' SUV's were, um, affordable.) But what's that second bit about the extra $2b GM DIDN'T spend on "marginal additional improvement"? Is White seriously suggesting that a couple of bil only buys you a bit of soft touch plastic here, a nicer steering wheel there? I'm no bean counter, but I would have thought that 2000 million dollars can do a great deal to improve a vehicle.

I emailed Ms. Priddle to see if White had specified these missing marginalities. (GM stopped returning my calls sometime back in April.) No joy there. It then occurred to me that no matter what White's mob left out of the GMT900's, his remarks typify GM's product mentality. The company's lineup is stuffed with ¾ vehicles: cars, trucks, SUV's and minivans that are just about as good as the competition, but not quite. For example, the Pontiac G6 seems a suitable alternative to a Nissan Altima. But if you look closely (as customers do), the G6 isn't up to snuff on almost every level: interior quality, engine refinement, reliability, etc. Even the class-killing Chevrolet Corvette features some of the nastiest plastic known to mankind. In general, The General signs-off its vehicles when they're still a few furlongs from the finish line.

An Audi engineer once told me that the final millimeter of a materials gap eats up a third of the item's production budget. Even though an Audi buyer might not see or feel the resulting precision, the automaker makes the effort and pays the freight. That's just the way they do things. It's already clear from the GMT900's 60% parts carry-over (much of which is due to the SOS timetable) and pre-production shots of the vehicles themselves that White's got it exactly backwards. The huge amount of money GM spent on these vehicles delivered nothing BUT marginal improvements.

White's comments highlighted the trade-off that created the $2b compromise: "marginal improvement" vs. "a balanced product portfolio". In other words, rather than get one vehicle– I mean, a host of similar vehicles– absolutely perfect, GM prefers to build [yet] another product. It's a shotgun approach in a rifle shot world. By manufacturing a complete range of not quite products across eight brands, GM condemns itself to perpetual mediocrity, and guarantees its also-ran status relative to the tightly focused folks at Toyota. The General's generals fail to realize that people don't buy GM's balanced product portfolio. They buy a single GM product. Or, increasingly, not.

According to Rabid Rick Wagoner, terminating his employment would only slow down GM's recovery: 'When you bring in a lot of new people, you bring in a lot of change and people just sort of sit there and try to figure out what to do.' As opposed to what? Keeping the same old people and making no changes so that people can sort of sit there and watch the world's largest automaker go bankrupt? Rick's comment appeared in AutoWeek immediately after Standard & Poor's rating service downgraded GM's credit rating to "B", some five steps below investment grade, with a negative outlook. Clearly, Wagoner is to leadership what penguins are to civil engineering.

Like any clueless corporate alpha, Rabid Rick wants us to believe that everything's under control. Indeed, he's instructed PR flack Gina Proia to tell the world that GM has "an aggressive and well thought-out strategy to turn around our North American business." Apparently, this comprehensive plan comes complete with quantifiable goals, implementation dates and, well, everything Rick's mob needs to save GM from a Valentine's Day Massacre. Only AutoWeek reports that Rabid Rick "prefers to keep it private." In fact, GM's would-be savior "declined to predict whether GM's North American automotive operations could break even next year." [NB: "could" not "would."]

"Other people may or may not have time frames, but it's not what I'm worried about,' Wagoner told AutoWeek. 'I'm focused on the fact that we need to fix the business, and that's really what is driving me.' Why do I keep seeing images of Rabid Rick in a pinafore, wandering through a vast wonderland of unsold GM product? In what alternative universe is it OK for the head of the world's largest automaker to stare financial oblivion in the face and say "trust me, don't rush me"? Lewis Carroll himself would be proud of Wagoner's strange rhetoric, which blithely suggests that timetables are antithetical to corporate repair.

Anyway, it's not as if GM's rivals are about to steal Rabid Rick's master plan, so that they can counter The General's new product launches and/or drive their company into the ground. UNLESS… Rabid Rick's briefcase actually contains the codes for the nuclear option. Sure! Rick's mob have a secret plan to leave Delphi twisting in the wind and let the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike. GM would then fall into bankruptcy accidentally on purpose, so it could jettison its UAW contract, close factories, cut brand deadwood, realign the product portfolio and…

Yeah right. Back here in the real world, Rabid Rick is fighting for his company's survival by strolling down the path of least resistance. Rather than make a stand against the UAW, Rabid Rick's ready to pay the blood money needed to forestall a Delphi strike– even though "we certainly didn't budget for stuff like that." Rather than kill-off Buick, Saab and Saturn, Rick's content to let their salesmen hit the forecourt like members of Robert Scott's ill-fated Antarctica expedition (i.e. "I may be some time".) Rather than slash GM's model range across the board and concentrate on building the world's best cars, Rick's happy to manufacture dozens of mediocre examples of the sorts of vehicles people may want to buy by the time GM finally gets around to building them.

Rabid Rick's timidity makes me wonder if he's even trying. When asked about the SUV slump in Automotive News, Wagoner claimed the company was powerless to respond. 'We just couldn't react,' he admitted. 'It really highlighted that the underpinnings of our business are too fragile… if we lose mix or volume, we cannot get costs down as fast as (sales) volume comes down.' Does Rabid Rick really think that GM's ability to turn tail and run is the key to its success? Wouldn't building hybrid SUV's, killer crossovers or awesome sedans have been the better option?

As the Italians say, the fish stinks from the head down. If GM couldn't detect and react to a change in market conditions quickly enough to avoid losing its proverbial shirt, that's because its CEO couldn't perform with sufficient insight, speed or decisiveness. If the UAW is tying Wagoner's hands, preventing him from doing what needs to be done, it's his job to sever those bonds, once and for all. It's one thing to admit you made a mistake, it's another to have the courage and wisdom to make sure it never happens again. Isn't that why Wagoner gets paid so much money?

News reports recently revealed that The General's CEO has negotiated a deal with GM's Board of Bystanders that makes his multi-million dollar pension fund bankruptcy-proof. Not only is that a boneheaded move relative to GM's negotiations with the UAW (which include pension liabilities and contributions), but it betrays Rabid Rick's stunning lack of confidence in his own talents. It's an opinion that's increasingly easy to share.

