The Freep has dubbed Chevy’s Next Big Small Thing a “hit” on the grounds that it’s big in Australia. The only problem? It’s not really selling all that well. Towards the bottom of its write-up, the Freep reveals that GM’s Holden division sold 4,826 of the US-bound Cruze in the last three months. Center for Automotive Research president David Cole reckons those numbers “kind of give you a clue as to what the potential could be” when the Cruze arrives stateside. If that’s true, the Cruze is a loser. Not only has Toyota sold 7,550 Cruze-class Corollas in the last two months, the Mazda3 and Hyundai i30 are also the segment’s fastest growers.

One of our Best and Brightest over in South Korea got the inside line on the new Hyundai Sonata. Here’s what he knows so far . . .

The car was officially released today [Hyundai press release HERE] in front of about 200 invited guests (I was NOT one of them). The car has been available for pre-sales for about 2 weeks and has, according to the salesperson I spoke to, sold over 20,000 units. For comparison, in August, the ‘old’ Sonata sold about 7,000 units. That number was probably down a little as people were no doubt waiting for the new model. In July, the ‘old’ Sonata sold about 9,000 units. So the new model has ‘pre-sold’ more than the last two months of sales of the old car. (These sales numbers of the ‘old’ model are official numbers from the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association).

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Bloomberg reports that Toyota spent the last three years secretly testing lithium-ion batteries for its hybrid Prius, then rejected them as unsuitable. And they still don’t want to talk about it. “Toyota last month ended road tests of 126 Priuses in the U.S., Japan and Europe that began in 2006, Jana Hartline, a company spokeswoman said in an interview [with someone somewhere at some point]. Details of the program, in which the cars’ nickel metal hydride batteries were replaced with more expensive lithium models, weren’t released.” [Point of information: that’s Priora.] Bloomberg fails to make the obvious contrast with GM’s public trials (sans gas engine) and tribulations (say hello to my little bankruptcy) vis à vis its electric/gas plug-in hybrid Hail Mary, the . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Volt. But they do kinda hint at it . . .

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Bob Lutz’s latest Fastlane livechat was dominated by discussion of GM’s “May The Best Car Win” campaign. As you might imagine, things got . . . interesting. Right out of the gate, Lutz confirmed that he would be racing Jalopnik’s Wes Siler. He also more or less confirmed TTAC commentators’ suspicions that GM would, well, cheat. “We’ll see if age and treachery beat youth and skill one more time,” Lutz said, echoing sentiments expressed by a famous pop chanteuse of which he is no doubt unaware. You want more?

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As a former car salesman, I can tell you that relations between the front line troops and management is usually no better—often much worse—than the relationship between the dealership and its customers. To wit, this email just in:

I used to work at —– Toyota in —–. My friends working there told me that during cash for clunkers, —– cut the sales commisions on the cash for clunkers deals by “packing” the gross of the deal with a bogus internal charge to screw the sales reps out of money. Pretty pathetic. The dealers get a bailout, raise the prices on cars to the consumer, and cut the salesmans commission. You might see if this was an industry practice. PS. I work for CARMAX now and I love it. It’s like car sales heaven. Tom

I can hear TTAC’s audience wincing at the headline. It should be “differently,” not “different.” Of course, if you imagine this executive exhortation spoken by an Italian mobster—a reasonable re-imagining given the fact that Chrysler is now controlled by Fiat—it still doesn’t work. In that case, it should be “We gotta do business different.” Preferably preceded by the word “Hey.” This ode to illiteracy appeared in a dealer document comparing Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep advertising’s effectiveness to that of Ford and Toyota. (Guess who scored higher?) So, did anyone notice the literary mistake? I’m serious. You can concentrate on what Chrysler plans to do different before it goes Tango Uniform, or you can wonder why these guys never, ever sweat the details.

