The Associated Press called it: GM is set to enter popular parlance as “Government Motors.” When the automaker files for Chapter 11, the nickname will stick, as the debate over GM’s future centers on whether or not the United States government should own a commercial enterprise. To which the only possible answer is no. It was no back when President Bush over-ruled Congress and authorized the first multi-billion dollar “loan.” It’s no now, as the feds prepare to stump-up another $20 billion dollars to keep GM in business. There are lots of reasons why “new” GM is a bad idea. But here’s the most important impediment: Government Motors doesn’t have the vehicles it needs to survive.

Let’s assume “good” GM lowers its cost base to transplant levels and single-out the models that could give the post-C11 automaker a fighting chance. We’ll combine objective information (last month’s sales data) and some subjective analysis (the enthusiast’s perspective).

Although we’ve long argued that Chevrolet and Cadillac are the only GM brands worth saving, that’s not how Government Motors will roll. So we need to identify potential money spinners lingering within Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC.

Buick is a lost cause. The “take a look at me now” brand stands for nothing, save God’s waiting room on wheels. In April, the LaCrosse and Lucerne sedans combined generated 1481 sales. That’s more than the Enclave (5,194 vs. 3,731), but less than Toyota Tacoma sales (8,925 vs. 9,027). I’m no fan of the Enclave’s exterior, but we’ve got to keep something. The Enclave stays.

There’s no nice way to put this: Cadillac is another dead brand walking. Last month, the “standard of the world” also accounted or less sales than Ye Olde ToMoCo Taco. Sales of all eight Caddy models combined clocked-in at just 8,337 units. Caddy has some new models in the pipeline, but c’mon. CTS Sportswagon? SRX replacement? While waiting for a flagship, the CTS is the only Cadillac vehicle worth saving, in terms of product excellence and sales (3,876).

GM’s volume brand is looking decidedly lackluster. The Impala topped Chevy’s sales chart in April at 17,532 units. The Malibu and Cobalt are next up, at 14,665 and 10,627 sales respectively. So, despite the fact that the Impala is a low-profit fleet queen and the Cobalt’s a POS, we’ll keep the old girl, the new ‘Bu and the crap ‘Balt. We’ll also hang onto the Camaro. Corvette? If you must. Volt? Cruze? Equinox? More pie-in-the-sky from America’s master BS baker.

Chevy trucks are still where the money is. Incentives be damned; 26,437 Silverado pickup trucks moved off the lots in April. I’m also liking the Traverse (8,204). By [literally] the same token, GMC should keep the badge-engineered Sierra (8,273) and Acadia (4,764), and stay the course with the Tahoe/Suburban twins (12,586 combined).

And there you have it: one Buick, one Cadillac, five Chevy cars, two Chevy trucks and three GMC trucks. Your list may differ here and there, but I reckon these are the eleven vehicles upon which taxpayers will risk at least $40 billion dollars. Which would be OK, if that was the long and short of it. But it isn’t. In fact, it can’t be.

As the New York Times recently asserted (welcome!), we can blame GM’s sclerotic corporate culture for their abject failure to create a complete line of compelling/profitable vehicles. The idea that the United States government will reform GM’s way of being and reverse the curse is completely preposterous. It’s like asking a cocaine dealer to sponsor a crack addict.

Initially, the Chinese walls separating Government Motors’ management from its political masters will prevent excessive tinkering. But there’s no way GM can insulate itself from “undue” political influence. Not when the feds are both the automaker’s controlling stockholder AND its main lender. And certainly not when there are so many GM “stakeholders” ready, willing and able to play political hardball with GM’s new owners.

Why wouldn’t they? The bottom line is that there won’t be a bottom line. The Obama administration may genuinely want to create and then sell off a profitable GM but it’s under no obligation to do so. To wit: there’s no deadline for returning taxpayer’s money. Even if a reasonable turnaround strategy emerges—complete with performance-based reality checks—the new management team is destined to fall afoul of institutional apathy. I mean, we all know how many government-sponsored projects come in on time and/or under budget . . .

Think of it this way: the above list of cars GM needs to keep AND cull to survive presumes that Government Motors’ new overlords will ignore the blowback from closing factories in any given country, state or congressional district. That’s simply not realistic. If the survival of federally-funded weapons programs depend on their sponsors’ political pull as much the systems’ efficacy, why would we expect anything less (or more) from GM’s lineup?