I'm a bit of a fix-it freak. Don't get me wrong: I'm no great fan of home improvement. I just love tools. I can quite happily while away an hour or so down at the Depot, cruising the aisles, checking out the hammers, screwdrivers, drills, planes, work benches, etc. Needless to say, I can spot a perfect implement at twenty paces. The second it falls to hand, I'm suffused with delight. A well-designed tool's intrinsic excellence rescues me from the foul compromises of daily strife. It soothes and thrills me with its minimalist mix of precision and possibility. It fills me with admiration for the craftsman who made it. It's the same feeling I get from the new Porsche Boxster S.

I freely admit that the new Boxster S doesn't look particularly special. Although Porsche's open-top roadster shares no major sheetmetal with its immediate predecessor, it continues to forfeit sexy to its continental and Japanese competitors. Truth be told, the Boxster has yet to recover from its divergence from the sublime, Speedster-inspired prototype. The latest iteration pins its hopes for aesthetic redemption on newly pumped haunches and a slightly more aggressive stance. It's better, certainly, but the Boxster's overall form continues to reside in push-me/pull-you no-man's land. It still looks like a hairdresser's car.

In the same sense that a hammer's true beauty is its use, the Boxster S saves its siren song for its driver. The seduction begins when the door slots back into the bodywork like a rifle bolt sliding home. The allure intensifies when your fingers curl around the perfectly-sized, blissfully button-free steering wheel. And then the 3.2-liter flat-six spins into life. The mechanical melody filling the cabin combines the steadfast solidity of an office building's cooling tower fan with a rasp that sounds like a sharpened blade scything a slab of meat. Blip the Boxster S' throttle, sense the immediate response, and the amorphous exterior fades from mental view.

Engage the Boxster S' engine to its wheels and that's it: you're hooked. Don't be misled by all those car hacks who've described the new Boxster S' driving experience with clinical admiration, who would have you believe that yes, it's a great steer, but nothing to go into debt about. I can't explain their blasé commentary any more than I can tell you why someone would build a piece of furniture out of pine. These writers somehow missed the Boxster S' ability to engender overwhelming joy. THIS is the machine that reconnects you with all the pleasures you experienced when you mastered your first bike: confidence, power, freedom, exhilaration.

I remember careening down a long off-ramp in third gear, amping-up the Boxster S' engine under the highway I'd just abandoned. Two possible exits lay at the end of this left-hand sweeper. To go left, I had to tighten my line. As I was already traveling at the outer edges of available grip, I considered taking the easier option. Then I tugged gently on the wheel and felt the Boxster S' back end drift. Without any undue drama, the rear rubber eventually dug in and got 'er done. Respect!

It's all about balance; sheltering in the security of the Boxster S' prodigious grip and progressive understeer or pushing its chassis beyond its limits– just because you can. Well, that and silky smooth shove; mucking about with the go pedal in Variocamland or mercilessly thrashing the sweet-spinning six from basement to penthouse– just because you can. OK, and brakes; relying on the Boxster S' awesome anchors to indulge in a bit of entirely unnecessary exuberance or leaning on them to haul your ass out of impending disaster– just because you have to. Put it together and what have you got? Bippity-boppity-ZOOM!

There are, of course, more accelerative machines. But few of these alternative weapons surrender their thrills at reasonable speeds. Cashing-in their kicks requires real skill, constant concentration and no small amount of courage. The Boxster S' true genius lies in its ability to reward drivers of all talents and abilities, at all speeds. Sure, driving a Boxster S at nine or ten tenths is not a challenge to be taken lightly. But the car is never anything less than fun, and just about as safe as such things get. In fact, the Boxster S' flawless dynamics provide a learning curve that pistonheads can ascend at their own pace, in their own style.

Is the more powerful and rigid Cayman S a better sports car than the new Boxster S? I certainly hope so. But I haven't driven the Cayman S, and the whole point of this exercise is to choose the best car I had the pleasure of driving in '05. That car was the Porsche Boxster S.

Forget GM's Toe Tag sale, which failed to extinguish the automaker's low sales idiot light and sealed their reputation as the K Mart of cars. Ignore GM's eternal promise of new and better products. Disregard Rabid Rick's pathetic bleating to the Wall Street Journal that lawsuits, fate and the federal government are responsible for GM's $4.8b black hole. The General's immediate future depends entirely on whether or not the United Auto Workers' (UAW) calls a strike against bankrupt GM parts supplier Delphi.

This January, the UAW's leadership may tell Delphi Prez CallMeSteve Miller to shred his salary and benefit-reducing proposal and flush it down the toilet of his Gulfstream Challenger. Miller will then ask a federal bankruptcy judge to terminate the UAW's contract. The UAW will retaliate with a strike that will starve GM of parts. GM's assembly lines will close. Should the UAW strike last more than a couple of months, The General will burn through its multi-billion dollar cash reserves. The world's largest automaker will be forced to file the world's largest Chapter 11.

Conventional wisdom says it ain't gonna happen. Most GM watchers think the UAW will do whatever it takes to keep Delphi/GM afloat. Supporters of this "acting in their own best interest" theory posit that UAW President Big Ron Gettelfinger is smart enough to understand that the nuclear option would terminate his employer's future, and thus, the union's. Yaysayers dismiss yesterday's comment by UAW Veep Richard Shoemaker that a strike appears "more likely than not" as posturing. Why would the UAW initiate a chain of events that would lead to its destruction?

Simple: they don't see it that way. The UAW knows that the fallout from a Delphi disruption would increase arithmetically; with each passing day, it gets harder and harder (and more and more expensive) for GM to restart its assembly lines. In that sense, the prospect of The General lurching towards strike-related bankruptcy is a good thing; GM's glimpse into the abyss ensures that The General, and thus Delphi, surrender to the union's demands. In other words, the union works on the principle that they can pay us now (GM subsidizes Delphi's UAW contract), or they can pay us later (GM subsidizes Delphi's UAW contract), but either way, they're gonna pay.

In fact, the UAW is spoiling for a fight. Big Ron's stated goal in all this is to forestall the 'dismantling of America's middle class". But his real agenda is, and always will be, the preservation of union power. A successful strike would reassert the UAW's hold over its membership, Delphi, GM and any other automaker or supplier stupid enough to ask UAW workers to surrender one dollar of their salary or a single solitary benefit. While Rabid Rick has proven himself pathologically incapable of drawing a line in the sand (on any issue, ever), Big Ron and his boys are in the sand scribbling business. Anyone who thinks that the union's going to let their adversaries step over the line without retribution faces a rude awakening.