Actually, it’s more about causation than a straight either/or choice. To survive, Chrysler has to learn how to sweat the details: to make interiors, engines and transmissions that don’t suck and fit them together in such a way as they don’t break, fail or fall apart. And then, gradually, inexorably, make them better, until they’re better than all their competition’s. As for branding, it’s no biggie. Jeeps go off road, Dodges go the distance and Chryslers have class. Off you go, boys. Don’t forget to pay me my $14,312,130,642 when you get the chance.

But noooooo.

“To save Chrysler Group LLC, Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne has to create a mid-size sedan that can compete with the world’s best,” Bloomberg asserts. “It’s a three- to five-year job, and he may have two years to do it.”

You can forgive the ADD-afflicted media for its ongoing love affair with The Next Big Thing. But the days are gone when Chrysler could join its cross-town rivals in pinning its hopes for a turnaround on a single vehicle. Ford and GM have the cash needed to sustain the delusion that what they really really need is a hit vehicle—instead of say, a gradual return to respectability via improved version of the products they already have. Chrysler can’t even afford the vig.

Even if Chrysler were rolling in dough, what are the odds that the former bankrupt can create a box-fresh Camry killer in a truncated product development cycle? The automaker behind the Sebring and Avenger is going to build a brand new class-leading vehicle in the most competitive segment of the market in the most competitive market in the world? Led by the head of Fiat? It’s just as preposterous now as it was before Uncle Sam decided to save American jobs by handing Chrysler’s keys to the Italians.

And even if they did build it, who would buy it? It’s not like Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota owners are wondering when the hell Chrysler’s going to offer them something demonstrably better than what they’re already driving. How do you get satisfied consumers to buy a vehicle from a company widely known for creating crap cars, whose taxpayer-provided existence is, in and of itself, off-putting? You know; if they were buying. Which, in the main, they aren’t.

We shall not see. Meanwhile, all the rest.

Sometime in the next two weeks, Sr. Marchionne will present his product and marketing plans for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Mopar (not to mention Fiat and Alfa) to the nine-member Chrysler board. Huh? While I’m a firm believer that intelligence gathering is a sign of intelligence, I’d kinda hoped that the head of the semi-nationalized automaker would have had a clear idea of what he was going to do with Chrysler before our elected representatives put him in charge of the aforementioned [nearasdammit] $15 billion “investment.” Forty-two days later, what do we know? Nothing.

Whatever Marchionne’s plan may be, Chrysler’s nine-member Board of Directors is bound to rubber stamp it. With each day’s delay, the pressure for doing something builds. With each day’s delay, the natural human tendency to consolidate power in the hands of a “man of action” grows. (Pretty good for a Canadian accountant eh?) I’m not saying Machionne is hiding behind a cult of personality. Oh wait, I am.

Whether it emanates from Marchionne’s minions or represents a mainstream meme, Chrysler’s press is increasingly focused on Sergio’s style. Bloomberg breathlessly reports the Divine Mr. M’s arsenal of cell phones, minimal sleep, and five days vacation per year. Well so what?

What we need from Chrysler is proof that they’re doing things differently, not a sneak peak into the seven highly effective work habits of sleep-deprived automotive executives. And while a[nother] new Chrysler sedan could be a showcase for New Chrysler’s capabilities, the only real proof that Chrysler has refashioned its corporate culture would be found on the showroom floor, in its existing products.

It’s not there. And it won’t be there. Even if Chrysler’s Best and Brightest hadn’t already headed for the hills (or away from the Hills), even if the company’s employees work full tilt, the company simply doesn’t have enough time to fix all the quality issues bedeviling its vehicles. And it certainly doesn’t have the ten years needed to correct a well-earned reputation for also-ran products.

Zombies are different from you and me. But they are not so different from each other. Whether its GM’s headless chicken product plans or Sergio’s [theoretically] carefully-crafted vision for Chrysler’s future, the undead are doomed. Anyone who thinks any different is deluded. “It has to work this time,” an unnamed Chrysler board member supposedly told Bloomies. “A patient can only be operated on so many times before he dies.” What if they’re already dead? Fuhgeddaboutit. If only we could.