To paraphrase Lowell George, GM’s been down—but not like this before.

Who’d have thunk it? The New York Times reports that despite being designed to become the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano isn’t attracting as many budget buyers as you might expect. Only 20 percent of Nano orders (India market only) are currently for the base model, a $2,600 vehicle. Half of all orders are for the top-of-the-line model, which boasts such ameneties as cup holders and air conditioning but costs some 40 percent more than a base model. When the Nano was announced, its lowest possible cost was widely touted to claims that it would become “India’s Model T.” And though the low-cost-at-all-costs approach hasn’t been wildly popular, orders for the well-optioned model will help Tata stay out of a profit-draining battle on price alone. But that isn’t stopping competitors from planning ever-cheaper models. Renault/Nissan is planning a $2,500 model developed in conjunction with Bajaj Auto. Toyota is also rumored to be pursuing a low-cost car for the Indian market.

I always wanted to control the Big Three. Not the once-mighty Detroit automakers but the three biggest personal expenses: house, car, and food. Thankfully, I got lucky with the house. Cars are my living. And food? My wife is an awe inspiring Zen master; I’m still working on spaghetti. But over the course of time our priorities have changed. Health care crept up. Then education. Now it’s saving for the volatile road of the near future. The world has changed, more folks are embracing frugality, and the world of cars reflects this seismic shock.

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Whoever has been on the inside of Volkswagen knows that they are devout skeptics when it comes to alternative energies. Sure, they do some token research into hydrogen and hybrids to give the blue VW logo a greener hue, but deep in their hydrocarbon pumping hearts, they are devoted pistonhardheads. The aggressive incremental improvement of internal combustion has been their true strategy. Under the “BlueMotion” moniker, they tweak existing technology to wring every last drop of gas (or diesel) out of it. So far, the conservative (and conserving) strategy has succeeded: The new BlueMotion Golf VI, fitted with a peppy 1.6L TDI oil-burning engine, gets 61.9 mpg, handily beating the 2010 EPA 51/48/50 mpg numbers of Toyota’s third gen Prius (YMMV, as you well know.) Suddenly, Wolfsburgologists are registering a change in VeeDub’s secretive Forschung und Entwicklungs Abteilung (R&D Dept., see picture above.)

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“To live outside the law,” Dylan sang, “you must be honest.” And so we come to the final part of a series that has offended some and delighted others. Just to provide some value to the querulous quislings of quaint quotidian travel, I’ll pass along one tip for the highway cell-phone snitch. Most highway patrol operations discount singular drunk-driving phone-ins, but they are not permitted to ignore reports of brandished firearms. Don’t like the speeder who just blew by? Call him in for waving a gun. Use a prepaid phone for this, as most cops have little patience for being used in this fashion. Some would say that snitching is bad; didn’t our mothers tell us not be little snitches? Still, you know what’s best for others, so go ahead and make that call.

The rest of us can take the offramp into the suburbs and exurbian roads and practice our maximum street speed here as well. We’d like to take most marked ramps at double the marked limit or above, and this will often lead us to interface with minivans, SUVs, and hybrids for whom the yellow advisory sign reflects a terrifying pinnacle of death-defying speed. Pass ’em on the outside of the lane. There are two reasons for this. The first is that you’ll maintain a higher speed for the same G-load. The second is that if you run out of talent or grip you will exit harmlessly away from the car you are passing, instead of inadvertently re-entering their lane and “PIT”ing them.

I’ve never had anybody acquire the presence of mind to block me in time when doing an offramp pass. It’s simply beyond the program of most road users. Don’t forget to wave in a self-deprecating, thankful manner as you go by. Most people will assume you’ve made some sort of mistake.

It’s nearly impossible to reach triple digits on surface streets, but that doesn’t mean we cannot flow at beyond traffic speeds. Forget about doing a series of back-and-forth lane-changes. That usually produces the same result it did in the movie “Office Space”. Instead, use the turn lane to run up to the end of traffic and then rejoin the main flow.

I’d be fibbing if I said that I always experienced perfect success with my “last-minute faux-forgetful merge technique”. Some drivers can be stubborn. To combat this, I purchased a 1991 Chevrolet Caprice Classic woodgrain-trim wagon, known as a “bubble” in the argot of the streets, and immediately experienced the freedom to merge without fear.