In any case, the UAW doesn't really care what anyone thinks about the virtue of their arguments. They believe (with no small amount of justification) that epic mismanagement caused Delphi and GM's perilous finances. Union members consider the idea that they should take a major hit to compensate for these blunders, helping corporate fat cats and their shareholding paymasters to prosper from their mistakes, beyond preposterous. It's insulting, veering towards evil. The UAW rank and file can just about imagine participating in a plan that would spread the pain equally– trimming corporate salaries, eliminating bonuses, cutting dividends, etc.– but not quite. Just fork over the dough you overpaid bastards, and let's get on with it.

What UAW members CAN conceive, and the analysts can't, is a scenario in which Delphi and GM disappear. The threat of losing everything– salary, benefits, pension, the works– is not the foolproof anti-strike palliative that white collar pundits believe it to be. In fact, the possibility of a cataclysmic GM failure holds a certain Alamo-esque romantic allure– especially for people who see themselves as working class heroes. Or, as one autoworker told the Detroit news: "If we're going down, we're all going down together."

Think it can't happen? Then you don't live in Worcester, Pittsburgh, Fall River or a dozen other rust belt cities and towns where unions drove up the cost and complexity of doing business, and watched it leave. Obviously, it's not unionism per se that caused these economic catastrophes. It was a combination of management arrogance, greed and stupidity; and union arrogance, greed and stupidity. There's only one way to untie this Gordian knot: the UAW must assume greater responsibility for Delphi– and GM's– destiny. They should have a seat on their boards and a large slice of equity. Profit sharing didn't save American Motors, but it just might save GM. Anyway, it's worth a shot.

Last Thursday, the American Family Association (AFA) reached an agreement with The Ford Motor Company ending their boycott of the automaker's products. The faith-based organization launched their action last May to stop FoMoCo from supporting gay and lesbian groups. Specifically, the AFA demanded that Ford stop all contributions to homosexual social events (e.g. gay pride parades), end all donations to homosexual organizations and cease advertising in all gay-oriented media. Yesterday, Ford confirmed that Jaguar and Land Rover will pull their advertising from gay publications, but refused to discuss any other details of the AFA agreement. One thing is for sure: The Blue Oval caved, Big Style.

Ford's acquiescence to the AFA's religious agenda is a huge mistake. It's lit a fire under the large, wealthy and equally well-organized gay community. Gays and lesbians around the country are sure to respond to Ford's AFA accord with a boycott of their own. If Ford backs down from THAT pressure, the AFA will relaunch their boycott. By choosing a side in the contentious "homosexual lifestyle" issue, Ford is now smack dab in the middle of a Hatfield – McCoy-style conflict that it can't win, on any level, ever.

But the company's silence is its biggest blunder. It's one thing to cave to a pressure group; it's another to be seen to be doing so; and it's a third to do so without explanation. Remaining shtum on the AFA agreement violates one of the inviolable rules of corporate PR, and its corollary: if you can't defend it, don't do it; if you do it anyway, defend it anyway. When GM responded to reviewer Dan Neil's criticism by pulling its entire advertising budget from the LA Times– without public comment– the move made them appear arrogant, sinister, petty and vindictive. By refusing to discuss the AFA agreement, Ford has made itself appear cowardly, deceitful, insensitive and unresponsive.

While it's hard to imagine an acceptable justification for Ford's capitulation to the AFA's demands, it's not impossible. A weasel like "After consultation with a broad array of public groups, Ford has decided to realign its marketing efforts to appeal to a more mainstream customer base" might have dampened the outrage against FoMoCo's 'accomodation.' In any case, maintaining radio silence in these cybernetic times is a virtual impossibility. Hence Ford spokesman Mike Moran's eventual assertion (to the gay website Advocate.com) that the Blue Oval's withdrawl of financial support from the gay media was "strictly business."

Moran's statement violates the second inviolable rule of corporate PR: never appear greedy. Obviously, Ford is in business to make money. And that's a good thing. The pursuit of filthy lucre is one of humanity's greatest levelers, binding people of all races, religions, nationalities and "lifestyles" in the glorious sanctity of a commercial transaction. Moran's "strictly business" comment sucks the virtue right out of the process, implying that equality to all has nothing to do with Ford's commercial activities. With founder Henry Ford's vicious anti-Semitism in its past, and not a lot happening on the forecourt, Ford can ill-afford the perception that it puts money before morals.

Even staring down the barrel of a nationwide boycott– ESPECIALLY staring down the barrel of a nationwide boycott– Ford should have simply stated that it markets its products without fear or favor. As governments around the world have learned, it never pays to negotiate with terrorists. Ford's AFA appeasement shows pressure groups that the company is receptive to blackmail. At the very least, they will view the automaker as a soft target for free publicity. And we're not just talking about religious groups. What's to stop the National Rifle Association from boycotting Ford if the company advertises in newspapers that oppose their legislative stance?

Nothing. Just as Ford is free to spend its marketing dollars where it pleases, pressure groups are free to respond to those decisions as they see fit (as long as their protests are legal). Clearly the only way to avoid these skirmishes is to remain deaf to ALL extortionists. Ford should defend against attacks against its business practices by appealing to the consumers' belief in tolerance and fair play; realizing that bullies lose their power over the masses the moment they're seen as petty and vindictive. In other words, they should take the high road, outlast the bastards and work behind the scenes to cut them off at the knees. Instead, Ford is taking the low road, waving the white flag mid-battle and kissing ass behind closed doors.

Ford has screwed itself on this one, but good. It's completely blown the "golden 24" hours of damage limitation. Anything it says or does now will only add fuel to the PR pyre. Even so, Bill Ford should immediately reverse the company's pro-AFA stance. He should tell the world that Ford builds, markets and sells cars to anyone who can afford to buy them. If AFA members don't want to buy a Ford, so be it.

If a rose by any other name would still smell so sweet, would a Ford Fusion by any other name still be a front-wheel-drive economy car? Lincoln certainly hopes not. It wants its upscale customers to view the new Zephyr as a discrete model, rather than a gussied-up Ford Fusion. Mercury harbors similar hopes/delusions for its Fusion-with-frills, the Milan. Come to think of it, the Fusion is based on the [Ford-owned] Mazda 6, whose price overlaps both the Fusion and the Milan. I suppose the answer to the conundrum posed by the incredible sameness of automotive being depends entirely on the customer's ability to smell a rat.