No surprise there. Any automotive analyst worth their salt could have told you—did tell you—that Uncle Sam’s $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program was going to suck the oxygen right out of the showroom. Really, this is one for Johnny Carson. HOW BAD ARE THEY? They’re so bad that salesmen who boast, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!,” know they’re being ironic. Pause. The Associated Press doesn’t “do” irony. (Nor, apparently, sales stats.) Still, their article on September’s new car sales drought is not without merit, suffused as it is with Glengarry Glen Ross-type quotes from starving dealers, caught in the no-man’s land between no inventory and no customers. Here’s the stripper version . . .

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To put it simply, Honda’s Insight sold 4,226 units last month while the Prius sold 18,886. Through August, Toyota sold 93,810 Priora while the Insight motivated only 14,045 buyers. Honda has tacitly admitted that the Insight is not up to snuff. But upgrades could take years. Honda could just as easily have the long-rumored Fit Hybrid ready in the same time. Would it be a better Prius fighter? Or will Honda Hybrids be stuck wandering the desert until, say, the CR-Z arrives?

A little elevator music and voiceover by a heavily sedated airport announcer tell you everything you need to know about Toyota’s bid to bring excitement to its staid brand. Er, as long as you don’t fall asleep first.

Officials in charge of red light camera and speed camera programs claim it is “rare” for erroneous tickets to be issued because a human police officer diligently verifies each and every citation for accuracy before it is issued. If confronted with clear evidence that their cameras have made a mistake, the camera companies insist that it’s an “isolated incident.” Here are seven of the more ridiculous “isolated incidents” from across the country:

7) It’s Never Too Late to Attempt a NASCAR Career
In 2008, a Montgomery County, Maryland, speed camera accused an elderly man of racing through a busy neighborhood at 100 MPH — during rush hour. The automated ticketing machine snapped two photos of a Toyota Echo economy car belonging to Silver Spring residents Terence Brennan, 68, and Helga Brennan, 76. Only after the local media got involved did Montgomery County admit that the camera, which had all the usual certifications of accuracy, was flat out wrong when it came to measuring speeds.

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China has a booming car market, the biggest of the world. Their car exports on the other hands, of which the world is dead afraid, are a joke: China exported a trifling 190,000 vehicles in the first seven months of this year, down 58 percent from 2008. Adding insult to ingrained rivalry, India out-exported China in the first half of 2009. China is mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. They do what they have to do: Buy foreign brands in earnest. Today: Saab and Volvo.
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beholders have beheld the new Honda Crosstour and found it not beautiful. Ugly, in fact. Ten years ago, this condem-nation wouldn’t have been a problem for the vehicle’s manufacturer. At worst, a few aesthetically-offended members of the automotive press would have nibbled the hand that feeds, gently alluding to the vehicle’s “challenging” exterior. Otherwise, the illusion that the Honda Crosstour isn’t a Gorgon-on-wheels would have been maintained—at least until “disappointing” sales proved the point. Those days are gone. These days, Honda’s decision to green light an ugly automobile has unleashed a major PR debacle. Welcome to the Internet, fellas. I did warn you.

True story. Once upon a time, I wrote that the Subaru B9 Tribeca was ugly. More specifically, I called the Subie SUV’s front end a “flying vagina.” Excrement and rotary air moving device collided. Subaru had me fired from my job as car reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. The anti-TTAC backlash was fast and furious. BMW, Chrysler, Subaru, Toyota, GM—every single mainstream carmaker in the United States took TTAC off their press car list. Including Honda.

HoMoCo tried to dress up their contribution to the ban as a sudden realization that TTAC was too small for press car consideration. I didn’t argue the point. Why bother? We were small. But I told the PR flack in question that he was missing the point. The game was changing. Thanks to the Internet, the Japanese carmaker couldn’t hide from the truth about their cars. You know, eventually.