When operating vehicles at speeds of about 35mph or below, most motorists are alert enough to compensate for your traffic-defying behavior, up to and including temporarily driving in the oncoming lane. When I need to do something like jump a green light and left-turn an intersection before that traffic can start moving, I find it’s helpful to clutch a deactivated cell phone to my ear, as if I were enraptured by conversation. This fits into other drivers’ preconceptions—a distracted phone user—and they fail to take direct offense to aggressive action.

The fake cellphone is also a great aid to merging into occupied lanes. Move your car over, absolutely fail to make eye contact with any other drivers, look back once the merge is complete, wave the phone apologetically, and continue on.

Sometimes we’re in a situation where traffic simply isn’t moving and a U-turn is required. But there isn’t enough room or time to do one due to a tight road or approaching traffic. What to do? The answer is the “Jarno Donut.” It works with most RWD cars. Crank the wheel all the way to the left, rev to five grand, drop the clutch. The first time you try it you may wind up doing a 270 instead of a 180, so practice at home. Of course, it’s called a “Jarno Donut” in tribute to that outstanding qualifier and vintner, Jarno Trulli, who frequently finds himself backwards in his Toyota.

To open up room for aggressive maneuvers, we can take advantage of a certain panic response in most drivers. When they hear squealing tires in the immediate vicinity, curiosity and concern will make them slow down and scan the immediate area. If we need a car to move out of a lane and the adjoining one is open, we can drive up at a higher speed and engage the ABS next to them as we sail by. This almost always produces a sympathetic brake slam and opens the spot.

Final tip: every Prius ever made will always yield its road position to an aggressive driver, as will every car on the road with more than one “Obama ’08” sticker. Good night, and good luck.

[Click here to read Part I . . . or Part II . . . or Part III . . . of this series. Note: as these editorials have triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples in an entirely first amendment friendly sort of way.]

The grand poobahs at the PTFOA are Wall Street bankers and political insiders. None of them have built or run real businesses designing, marketing, selling and supporting high priced consumer products. Everything they think they know they learned from books and lectures, not from actually doing stuff. The old story goes: “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” To the Wall Street types, slash and burn is the hammer they know. Even President Hope has taken to using their favorite motto “Lean and Mean.” Surely we need lean, productive companies, but who needs mean?

GM and Chrysler, under orders from the PTFOA, are decimating their dealer network in the perverse expectation that doing so will lead to higher sales and/or profits. The word decimate comes from the Romans’ practice of showing displeasure with the soldiers by randomly killing one-in-ten of them. While the famously brutal Romans capped their ritual slaughters at 10%, GM and Chrysler are killing off more like 30% of these formerly loyal partners.

Many have made the argument that the bloodletting is necessary to improve GMAC’s cash flow, reduce GM and Chrysler’s inventory costs and give the remaining dealerships the chance to make better profits with which to support future sales efforts.

All of those arguments point to second order effects, not primary effects. GMAC’s floorplanning business, for example, has historically been wildly profitable. Credit worthy dealers paying their floorplan loans on a timely basis are a benefit to GMAC, not a liability. What bank hates having good paying revolving loan customers?

Those dealers which do not demonstrate ongoing creditworthiness should have their credit lines pulled, which in many cases will force them to close down. The floorplan and other second order arguments duck the main reason why financially viable dealerships should not be wantonly shut down by decree from Detroit or Washington.

More sales outlets means more places for customers to buy cars, more places selling the highly profitable OEM parts and more places paying the various fees which go along with being a franchised dealer. Franchise discipline practices which enforce quality standards are long overdue, but swinging the hatchet pell mell is no solution to that problem.

The dealerships are in fact the customers of the factory. No manufacturer of any product in history has successfully maintained or increased its sales volume or profitability by decimating its customer base and sales channel. Surely it makes sense to get rid of crooked and/or financial weak dealerships. The speed with which the recent slaughter has been carried out demonstrates simple minded meanness and not smart management.

The dealer slaughter frenzy all started with Wall Street analysts pointing out the numeric sales per dealership advantage which Toyota, Honda and other enjoy over the Detroit-Washington 2.8. Financial analysts are often much better at describing the disease than they are at prescribing the best medicine.

In 1998 when Daimler merged with Chrysler, not a word was said about the excess dealership millstone around Chrysler’s neck. In the eleven years since then the problems with Chrysler have boiled down to a series of botched new products. Dealers didn’t create that problem and nuking dealers will do nothing to solve it.