Fifty or sixty years ago, car buyers were easily fooled by re-badged vehicles. And even if they weren't, it didn't matter. The Big Three bestrode the US car market like a colossus. Even casual pistonheads could name every single car for sale. Auto brands were stronger than superglue. Driving a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury meant something; your car's sheet metal and badge reflected and projected your personal status. Customers who knew that their fancy new Lincoln was actually a Ford in a zoot suit didn't really care– as long as they got a good car that earned appropriate props. Brand loyalty was king.

Today, over forty major car brands produce a range of models whose aggregate is well into triple digits. Brand-related social demarcations still exist, but the lines are blurrier than a college student's Sunday morning memory. Mercedes sells low-end product, while Hyundai make an entirely convincing upmarket homonym. What's more, new models debut and disappear in a matter of months, while longer running favorites undergo dramatic restyles with increasing frequency. "Niche marketing"– creating a genre-killing product for a limited audience– is king.

Ford, GM and DCX act as if 'niche' means 'superficial.' They believe that adspin and blingery obviate the obvious long-term advantages of selling clearly delineated products with focus and depth. A Lincoln dealer recently confided to the Detroit News that he "wished the company wasn't so forthcoming about platform sharing.' Sorry; in these days of Edmunds.com and kbb.com, customers' noses are highly attuned to the slightest whiff of duplicate duplicity. Trying to palm off a Ford as a 'proper' Lincoln simply by adding some bits and pieces– a new grill and rear bumper, extra sound deadening, a softer suspension, wood, new gauges, fancy ICE and silver-effect switchgear– isn't just cynical, it's stupid. Badge engineering is fooling fewer and fewer people more and more of the time.

While the cost-savings offered by the kind of five-minute makeover described above cannot be underestimated, the damage to the car brand perpetuating the platform perfidy cannot be overestimated. If a car brand becomes known for mixing its genes with lesser machines and flogging the result at a premium (i.e. inflated) price, the road to rep recovery is both long and uncertain. Just ask Cadillac– if and when they complete their thirty year wander through the wilderness. As Caddy's ongoing recovery illustrates, even after you throw the badge engineering monkey off your back, you may still have to wait until your old customer base dies off.

Lincoln should know better. It was once one of the world's most exclusive brands. Ironically enough, the company was started by Cadillac's co-founder, Henry M. Leland. Ironically squared, Lincoln's tumble from the top began with… the Lincoln Zephyr. While the 1936 Zephyr helped the brand climb out of the depression, Lincoln's success came at the expense of the brand's premier positioning. No surprise, then, that the Zephyr was eventually canned in 1942 in favor of the similarly-priced, new-to-the-market Mercury, which was derived from a Ford chassis. Rather than carefully cultivating the loyalty of a critical cadre of brand faithful, Ford sold out Lincoln's image to cash in on badge engineering's 'easy money.'

In fact, if you're looking for the hidden force pulling GM and Ford into their respective black holes, badge engineering is it. Well, that and brand bingeing. (DCX' relative restraint in both areas accounts for its relative health.) The two forces have combined to suck the life blood out of the companies' products, until all their brands and all their cars are all pretty much of a muchness. When in-house brands are homogenous, shopping elsewhere becomes just as easy as (and more interesting than) trying to share the salesman's enthusiasm for an invidious distinction.

There's only one solution to this mess: lop off the unsustainable overlaps (Mercury, Buick, Jaguar, etc.), and then build brand-specific vehicles that share platforms and nothing else. Screw economy of scale. Customers want products with genuine individuality and integrity in every aspect, from body style to the interior to engineering. In fact, that's all they've ever wanted, no matter what you call it.

Yesterday, GM announced it will release former subsidiary Delphi from an agreement trimming big bucks from The General's parts bill. This despite the fact that GM CEO Rabid Rick Wagoner has consistently used the discount to casually suggest that Delphi's bankruptcy was good for General Motors. Never mind. Delphi responded to GM's generosity by extending its contract deadline with the United Auto Workers (UAW) to January 20th. The quid pro quo means GM avoids a cataclysmic loss of parts– until that date. It's all part of Rabid Rick's masterplan for dodging Delphi's strike-related bankruptcy bullet…

Rabid Rick's tendered the 'get out of free competition free' card to provide Delphi with the funds it needs to subsidize the unthinkable: the difference between what Delphi wants to pay its UAW workers ($10 an hour) and what they currently earn ($27 an hour). What's more, TTAC's Deep Throat reckons GM will also reach into its back pocket to mop-up other UAW claims against Delphi's cash. The General will pay Delphi's superfluous union workers not to work, underwrite the union's benefit guarantees and assume Delphi's $10.8b pension liability. In short, Rabid Rick's recently stated desire for all sides to figure out "what we really need to do here" actually means delivering huge sacks of GM blood money to the UAW.

Should this scenario play out, Wagoner will claim victory for avoiding a company-killing strike, Delphi President Miller will claim victory for delivering Delphi from bankruptcy (at GM's expense) and union boss Big Ron Gettelfinger will claim victory for maintaining his members' compensation. Meanwhile, Wagoner's craven capitulation will cost The General a mountain of money. Back of the envelope estimates place the figure at around a half billion dollars per quarter, all in. That would put the price tag for Delphi's union peace at $2b, PLUS the lost discount (which could be worth up to a billion dollars), PLUS the $10.8b pension top-up, PLUS whatever other clever little caveats the union demands and receives.

Excuse me for saying so, but this is turning-out to be a Hell of a year for the UAW. The "historic health care giveback" that saved Rabid Rick's butt in the fall (and made the union look magnanimous in the process) will dump an extra $2b into their bank account and leave health care benefits intact. The plant closures that painted union workers as blameless victims of management incompetence will not injure a single union member financially (thanks to retirement buyouts and the infamous jobs bank). And now Delphi's "Last Stand" promises to make the union bosses look like heroes, as The Man behind the Man caves like a professional spelunker.

Rabid Rick's timidity on the union front is stunning. While it's often said GM can't blame the UAW for its troubles– GM agreed to the union demands that helped create those troubles– the argument avoids the real issue: drawing a line in the sand. No matter what GM granted the union in the past, consenting to it in the present sacrifices the company's future. While you can (and should) blame Rabid Rick's mob for its bone-headed product/brand/discount/investment binges, GM's cost structure remains unsustainable. And though nothing much has been said about the union's inflexibility on the factory floor, that cancer also remains unchecked. Rabid Rick has not even paid lip service to solving these issues.