I figured GM’s bankruptcy would be the beginning of the end for decades of journalistic bribery and collusion. When the largest and most monolithic of the American automakers went down, the industry would realize they had to face the truth about their products, or face extinction. While I didn’t expect the chastened car companies to embrace their protagonist, I thought the post-GM C11 automakers would at least begin to see the value of a website that left no holds barred.

At that point, perhaps, carmakers might reach out to us and engage our writers and commentators in something roughly akin to a conversation. An open, honest and frank exchange of views about their vehicles’ shortcomings, leading to better products and customer relations. I predicted that the first car company to fully embrace Internet openness would have an enormous competitive advantage.

Here’s what I didn’t understand: TTAC was part of the problem. Yes, we host a not inconsiderable 1.1 million unique visitors per month. But we’re still an elitist outfit. Not to coin a phrase, we report, you decide. Old school. Or, more accurately, outdated.

The Crosstour controversy proves that the power of the truth has leapfrogged gatekeepers—both old and new—and landed on the keyboards of individual enthusiasts. To wit: a TTAC writer didn’t force Honda’s hand in the matter of its ugly ass CUV. Everyone did. Honda’s Facebook page was the medium. “The Crosstour is ugly” was the message.

And now that the message is out there, Honda can’t deal. Their efforts to do so, via their “Message to Fans,” misunderstands the fundamentally no-bullshit nature of Internet “debate.” By doing so, Honda only makes things worse.

Hi, Facebook fans. We’re listening, and we want to address a few things you’ve been talking about over the past few days. The photos: Arguably, the two studio photos we posted didn’t give you enough detail, nor were they the best to showcase the vehicle. There are more photos on the way. Maybe it’s like a bad yearbook photo or something, and we think the new photos will clear things up. It’s not the European wagon: We’ve seen a lot of comments about the desire for a wagon, but this is neither a wagon nor designed for wagon buyers. We think the Euro wagon is a cool vehicle, too, and we appreciate the feedback… but a version of that wasn’t our intention here. That’s another segment worthy of our consideration, but the Accord Crosstour, built on the larger, Accord platform, is meant to give you the best of two worlds – the versatility of an SUV with the sportiness of a car. Many of you don’t like the styling: It may not be for everyone. Our research suggests that the styling does test well among people shopping for a crossover.

Arguably? “A bad yearbook photo?” “Clear things up?” Honda’s rip-post is defensive, evasive, obfuscatory, condescending. Moreover, it shows that the automaker is so far out of the cultural loop they don’t realize that the phrase the “best of two worlds” evokes the deeply uncool Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus paradigm. And “We’re listening” brings to mind blowhard fictional shrink Frasier Crane. Taken as a whole, it’s hard to imagine Honda drafting a worse reply to their “fans” that doesn’t include the words FOAD.

More to the point, Honda fails to understand that the Internet wins. The web has revealed that their would-be emperor is buck naked and unattractive; rendering their previous product design and research worthless. And there’s nothing Honda can do to change this perception amongst the automotive opinion shapers. Because it’s not perception. It’s reality.

Honda can’t fix ugly. Unless, of course, they do. Honda could spend tens of millions of dollars to rectify this now-obvious mistake. Lest we forget, despite Subaru’s vicious anti-TTAC smear campaign, the car company quickly modified the Tribeca’s flying vagina front end into a Chrysler Pacifica-esque snout. Will Honda follow suit and change the Crosstour?

In some ways, it doesn’t matter. The autoblogosphere has forced Honda to face the truth about their car. For those of us who love cars—not forgetting that hatred is love turned upside down—the fact that Honda may be shamed into returning to product excellence is a truly wondrous thing.

It turns out that Gil Scott-Heron was right: the revolution will not be televised. It’s on Facebook.

TTAC Commentator dastanley writes:

My 2006 Corolla CE is what it is – it gets me where I’m going with no muss, no fuss, no excitement, no drama, no fun. But hey, it runs.