The rational thing to be doing right now would be a selective culling of dealerships based on quality and financial stability criteria. Most of the really bad dealerships will self-destruct without any help from Detroit or mean spirited zone managers. Instead of this, we are seeing summary decimation carried out as a result of the “appear to do something bold” political imperative.

The contrast between Ford and its cross-town rivals on this subject is quite telling. Ford is selectively culling the dealer herd and will likely come out the other side of this period with the strongest vehicle sales and service channel in North America.

Books and articles will be written about how even with greatly reduced dealer numbers, GM and Chrysler will continue to loose sales at an accelerating rate as the remaining dealers do not in fact pick up the slack from their slain comrades. The real reason the dealer slaughter is going on is to offer blood sacrifice to the gods of Washington and Wall Street. God help us.

1. Floorplan costs The more dealers you have, the slower the inventory turn. The slower the turn, the longer it takes to repay the debt. The longer it takes to repay the debt, the more money that’s required. By cutting dealers, the manufacturers cut GMAC’s capital requirements, which run into the billions.

2. Inventory Excess inventory ties up capital and increases the burden of the floor plan, due to the longer sales cycle. (Chrysler and GM have far higher days of inventory than Toyota, Honda, BMW, et al. All that metal sitting around wastes a lot of money delaying the conversion of assets to cash). If the automakers have fewer dealers to serve they should be able to produce fewer vehicles.

3. Resale value More dealers means more competition within the brand which means lower transaction prices.

4. Profit at the dealer level One would hope that you end up with better dealers if they can make more money (although that’s debatable).

Start with this: Automotive News [sub] reports that FoMoCo is set to out-produce cross-town rivals General Motors this year. This according to auto industry analysts IHS Global Insight. “Ford will rank first with North American production of 1.9 million units, a 17.7 percent decrease from 2008, IHS said. GM, which is shutting most of its plants as it braces for a possible June 1 bankruptcy, will build 1.7 million vehicles, about half as many as it did last year.” A fifty percent production decline. Whoa. And what’s with the probable on the GM C11? AN should’ve saved the modifier for GM’s projected production; it’s entirely possible they won’t even build that many. Especially if/when Nissan/Renault buys-up the bits. As you might imagine, “new” Chrysler keeps on slipping, slipping; into the man-u-re . . .

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The über-wealthy have many fascinating ways to speed on America’s highways, from night-vision goggles to convenient spotter planes overhead. But those of us who toil in the middle class have to earn our velocity by hard graft. Freeway speeding is the crack cocaine of fast-road driving—cheap, easy, addictive, and deadly—and nighttime freeway speeding is both more glamorous and annoying than its daytime counterpart.

Once the sun goes down, we can do a lot more of that left-lane passing which is so near and dear to the hearts of wannabe Europeans, thanks to a trick I call “Poor Man’s Takedown.” Cop cars have “takedown” lights: high beams which flash alternately. We can simulate the effect as follows: While coming up behind traffic in the left lane, switch to parking lights only. When you are a few hundred feet back, flash your brights three or four times, producing the “takedown” effect. As Billy Dee Williams would say, “It works every time,” primarily because it startles Toyota drivers into yielding the lane before their natural territorial instincts can assert themselves.

We don’t use the shoulder at night unless we have to. Confused deer, abandoned cars, and discarded retreads tend to hide out there. In the event that a lane-changing fellow motorist leaves us with no safe lane choice and no time to slow the car, it’s occasionally possible to simply split the lane on the side away from the lateral direction of the lane change. If you are swift enough with it, you might even keep your mirrors.

The time will come when, despite our best efforts to look ahead, watch brake lights, and use our Valentine Ones, we will be clocked. At this point, we have two useful options. We can pull over and wait for the nice policeman, right there across the road from his clocking point (this will sometimes earn us some goodwill), or we can run.

It isn’t really “running” until the cop is directly behind us with his lights on. That’s a felony, and I advise against it. Until then, it’s merely additional speeding, spiced up with some unwarranted direction-changing. When we decide to perform said additional speeding, we need to absolutely abandon the idea of getting where we were going. That’s no longer important. Instead, we need to perform three important tasks.

Task one is breaking visual contact. As long as the cop can see us, we are toast. So it’s time to boogie. Most police sedans with light bars can’t break 120 mph, so we want to get to that speed or better immediately. We look ahead, not behind, or we will surely drive right into the back of a lane-wandering minivan full of multicultural children stroking crippled kittens and singing “Kumbaya.” We can check our mirrors in the gaps between traffic.