CallmeSteve Miller is no better. The tough-talking Delphi Prez said right from the start that GM should bail his company's ass out of bankruptcy. In other words, he's happy to sacrifice his anti-union rhetoric on the point of Rabid Rick's check-writing pen. In fact, there's only one resolute player in this entire epic: Big Ron Gettelfinger. The union boss has maintained his hold on both his members and GM's coffers, while winning the PR war without uttering more than a word or two at the appropriate moment. And that's why this thing is bound to blow-up.

While Wagoner and Miller play footsie, Big Ron knows it's Last Man Standing. He doesn't need an expensive independent audit to realize that GM is doomed. Nor does he particularly care. Big Ron's job, the UAW's job, is to extract as much milk as possible from the GM tit for as long as possible. When GM collapses, even if it's his union's intransigence that precipitates the event, even if it means the complete dissolution of the UAW's contract with GM, Gettelfinger will look back with satisfaction and say "I always did my best for my members".

How do you negotiate labor/legacy reductions with a man with that mentality? You don't. You can't. The truth is, GM doesn't really want to. Rabid Rick is willing to pay-off Delphi's UAW now to buy enough time to sell enough SUV's, crossovers, something, anything that will revive the company's fortunes and allow it to once again avoid a UAW confrontation. Yeah right. If Rabid Rick manages to forestall a Delphi strike, GM only lives to die another day. History will describe Wagoner's escapology as a Pyrrhic victory; one that protected his own future at the expense of his employer's.

I used to think that spin meant arranging facts to conceal their meaning. After watching Rabid Rick Wagoner's responses to the pre-shocks signaling GM's impending implosion, I now see spin as the art of distraction combined with the sin of omission. Back in October, on the day Rabid Rick revealed a $1.6b quarterly shortfall, Wagoner also announced a $1b health care "giveback" by his unionized employees. Only later did we learn that GM is paying the union $2b to cushion the impact. Yesterday, Wagoner announced he was slicing 30k jobs and closing nine production plants by '08. So Rick, how much will THAT cost GM?

Wagoner publicly conceded that The General will take a "sizable charge against earnings" to cover the plant closures– and then point blank refused to provide any details. It's entirely unlikely that Wagoner made the downsizing decision without knowing its exact impact on GM's bottom line. His reluctance can only mean one thing: red ink, and lots of it. Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa estimates that shuttering the nine plants will cost The General between $1b and $2b. Mr. Casesa was unavailable for comment; it's not exactly clear what expenses his figures encompass. Of this we can be certain: the closures will cost a bundle and do sweet FA to relieve GM's sky-high labor costs, either now or in the future.

As we mentioned the last time Wagoner proclaimed job cuts, The General is hoping that the majority of the unneeded workers will either retire or be coerced into retirement (i.e. be paid off or be paid off). The rest will collect unemployment benefits at the taxpayer's expense. That said, GM is contractually obliged to make up the difference between the "idled" workers' government checks and 90% of their GM base pay AND continue to pay their health care benefits. When their jobless benefits expire, GM will place the workers into its infamous "Jobs Bank". They will then receive a full paycheck for doing nothing, until they retire to collect their pensions and use their GM-financed health care benefits.

With that kind of downside, it's no wonder GM has continued to build cars and sell them at a loss rather than the bite the [exploding] bullet. It's also clear to anyone who even glances at the details of Rabid Rick's mini-restructuring plan that the plant closures are too little, too late. Unlike the health care give-back scam, industry analysts and the mainstream automotive media are all over this one. The Detroit News, Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Sanford & Bernstein, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs– it's pig pile on Ricky. And rightly so. The closures are a tacit admission of GM's failures both in the domestic marketplace and on the factory floor. They do nothing to rectify the fundamental problems bedeviling The General's potential profitability.

Wagoner's spin on this development is the old "tough medicine" routine. In case you missed the implied corollary– I'm the Doc courageous enough to administer the diabolical dose– Rabid Rick dismissed those who would dismiss him: "I wasn't brought up to run and hide when things get tough." Yes, well, the ramifications of his retreat from the field of battle are many– and none holds forth the prospect of a corporate turnaround. As the offical UAW response to the closures pointed out, GM under Wagoner has proven itself incapable of designing cars, trucks and SUV's people want to buy. Predictably enough, Wagoner says the killer products– once new SUV's, now crossovers– are just around the corner. Again. Still.

In any case, when all is said and done, a great deal will have been said about The General's plant closures and job cuts, and nothing will be done to steer GM away from the troubles ahead. With a Delphi-shaped iceberg about to strike GM's hull, you could even argue that GM's production plants should be cranking up to provide inventory, not winding down to bolster Wagoner's flagging rep on Wall Street. Meanwhile, GM's Board of Bystanders– I mean Directors– should be publicly flogged for allowing Wagoner to dance with wolves when he should be busy re-creating GM as a leaner, meaner and more creative organization; making fewer models for fewer brands at a greater profit. It is hard to understand what Board members do to deserve their paychecks, or how they can possibly justify paying dividends at this time of crisis.

Rest assured, there will be a moral to this story: you can spin anything, but lies and half-truths only provide a brief respite from reality. The only way Rick Wagoner can help GM is to be the instrument of its destruction. Whether he knows it or not, the rough beast that will replace the world's largest automaker is already on its way.

'I'd just like to set the record straight here and now,' Rabid Rick Wagoner wrote in an email circulated yesterday on GM's intranet. 'There is absolutely no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy." Obviously, the growing suspicion that GM is heading for a cataclysmic financial failure prompted Wagoner tell the world that The Man in Charge isn't playing kissy-kissy with a bankruptcy judge behind the bike shed. At the precise moment when Wagoner should have been rallying his troops with a bold survival strategy, he chose to declare the fact that he's not [currently] negotiating surrender. Wrong answer.

If you still believe that Rabid Rick and his cronies can save GM, I suggest you surrender that opinion now and join the industry analysts wise to Wagoner's wicked ways. Every time there's trouble at the mill– an occurrence whose increasing frequency is only matched by its escalating intensity– Rick announces Something Is Being Done. The scandalous manipulation surrounding last quarter's financial statement, when Rick revealed the bogus United Auto Workers (UAW) health care "giveback" on the same day GM lost $1.6b, is a perfect example of Wagoner's MO. It's got the point where any executive assertion of corrective action signals yet another financial disaster.