Problem is, every time I do a road trip in the thing, my ass hurts. The driver’s cloth seat feels like wood. Should I go to Walmart and buy the aftermarket cushions, etc. or does anyone have a recommendation for good comfortable aftermarket replacement seats? Or get another car?

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This is a tale from my youth, a very confusing period of my life, including the habit of drinking myself into a drunken stupor just for the fun of it, reckless driving of Jack Baruthian proportions, and generally excessive wanton behavior. In short, a day in the life of an average college kid, knee-deep in a period of Sturm-und-Drang. I was young, I was stupid and I had a death wish none of this world. I usually spent more time at the local café than in school, and I was out partying five days a week. I was twenty years old, I went to college, I had an apartment of my own, and I was the proud owner of a car, minus the driving license.

The car was a family hand-me-down, a Volvo P210 Station Wagon, of the 1968 vintage. It had remained in the family for some twenty years (eventually replaced as the family truckster by a certified pre-owned Toyota Hiace van). I was handed the keys on my eighteenth birthday, though the car usually stayed at the family residence. Again, I didn’t have the license to drive it. However, I took some artistic liberty in the use of the car, usually with the excuse that some friends of mine had a driving license. And on those occasions it was proudly parked outside my apartment. None the better for resisting temptations. I couldn’t help myself but to take it for a ride now and then, usually at night.

One night, I was playing games on my Commodore 64 (yes, it was that long ago) when I heard someone knocking at my door. It was my two friends Peter and Paul (names changed to protect the innocent). They asked me If I wasn’t perhaps in the mood for some partying? “Yes, well, of course,” I said. “And who’s gonna be there?” “Well, there’s you,” they replied, “and then the two of us.” “Sure,” I said, “why not.”

Paul wanted to party-crash his parents’ house out in the country. That meant we had to take my Volvo for a ride. Said and done, we arrived at his parents’ house some half an hour later.

It was a big and very flat house with overhanging roofs, built in the bungalow style. It was meant to be some fancy up-scale variant, with lots of white marble and tables of brass and smoked glass. Its moment had come and gone in 1983.

After a couple of hours of ransacking his father’s liquor cabinet, proving a point in a discussion I can’t remember (neither the discussion nor the point), Paul decided to fetch a cross-bow his uncle had in storage at his family’s other place. It seemed like a great idea. On our way out, we took Paul’s parent’s car, a late 70s euro-spec Ford Granada Station Wagon. I have never driven my parents’ car while intoxicated; Paul smiled in a smirky fashion. And we should have known better.

It was two o’clock in the middle of the night. There was no car in sight on the dark back roads of the Swedish countryside. Paul was up front, I was riding shotgun, and Peter was sitting in the back, right behind me.

Not long after we got started, we were lost. Paul decided to turn the car around. While backing the car into an exit, he missed it by several meters, and backed right into a ditch. It took us some time to get the car back up on the road again. If only we’d quit then . . .

Ten minutes later, we were driving on an avenue, with trees on both sides. The last time I looked at the speedometer, we were traveling in excess of 180 kilometers per hour. Suddenly, the avenue of trees made way for some open fields, the pavement made way for a gravel road, and a sharp turn to the right was advancing at an alarming speed. Paul cleared the turn to the right, but he lost control of the car. It made a violent return skid to the left, only to see the car exit the road to the field on the right.

There was a downward inclination of about a meter or so down to the ground,. The car hit a tree, two times, due to it being sideways and inclined. First the car hit the tree with the front left, then it bounced and hit the tree once again, on the left side. The tree made a man-sized indentation—on the side where no one was sitting.

After a moment of silence, we asked ourselves if we were okay. And we were, pretty much. Paul was in shock. Peter had a couple of broken ribs. I somehow managed to be completely unharmed, save a couple of minor scratches.  The big tire jack, formerly placed in the open back, was fifty meters away from the car, out on the field. Had it hit us on our heads on its way out, I wouldn’t have been here telling you this.