With Task One accomplished, it’s time to multiply possibilities. The police handbooks indicate that fleeing drivers almost always turn right. So we get off the freeway and turn left. If we have enough clear air and we aren’t driving something like a lime green Audi S5 or other memorable car, we can cross the median and join the lawful traffic heading in the other direction. If that’s too much to ask, get off the freeway . . . but do it quickly. We keep our speed up, using the techniques I’ll cover in Part III, and we make multiple direction changes.

After a few of these, it’s time to abandon the whip. We get out of the car and walk away. A gas station is fine for this, a restaurant is better, a car lot is best of all. If you have, ahem, a new Ford Flex, why not drive into a Ford dealership and park in a line of them?  Then get away from the car. Guess what? If they can’t prove we were driving the car, we have a fighting chance in court.

If the police manage to catch us, we say we didn’t see them and that we always drive like a maniac. This abject confession of putative stupidity saved, um, a friend of mine from a beating after he led the Ohio Highway Patrol on a 120+ mph chase down Route 71 in a Lotus Seven clone. Sorry, officer! Didn’t see you back there! Gimme the ticket, I’ll sign it!

In cities, we return to the scene of the crime. Police search in an outward circle that expands with time. The one place they won’t be is the place where the search started, so we go there, using left turns. Needless to say, we don’t go speeding with weed, Ecstasy, firearms, or illegal immigrants in the car, because one felony charge at a time is enough.

In Part III, we will learn how to drive back roads at outrageous speeds.

[Click here to read Part I or Part III of the series. Note: as these editorials have triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples, in an entirely first amendment friendly sort of way]

Toyota’s Prius will extend its domination of the auto design zeitgeist, according to an Automotive News (via Autoweek) interview with Toyota global design chief Wahei Hirai. The third-generation Prius rocks ToMoCo’s latest “free-form geometrics” design language, an “avant-garde, high-tech look that also screams green.” The new Prius has improved its Cd from .26 to .25, with the help of “aero corners” and a reworked grille that shows Toyota’s way forward. “It’s an anti-traditional grille,” says Simon Humphries, general manager for global design. “It’s one step closer to the ultimate goal, which is going grilleless.” The “bolder” presentation of the hood emblem will also find its way onto other Toyotas as well. Which to my way of thinking is no good thing. Where the outgoing Prius was generic looking to the point of becoming iconic, the new model seems almost like a step backwards to the fussy awkwardness of the first-generation Prius. Although much of the visual discord is a matter of proportion, rather than details, news that this new model will influence Toyotas everywhere is reason to give pause. Think about it, man. No one may ever buy a Toyota based on its looks ever again.

While sales of hybrids and plugins languish in the US, and are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent in Europe, in Japan, “the popularity of Honda Motor Co.’s Insight hybrid and the even greater popularity of Toyota Motor Corp.’s new Prius highlights that eco-friendly models are one of the few bright spots for automakers,” the Nikkei [sub] reports.

According to the Nikkei, “Honda’s Insight hybrid, released in February, became the best-selling model among all passenger cars, excluding minivehicles, in April.” Sales will heat up further after Toyota unveiled their third-generation Prius on Monday.
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Bloomberg is all over Bill Reinert’s presentation to a National Academy of Sciences panel today in Washington. And why not? Toyota’s US national manager for advanced technology says plug-in hybrid vehicles are a non-starter. “Toyota estimates sales of hybrids that can be recharged at household outlets may be 50,000 units a year at most and could be as few as 3,500.” Not expressed: those kind of numbers wouldn’t even pay the HVAC bill for the building where Chevy engineers are busy trying to cobble together the new plug-in electric/gas hybrid Volt. Reinert’s not dancing on the Volt’s grave, but that’s only because it’s not dead. Yet. But the signs—admittedly as provided by the vehicle’s competitors—are not good.

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Three years ago yesterday, on a Jalopnik-TTAC joint podcast, a certain Robert Farago foresaw the rise of a “hybrid aesthetic” in automotive design. In order to break into the consumer psyche, went his logic, a hybrid car must look unmistakably like . . . a hybrid. Fast forward to 2009 and the new Honda Insight seems to confirm that looking like a hybrid means looking like a Toyota Prius. Chevy’s Volt might someday become the third member of the Prian party, while the forthcoming Lexus HS250h looks to be a Prius rebadge of GM-level laziness. If hybrids are the cars of the future, are we doomed to inherit a world of identical, beetle-shaped rides?