So when The Detroit News (DTN) duly reports that "Ailing GM speeds up fix-it plan", it's a sure sign that The General is closer than ever to flat lining. As part of this nominal plan, whose bullet-pointed description is only marginally better than "lower costs, increase sales", Wagoner vows to cut 25k hourly employees by '08. Only GM's contract with the UAW prohibits plant closures until September 2007. And that means Wagoner actually intends to "idle" the excess workers, or try to lure them into early retirement. Either way, the employees will be almost as big a drain on GM's resources as if they were building cars no one wants.

Meanwhile, back in Wagoner's email, The General's general went to great pains to show he understands the gravity of the situation he's put the company in, and the need to sort it all out, you know, soon. Rabid Rick acknowledged that GM's North American meltdown created losses which are "unsustainable, for sure, and require a comprehensive strategy… that must be implemented promptly and effectively.' In case you haven't guessed it by now, Rabid Rick is saving this meta plan for next quarter's financial statement, when the latest red ink report reveals the full extent of GM's arterial spray.

Hey, if Rabid Rick Wagoner's got a cure-all to keep GM from the corporate crash cart, how come the North America's Vice President of Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing doesn't know about it? DTN reporter Brett Clanton recently got some face time with Monster Mark LaNeve, and asked LaNeve to outline Wagoner's plan to revitalize GM's sales and marketing. Here's what he got:

"What he means by that is doing a much better job of delivering eight distinct brands to the marketplace that all have unique target customer groups. He's talking about focusing the brands. He's talking about my plan, which is to go to market with value orientation rather than incentive orientation. Do better in the key markets such as the coasts where we've lost a lot of ground in recent years. And then, have a world-class dealer base."

While we're glad to see LaNeve wrest ownership for GM's recently abandoned "Total Value Promise" from his boss, Monster Mark's remarks indicate that Wagoner has yet to hit refresh on his turnaround browser. Even if you accept LaNeve's spinvaguery, there's no evidence whatsoever that Wagoner's crew are doing anything to conquer the coasts or implement brand differentiation. In fact, the recent revelation that GM is preparing 14 crossover vehicles for its eight brands indicates the exact opposite. And if GM's front end is in such disarray, what hope is there for sorting things out in the back?

None. All GM's management maneuvering brings to mind the connection between an ancient Roman conflagration and Emperor Nero's musical abilities. Big Ron Gettelfinger's belligerent remarks regarding the UAW's negotiations with parts maker Delphi reaffirms our contention that Delphi will be crippled by a strike in December, which will cripple GM roughly five minutes after that. Did I say cripple? Perhaps I should have used the word "kill".

Buried inside the DTN story on Wagoner's bankruptcy denial is a startling revelation; a factoid that obviates any move GM's brass could make to save the company's ass. "A Delphi-related shutdown at GM would force the automaker to tap into the $19 billion in cash it has on hand. The investment firm UBS Securities estimates that GM would run through its cash hoard in 10 weeks." In other words, our GM Death Watch is heading for its inevitable conclusion. For sure.

If it wasn't so funny, it would be sad. GM loses billions in ill-advised overseas 'investments', produces an over-abundance of vehicles that are two model cycles behind the competition, can't build a single hybrid, completely cocks-up production of its Solsticial one hit wonder, cedes US market dominance to Toyota, plays "Let's Pretend to Make a Deal" with its union, announces its intention to sell-off majority interest in the only profitable part of the company, refuses to outline its turnaround plan, and the stock market yawns. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) discovers GM's accountants have lost four hundred million dollars behind the couch and the stock tanks. What's that all about?

Before the SEC probe, like many other industry watchers, I was laboring under the impression that GM's stunning incompetence and epic lethargy reflected management myopia. In other words, The General's G5 corporate culture had insulated Rabid Rick Wagoner and his well-paid minions from what you and I would call reality. They honestly believe their own hype. Now, I'm not to sure. Although the $400m was "misreported" rather than "lost", there are ominous rumblings that GM's mea culpa is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Lest we forget, the SEC's main focus was/is GM's multi-billion dollar pension and benefit schemes (vis-a-vis bankrupt auto parts supplier Delphi). Yesterday, the federal Pension Guaranty Corporation reported that Delphi's pensions are underfunded by $10.8b.

If GM's been cooking the books, people will soon wonder if Rabid Rick's secretly hired Dorian Grey's portrait painter. After all, GM maintains an entire ledger of accountants to ensure that The General's financial statements are on the up-and-up. The audit committee in charge of these pusillanimous pencil pushers reports directly to Rabid Rick. So, if the SEC finds that GM's increasingly obvious use of "aggressive accounting" tipped into pension and benefit-related GBH, the chances that the shell game was a devious plot concocted by a rogue element with The General's ranks are minimal. The discovery will reflect Rabid Rick's willingness to encourage– or at the very least tolerate– corporate duplicity.

This would put us back in charted waters: in Enron territory, watching arrogant execs manipulating the public trust for personal greed and glory. And that sucks. Because it would mean that GM is deeply, fundamentally corrupt. That all the garbage we've been interpreting as corporate "spin"– our cars are terrific, our new SUV's are high mileage heroes, we're sorting the brands, badge engineering is dead, discounts are dead, crossovers are coming, hybrids are coming, fuel cells are coming, etc.– is actually a deliberate cover-up of executive malfeasance. It's a slippery slope from PR to lies to cutting corners to criminal conduct. The SEC probe could reveal that Rick's riding a Flexible Flyer.

Sadly, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps Rabid Rick can't turn GM around because he's lost in Nixonian paranoia, struggling to maintain his administration's hold on executive privilege at all costs. Wagoner is, after all, a straight-from-biz-school boffin without any work experience outside of GM. Rabid Rick's moral and ethical compass was handed to him by GM's heavy hitters. His managerial mindset was forged by the plots and plans of The General's inept dictators. Personal power could well be his primary goal– rather than the greater good of the company, its customers, employees, suppliers and stockholders. If you want evidence of this perspective, drive a GM product and ask yourself a simple question: why isn't it better?

I know: it's a deeply cynical portrait. But GM is a deeply cynical company. After launching and vigorously defending its post-fire sale "value pricing" strategy, after going to all the trouble to retrain its front line salesman to switch from deal-making to product pushing (at a cost of millions), The General has just announced a year-end "Red Tag" sale to once-again clear its bloated inventories. At the same time, they're taking credit for building-up their inventories [supposedly] in preparation for the inevitable Delphi strike and resulting production shutdown. Is this first-class crisis management, gross incompetence or a reflection of something darker, something rotten in the heart of RenCen? I'm beginning to lean towards the third option, and so is Wall Street.