Paul, who always had been slightly criminally bent, started meddling the locks with a screwdriver, so it would look like the car had been stolen. And then we began our way back to the house, on foot. An hour later, we arrived back at Paul’s parents’ house. It was four o’clock in the morning, and we were almighty bruised and tired.

Paul immediately woke up his kid brother, who had been at the house all the time, sleeping and unknowing that we had been there before. Paul’s strategy was for us to swiftly move back to my place, making it look like we had never been there at all, with his kid brother as a witness of the non-existent events that had just taken place.

An hour or so later, we were back at my place in town. Kennedy-like, we immediately went to sleep. I crashed on my bed, the sofas were occupied, and the kid brother made use of the spare mattress in my tiny one room apartment.

Nine o’clock sharp, there was a loud knock on the door. I went up and opened the door. “This is the Police,” they said, “are you Mr. So-and-so?” “Yes,” I answered. “Good. We have orders to escort you out of town. Apparently, you have failed to show up at your military training, which was due this morning, and we will see to it that you get there.” “All right,” I said, “let me fetch my contact lenses, and we’ll be on our way.”

While the police waited, I’m sure they had a look around in the room, and I’m equally sure that all my friends were now widely awake, but hiding under their blankets. As I hadn’t cleaned in a very long time, the room was very untidy. Empty wine bottles lying around, records out of their sleeves, someone had puked in the kitchen sink, and there were fresh cigarette marks all over the carpet. It looked like we had partied like there was no tomorrow.

In the ride out of town, one of the plainclothes men asked me who it was in my apartment. “Oh, it was Mr. Paul and Peter so-and-so,” I said. “Yes, well, I thought I’d recognized them,” he replied. “We had a party last night,” I said. “Yes, we could see that,” he retorted dryly. And the rest of the ride they were silent.

As I had failed to show up for my military training five times in a row, in two years time of not making up my mind, I didn’t have to do the usual physical routine or intelligence tests, but had to go straight to the line to see the psychiatrist. I was very thankful for that, as my entire body ached, some tremendously.

After waiting for an hour, I was let into this room with this very nice lady, who looked at my papers and then looked at me and then looked at my papers again. “I can see that you don’t want to do this year in the military,” she smiled, “but what reason should we come up with?” I took that as my cue to tell her the long and tedious story of my life, exaggerating all the points that would make me unfit for my military duty. She slapped me on the wrist and let me go, with the written conclusion that I was “too individually minded to fit in the collective whole of the army.” I was handed my one and only daily wage from the military, some 38 Swedish kronor or about five dollars.

The young cadet in the counter smirked and called me a simulating SOB. I had left my wallet back home, but luckily for me, the bus fair home was 32 kronor. On the way back, I got myself contemplating and tried to grasp the absurdity of life. Back home, on the kitchen counter, there was a gift-wrapped bottle of Gordon’s London Dry Gin and a note from Paul’s girlfriend, thanking me for insisting that all in the car should wear seat belts. I laughed with the most uncanny laughter I’ve ever heard, went straight to my bed and slept for fifteen hours.

Never again.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a General Motors Zombie Watch. Time keeps on slipping, slipping . . . into the future. Only when you’re dead, there is no future. You’re dead. Oh, I know: New GM’s got new plans for new cars with new advertising that will win new (old?) customers. And the new Board of Directors’ Chairman Ed Whitacre is busy threatening to fire New GM’s old (new?) execs if they don’t get their shit together. But they haven’t, as their farrago of product plans and the botched launch of the new Buick LaCrosse prove. In fact, the current crop of GM suits will be fired. And?

And nothing. As I’ve said before, Uncle Sam kept CEO Fritz Henderson and the GM Lifers on center stage for one reason: to throw them off when taxpayer tomatoes start hitting RenCen’s windows. Which will be soon after GM’s third quarter financials hit the press. When it becomes abundantly clear that GM will burn through ALL of its taxpayer loot within two years. Or less.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle (though one more than the other) will proclaim that something must be done! And something will: the management that should have been shit-canned when GM was nationalized—actually long before, but that’s another story—will be shit-canned. The feds will press an entirely theoretical reset button.