The obvious explanation for Prian design influence run amok is found in the wind tunnel. The outgoing Prius boasted a low-low coefficient of drag (Cd) of .26, making for one slippery hybrid. But the current Mercedes S-Class and Lexus LS460 also earn the exact same rating. For a four-door, the Prius’s CdA (Cd multiplied by area) is also surprisingly good at 6.24. But that’s not much better than, say, a 1991 Subaru Legacy which scores a 6.81.

The point is that the pursuit of wind tunnel efficiency does not lead inexorably to the Prian form, like some aerodynamic Mandelbrot set. There’s more to the wave of Prius-aping than mere laws of nature. The hybrid, writ large, has entered the American psyche. And it looks just like a certain Toyota.

To many Americans, the outgoing Prius was more than just a car. Through eight years of George Bush’s presidency, the Prius became symbolic statement of iconic power. It would not be unfair to say that, in 21st Century American iconography, the Prius took on the role of the Volkswagen Beetle to Bush’s Richard Nixon. It’s distinctive looks, unsullied by visual association with humdrum “regular cars,” created an undeniable statement. The bumper sticker had wagged the car.

The always-incisive cartoon South Park tapped into the Prian archetype in its send-up of self-satisfied hybrid drivers, “Smug Alert!.” The episode portrays the “Pious” and “Hindsight” as near-identical Prius-alikes, a subtle metaphor for the lockstep conformity of their “enlightened” owners. And with Honda’s latest hybrid so sincerely flattering the Prius’s looks, the South Park critique clearly had some merit.

But the real threat presented by the Priusification of the hybrid sector is not a looming cloud of smug. Rather, the very soul of automotive expression could become a victim of trend-following. Mass-market automotive offerings have long lost any stylistic luster, but more profitable “dedicated hybrid” models offer new opportunities to shape the automotive zeitgeist. In the face of this opportunity, automotive stylists seem to have raised the white flag, surrendering to (and thereby reinforcing) the power of the Prian archetype.

And this doesn’t just hasten the dystopic day when car buyers are forced to choose between a few flavors of hump-backed hybrid. Chasing the Prius’s self-defined segment too closely forces a comparison of the pretender to the original in which the newcomer may not fare well. The new Insight seems to have already fallen victim to this vicious dynamic. With so little separating the driving experiences of the Toyota and the Honda, reviewers are forced to conclude that the Insight is a slightly cheaper Prius without usable back seats.

Beyond this model-specific self-sabotage, the pursuit of the “dedicated hybrid” segment creates other dangerous temptations for automakers with hybrid ambitions. The early stages of the hybrid market favored unique models that identified their owners as early adopters. But as hybrid technology filters into the mainstream, Prius-like “dedicated hybrid” models will lose their unique appeal. If South Park jabs doesn’t get ’em, technological proliferation will.

Honda may have traded in its Hybrid Civic and Accord efforts for the Insight due to weak sales, but it may well have missed out on the “dedicated hybrid’s” moment in the sun. The third generation of the Prius hits dealerships this year, and early reports indicate that its blockbuster predecessor has been relentlessly improved upon in typical Toyota fashion. Oh, and the looks haven’t changed much. Honda’s decision to attack the Prius on price alone may run into some heavy competition.

If the Insight sells like gangbusters, the Farago principle will play out with a grim determinism. This scenario would not only prove that the hybrid market still demands visual representations of eco-awareness; it would also permanently cement the Prian form as the distillation of this hybrid aesthetic. But the automotive future is simultaneously too exciting and mundane to be represented by a single, instantly-recognizable (and baggage-carrying) form.

On the one hand, hybrid technology must eventually enter the mundane realm of the Fit, Corolla and Matrix. On the other, truly cutting-edge technology must be packaged in ever-more inspiring new forms. Not just another Prius.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Honda earned a reputation as the most technically innovative and ecologically sensitive Japanese automaker. Honda introduced the first hybrid to the American market. Unfortunately, its rep for green tech leadership took a big hit when the original Insight, an EV1ish tear-drop-shaped two-seater, was totally eclipsed by Toyota’s Prius. Hybrid versions of the Civic and Accord did little to stem Toyota’s PR gains. For 2010, Honda has introduced an all-new Insight hybrid. Does this car have a shot at ending Toyota’s dominance of the green car mindscape?