Financial analysts like Banc of America's Ron Tadross haven't suddenly "woken-up" to The General's fundamental flaws and looming troubles. They've simply begun to see that The General's generals don't have a viable plan for winning the battles– never mind the war. And like Kirk Kerkorian, they can smell imminent exsanguinations from a mile away. Each day, the likelihood grows that Captain Kirk or another similarly voracious corporate raider will swoop down and buy Rabid Rick's alma mater, sell off the entire GMAC finance unit, pocket the profits and flog the unprofitable automaking side of the business for chicken feed. Either that or just close the factory gates and walk away.

For over 30 years, Maryann Keller's kept tabs on The General. The auto industry analyst has watched GM lose billions in overseas investments, surrender great chunks of market share to its rivals and sacrifice shareholder value in an endless pursuit of The Next Big Thing. According to Keller, GM's inability to face-up to its structural weaknesses is nothing new. Nor are the excuses coming from RenCen. "It's one big idea after another," Keller said. "This time it's crossovers. Well, they've used that 'there's a new product in the pipeline' routine for years. GM's problems are NOT temporary." OK, but are they terminal?

Like most observers, Keller's brain balks at bankruptcy. For one thing, The General is sitting on an estimated $30b cash pile– which will grow by another $12b or so when GM jettisons controlling interest in its GMAC mortgage and financing business. For another, Keller says bankruptcy would have a cataclysmic effect on GM's business. "Customers would disappear," Keller says. "They'd think, who's going to pay for my warranty claims? What will my car be worth? And what bank would write a loan for a car sold by a bankrupt company? Would fleet customers do business with them? I don't think so. The long-term damage to GM would be incalculable."

That said, there's no doubt in Keller's mind that GM's current situation is extremely bad, and getting worse. "In October, GM pulled down a 22% market share. If you remove fleet sales from those numbers, they actually had a 13 to 14% share. That's less than Toyota. November and December aren't going to do anything for them, and if Delphi goes out on strike, there's no telling how long current inventories will last. Even as it stands now– 14% of the market, eight brands, 70 plus models– it's simply not sustainable."

Keller is convinced that this doomsday scenario's increasing likelihood will motivate GM's management to address the company's flawed fundamentals. Call it the cornered car company concept. Keller points to Nissan and Chrysler's comebacks as examples of automakers brought back from the brink because… they didn't have a choice. Keller predicts– and clearly longs for– a signal from inside GM that reality bites. She hungers for a bold and comprehensive recovery plan that acknowledges the full extent of GM's problems and pledges the company's full resources to solve them. She calls it the "moon shot solution":

"What I'm hearing is platitudes. What I'd like to hear is a plan. A plan that says we're going to the moon. We're going to spend as much money as it takes to rebuild the brands– even if we don't make a profit on a single car for ten years. We're going to use that money to build substantially better cars than the competition, and significantly under price them… This is not rocket science. GM needs to give customers more than they expect at a price they can't ignore."

Keller doesn't see the unionized elephant in the room as an insurmountable obstacle to this as yet unexpressed turnaround plan. In fact, Keller says GM's recovery is doomed without "shared sacrifice" from management, the United Auto Workers (UAW), suppliers, bankers and dealers. In that sense, Keller feels the UAW is getting a raw deal in the court of public opinion. "It's currently in vogue to blame GM's ills on runaway health care costs, but if things are that bad, why is GM 'giving away' money in the form of stockholder dividends… The only way GM's going to solve its union problems is if they solve all the other problems at the same time. There's no way out of this mess except for GM to fix it."

While I agree with Keller's analysis, I don't share her optimism in the power of self-preservation. Keller says "People buy one car at a time." By the same token, people contemplate their employer's future one person at a time. Nothing I've read, heard or seen convinces me that any of the participants pulling the levers of power in this twisted saga have enough at stake to make them, as Keller puts it, "do things that are not in their character". Even on the fateful day they clamber aboard their golden lifeboat and watch the mother ship sink beneath the waves, they will insist that they did the right thing. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, they will accept none of the responsibility, and none of the blame.

Capitalist enterprises have a way of bouncing back from adversity. Even so, it takes more than a comprehensive plan. It takes leadership. Until and unless GM dumps Wagoner, Lutz, et al. from their lineup, and finds a team with genuine backbone, the company will not have the will nor the skill to sidestep the looming disaster. As Keller says, "Despite its success, Toyota operates with a sense of urgency. I still don't see that from GM. I wonder if I ever will."

So, Ford has a new guck. I only caught a few seconds of the ad touting The Blue Oval's "Grand Unifying Concept", but I'm reasonably sure Mr. Bill promised that, from now on, all Ford motor products will be known for… innovation. Should reality somehow mirror hype, Ford's eight brands will heretofore produce cutting edge vehicles that do way cool stuff that will make both consumers and the competition sit up and say "Whoa, Dude!" Maybe, but I reckon innovation is as likely to save FoMoCo as a GM buyout.

For one thing, most people view innovation (a.k.a. change) as only slightly more desirable than hepatocellular carcinoma. Automobilists don't want to drive the radical new machine bristling with innovative technology and design. They want the same car as the one they're driving, only a bit newer. How else could you explain the fact that GM continues to sell cars that are two product cycles behind the competition– to the same people who bought one before? Sure, automakers put a lot of gee-whizzery in mass market motors, but there are still a large number of motorists who'd rather celebrate their birthday at the Registry of Motor Vehicles than program a sat nav system.

You don't need to own a Brush Motor Company friction drive car to know that automotive history is littered with manufacturers who went out on a technological limb that snapped beneath them. Even successful carmakers regularly fall prey to feature sleep. When BMW's 7-Series introduced its pioneering iDrive [you nuts] mouse controller, the system flummoxed the faithful and alienated aspirants. When GM created an SUV with a power roof section above the cargo bay, the advance was met with spectacular apathy (save waterproof grandfather clock collectors). Bill Gates may be sniffing around the auto world, but he does so at his peril.

In fact, the more innovative the automobile, the less saleable it is. For every pistonhead who feels enriched by the latest engineering brainwave, for every Ferrari owner beta testing kludgy software and clever-but-dainty mechanicals, there are a million consumers who understand that the last thing you want in a 4000lbs. piece of metal hurling itself through a world of solid objects is unreliable– I mean "innovative" technology. Besides, you'd think that Ford has suffered enough product recalls without reinventing the wheel, and everything attached.