New suits will take over. The fact that the auto industry is on a three to five-year cycle, the fact that New GM’s new brooms face dust devils the size of Montana, the fact that any genuine GM turnaround would take a decade and over $100 billion in addition funds, will be lost in the shuffle.

Never mind. The corporate cull will achieve its intended goal: it will unleash the puppies of prognostication. The media will be abuzz with speculation about the new new new new new new new New GM, for another financial quarter. Maybe two. Possibly three. Meanwhile, the feds will continue readying the GM pig for its IPO, lipstick and all.

You want to talk about a perception gap? The Obama administration’s Presidential Task Force on Automobiles is trying to widen the gap between the perceived value of General Motors and the actual retail price of the government’s automotive showcase. Mark my words: the feds ain’t done propping-up the unproppable. They’ll shovel more and more money at GM, dressing-up the nationalized automaker for the Great Pre-Mid-Term Election Sale.

Lest we forget, GM is counting on—as in factoring into their current balance sheet—a $10.3 billion loan from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program. It’s the same money previously denied the American automaker. You may remember that GM was deemed non-viable by someone figured out that 1 minus 120 billion is something less than one. Guess what’s changed.

Nothing much. While GM has shed a mountain of debt, restructured its labor contracts, dumped dealers, paid lip service to cultural change, and found another sucker to foot the bills (thank you, America!), it’s still taking in less money than it spends. And we all know how that picture ends.

Before the closing credits, we’ve got to sit through a chase scene between Chevy’s plug-in electric/gas hybrid Volt and the Toyota Prius.

There’s no way GM can catch ToMoCo’s four-wheeled planet cooler. Even if GM can get the Volt to work, they can’t sell it for anything even close to the Prius’ $22,000 price tag. Unless . . . Unless . . . Government Motors does it anyway and takes the hit.

Of course, a “hit” is not a good thing for a company that wants to offer shares to the general public. So . . . how about we subsidize the shit out of the car so that it appears as if the car is somewhat profitable-ish? Or, at the very least, take the costs off GM’s books?

The federal government has already cash-injected the battery makers developing the Volt’s power supply, to the tune of $100 million plus. Your elected representatives are going to use your taxes to subsidize the plant making the car [see: DOE loans above]. And the car itself (via a $7,500 tax credit). Not to mention signing over $62 billion to a company that can’t even set a timeline for the Volt’s potential profitability.

Before a hundred or so hand-built Volts hit Chevy showrooms, the feds will re-up the battery research grants and find some other eco-friendly way of “helping” the halo car that the Presidential Task Force on Automobiles rejected as delusional, pre-nationalization.

Yes, there is that. It can’t be said enough: the feds own GM. The GM zombie has no will of its own; it’s controlled by its political taskmasters. When the truth about its [most recent] parlous finances are revealed, GM will become far more than a failed automaker turned undead manufacturer. It will become a political liability. If you think GM shareholders were slow to abandon ship, you’re right. If you think the Obama administration will be slow about jettisoning its GM-shaped political baggage, you’re wrong.

But first, GM CEO Fritz Henderson and his motley crew will be packed off in their golden lifeboat, so that the illusion of change can be re-energized. Like any good magic trick, the “GM will pay back it federal loans” routine depends on a suspension of disbelief. As Tufts University supporter P.T. Barnum said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

When the IPO time rolls around, real investors (as opposed to taxpayers dragooned into paying for GM’s nationalization) will not want to own GM stock. Why would they? So the government will have to subsidize THAT boondoggle as well. In other words, papers will be shuffled once again, the taxpayer will still be on the hook, and GM will continue wandering through the wilderness.

One way or another, sooner or later, what’s left of GM will fall into the hands of its rivals. A few names will be all that’s left of what was once the world’s largest automaker, and the world’s most profitable company. But make no mistake: this is less of a transition than it seems. GM is already dead.