Anyone who’s spent any time around preschoolers knows they can ask some really hard questions. Fortunately, even questions like “why is the sky blue” or “where do babies come from” can be answered to their satisfaction with a little thought and careful wording. Questions from gearheads are a bit tougher and aren’t as easily answered. Here are nine questions I’d love for someone to answer. That is, if there really are answers to be had.

1. Why did Jim Press leave Toyota for Chrysler? He was sitting on top of the automotive world at Toyota as the President and CEO of Toyota North America. Press was the first non-Japanese member of Toyota’s management board. Suddenly, he quit, and went to Chrysler to work for Bob Nardelli. Was it Toyota’s executive salary cap that caused him to bail, or was there something more political going on? Did Cerberus promise Jimbo something more than just a co-presidency at Chrysler? Jim ain’t sayin’.

2. Why did GM keep Rick Wagoner around for so long? “Red Ink Rick” inherited a mess created by his predecessors. Instead of taking the draconian steps needed to get the company back on track, Rick accelerated the company’s slide to oblivion. If a GM middle manager had lost the company the kind of money that Rick did, he would have been given a box for his personal belongings and escorted from the building. Even so, how could it take a president of the United States to bring Ricky down. What power did RW hold over the GM Board of Directors that kept him in charge for nine years?

3. Does Fiat really think they can make a comeback in this country? Fiat sold just one vehicle stateside (pause) that met with any kind of critical acclaim: the 124 Spyder. Meanwhile, Fiat earned itself a stellar rep as the manufacturer of trouble-prone rust buckets whose dealers couldn’t get critical parts (even if they knew what they were and wanted to). Fiat’s decision to jump into bed with Chrysler is not the most ridiculously ambitious (or ambitiously ridiculous) idea in the world, but it’s in the top five. How does Fiat plan to market themselves? Just how big of a PR budget do they have?

4. How much longer can the UAW hang in there before it becomes a casualty of the “good” automakers? When American automakers were raking in the cash, the UAW demanded and received . . . whatever they wanted. In the cold light of day, the union priced itself out of the picture. The concessions surrendered during the last round of contract negations are the crack in the glacier [see: Ice Age]. By the time “new” Chrysler and GM find their feet [Ed: in our shoes], the UAW will carry about as much clout as the air traffic controllers union. How can they survive?

5. How long can GM’s ex-Car Czar, Bob Lutz, keep his mouth shut? Bob Lutz is the prince of WTF sound bites. Earlier this year, Lutz announced his retirement. Last week, he cashed in his remaining GM stock (what does he know that we’ve known for the better part of a a decade?). Why hasn’t Maximum Bob defended his legacy? Alternatively, how is GM managing to keep him quiet?

6. Why has Mark Fields been so quiet lately? Mark “Fly Me to Miami” Fields was another gold-mine of blogger fodder. Ford’s Presidente de las Americas even ran a web-based reality series, “How I Turned Around Ford Without Really Trying.” Lately, like Lutz, Fields hasn’t said boo to a goose. Did Big Al have a “come to Jesus” meeting with Fields? Or did Mrs. Fields finally silence her boy?

7. Where is Honda going with Acura? Honda’s schizoid sports/luxury wannabe division can’t seem to decide what part of the market it wants to play in. For a while, they sold a hard-core sports GT car and scrappy sports compacts and wanted to be the Japanese BMW. Now it seems Acura’s trying to be the Japanese Audi with soccer mom CUVs and AWD near-luxury sedans. Toss in styling only a Anime fan could love and who knows where they’ll go next on their voyage of self-discovery?

8.  How much longer will GM, Ford and Chrysler pour money into motorsports? Car and Driver ran an April Fool’s story reporting that budget constraints had forced GM to withdraw from NASCAR. It was so believable no one thought it was a joke. It isn’t. Nothing that any of the domestics are doing in motorsports has anything to do with what you can buy on their showroom. How can they justify spending millions on racing programs when they’re shuttering factories, firing people and begging for handouts to stay alive?

9. Will Toyota wake up and smell the coffee? Toyota’s creating superfluous brands, dragging their luxury division downmarket, trying to fill every market niche, and taking hits due to quality issues. Sound familiar? ToMoCo’s shaking up their management team. But will that be enough to keep them from becoming the GM of the Orient?