And then there's the cost. If Ford is serious in their newfound determination to boldly go where CAD-CAM computers make treads, they're going to have to plow a lot more of Mr. Bill's inheritance into research and development. To stay ahead of the technological curve in every automotive technology– from fuel cells to LED lighting– Ford would have to spend Portugal's gross national product on Xtreme engineering. Per year. Technologists will argue about the difference between in-yer-face innovation and behind-the-scenes boffinology, but splitting hairs isn't going to save anyone any money. No matter how you program it into you spreadsheet, high tech costs big bucks.

Innovation asunder, you've can't blame Mr. Bill for wanting to tell consumers why they should buy from the family firm. The 80's motto "Quality is Job One" certainly helped pull Ford back from the brink the last time 'round. Unfortunately, Lexus now owns that piece of real estate. More worryingly, Toyota's snagged reliability (with Hyundai in hot pursuit) AND innovation (by Prius engagement). Honda has bagged the quality engineering gig, GM lives (and dies) on the cheap, DCX does bling, Porsche is performance, Audi loves luxury, BMW is bitchin' and Mercedes still snobs-out. Ford is left wandering in brand image wasteland.

As someone who's good with the guck, I offer the following suggestion: safety. While performance and style grab the headlines and make marketeers feel macho as Hell, the average motorist is motivated by more prosaic concerns: their social, physical and financial security. Any car that protects their personal status quo is in with a chance. Under that remit, the term 'safety' encompasses design, handling, braking, traction control, ergonomics, repairs, finance, etc. So yes, an Aston could be a 'safe supercar'. Lincolns and Jaguars could feature all that expensive hi-tech safety stuff, like heads-up displays and cruise control radar. Mazda could embody nimble safety. Land Rover would be the off-roader that gets you there… and back. (Volvo's a done deal and Mercury can go fish.) Whether you're blasting in an Aston or fooling around in a Ford, the Blue Oval's got your back.

Sound familiar? GM flirted with a company-wide safety campaign earlier this year. Of course, The General's ADD reasserted itself and the safety guck disappeared. So the way is clear for Ford to refine and sell its entire product range under the overarching brand umbrella of safety– from the cars themselves through to the ownership experience. Mr. Bill could even make it hip. Safe! OK, it may not be the sexiest answer to Ford's imagectomy, but it is the safest.

While GM models continue to debut and disappear like Manolo Blahniks, the Chevrolet Corvette stays the course, slowly evolving towards excellence. To mark the retirement of Chief Engineer Dave Hill, Car Czar Bob Lutz posted a short honorific on GM's fastlane blog: "Dave was often disruptive, stubborn, unwilling to take direction, unwilling to take advice, unwilling to accept constraints or limits — in other words, the perfect man for the job." In other other words, Hill was a successful guardian of the Corvette flame DESPITE GM, not because of it.

Lutz' unintentional condemnation of his employer's corporate culture won't surprise anyone who's had dealings with The General. I've received dozens of emails from GM workers and suppliers. They describe an organization so complex it makes the legal system in Kafka's The Trial seem like basic addition. One story convinced me that the phrase "institutional paralysis" was coined by a seat bracket designer. Another persuaded me that "matrix management" and "total chaos" are synonymous. And another reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces, and left me wondering why more GM managers haven't followed author John Kennedy Toole's example.

In all the discussion about GM's perilous financials, it's often forgotten that the company itself is a disaster. Think of it this way: no one at GM wakes up in the morning and says, right, let's go make some vehicles that are two product cycles behind the competition at a price that will bankrupt The General within the next year. [Mr. Hill would have probably sacrificed his left testicle to equip the 'Vette with Audi-esque soft touch plastics.] But something happens between morning muesli and Miller time that kills GM workers' creativity and stifles the company's competitiveness. That something is bureaucracy.

It's not about size. It's about focus. Toyota is living, breathing, money-making proof that a multinational automaker can produce millions of vehicles without tripping all over itself. To do so, to create an organizational structure lean enough to consistently produce genre-dominating cars, a carmaker must maintain laser-like focus. It must first decide EXACTLY what it wants to do, and then it must do it better than anyone else. As a corollary, the manufacturer must accept that it can't– shouldn't– do everything. It's about choosing your battles wisely, fighting them tenaciously and then protecting your territory with steadfast ferocity.

Domestically, GM has eight brands: Hummer, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac, Saturn, Chevrolet, Saab and GMC. Which one of them has focus? Which one of them sells a coherent lineup, where every single model does [the same] one thing better than anyone else? Are all Chevy's economy cars? Do all Buicks lead their competition in interior quietness? Are all Pontiacs sexy? What do all Saabs, Saturns or GMC trucks do that no other vehicle in their class can match? Sure, all of GM's domestic brands sell cars that don't fall apart, get reasonable mileage, are reasonably comfortable and don't cost a fortune compared to the competition. But what's their unique selling point? Why bother buying one?

It's General Motors by name, general motors by nature. Once you go down that road, it's no wonder that the Chinese walls separating the brands disappear, and dozens of models across the eight brands emerge on their respective forecourts courtesy of the bloodless process known as badge engineering. Since all the cars within each of GM's eight brands must do everything pretty well, but none are asked to excel in any one area (save Hummer, but give it time), it makes perfect sense to save money by sharing management, designers, workers, models, parts, marketing, etc. Is it any wonder that GM's company culture rewards measured uniformity rather than breakthrough creativity?

Of course, inside any large organization, there will always be employees striving to realize their personal vision of product excellence– despite the internal forces ranging against them. Dave Hill was one of GM's "mavericks'; I'm sure he could tell plenty of stories of missed opportunities, needless compromise and administrative lethargy. In any case, Hill's success is an anomoly: the exception that proves the rule. Just think of all the nameless managers who were prevented from creating something great because they had to satisfy GM's overarching desire to do something good…

We've said it before. We'll say it again: GM must die. You can't fix this company. Even if GM's unions agreed to join their Chinese colleagues and work for $1.50 per hour, even if several of GM's 14 (count 'em 14) crossovers are a runaway success, the company is deeply, fundamentally, culturally flawed. Shuttering Buick, Saturn and Saab would help, but nothing can save a car company that's a jack of all trades and master of none.