A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Japan’s auto production in the dumps: Production of cars, trucks and buses in Japan fell 20.4 percent on year in November, marking the second straight month of falls, the Nikkei (sub) writes, Vehicle output declined to 854,171 vehicles in the month from 1,072,519 vehicles a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said. Japanese domestic vehicle demand in November totaled 368,884 units, down 18.2 percent from a year earlier. Japanese exports of passenger cars contracted by 19.5 percent.

Joe Isuzu gets a haircut: Isuzu announced temporary pay cuts for all 8,000 domestic full-time employees in response to a steep decline in auto and truck sales, The Nikkei (sub) writes. Executives will get 30 percent less starting in January. Manager-level employees will see 10 percent less from spring. For rank-and-file workers, Isuzu will propose to its labor union as early as the beginning of next year a several-percent reduction in base wages that could begin as early as April. The Nikkei: “While the pay cuts would be temporary, they could last a year or longer.”

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My parents had many ways to traumatize me during my childhood holidays. Perhaps the most effective: taking me downtown to donate a hundred bucks to the local Ronald McDonald House. Don’t get me wrong; the charity could well be the best (only?) reason to eat a Filet-O-Fish. But a hundred bucks? That kind of money could have bought two copies of “Star Raiders” for the Atari 800. As it turns out, I’m not the only spoiled brat to resent a bit of charity, as the following Christmas list proves. It’s straight from my top-secret sources at the North Pole: a complete recap of what the more fortunate manufacturers are asking Santa for this year. We’ll start with Toyota.

“Dear Santa, we want a sack of Tundra tailgates that don’t bend when Americans sit on ‘em. We would also like some more of the green fairy dust that keeps the mainstream media from focusing on our ten gas-guzzling truck and SUV nameplates, while continuing to praise us for knocking out a couple hundred thousand hybrids every year.”

Maserati. “Dear Santa, you don’t have to bring us anything. Just take our remaining stock of 2008 Quattroportes and give them to someone deserving. Someone really wealthy, who can afford the service. What’s Mrs. Claus driving these days?”

Mercedes-Benz: “Herr Claus, please would you use one of those Men-In-Black neuralizers (a.k.a. flashy things) when you’re over our North American market. Get everyone to forget this ‘living within your means’ rubbish. Oh, and can you please remove memories of the first-generation ML320? Bitte.”

Mitsubishi: “Santa, we’d like a lump of coal. And a list of every Evo that’s ever run an autocross, so we can cancel all the warranties at once.”

Nissan: “Dear Santa, we’d like all the money back that we spent on that ‘From the Same Mindset’ ad campaign. It turns out that Murano customers don’t care about the GT-R’s fender vents after all. In exchange, we’ll look after something small and feeble that needs a new home. How about Chrysler?”

Porsche: “Dear Santa, we’ve been a bit naughty recently around the hedges (you know what we mean). But if we’re still on your list, we’d like the serenity to accept our massive profits, the strength to continue making grenade-like water-cooled engines, and the wisdom to convince our customers that the 911 is really worth half again as much as a Cayman.”

Subaru: “Dear Santa, we’ve just discovered that one of your elves is the guy who styled every Impreza since the year 2001. Please deliver him to us for a nice warm Christmas dinner. We’ll take care of the rest.”

Honda: “Dear Santa, we need  100k more transmissions for the Acura TL and CL, more mechanics to supplant the single full-time guy most Acura dealers have changing them out fifty hours a week. Also, some more alphabet soup to help us name our new vehicles.”

BMW: “Dear Santa. Can we please have a gift certificate for liposuction, plus another five thousand dollars per unit in 2009 to continue stuffing our lease programs with subvention like a drunk construction worker puts dirty singles in a daytime stripper’s thong? That is all.”

Bentley: “Dear Santa, don’t worry about us. Just stick bags of cash under the trees of rappers, professional atheletes, misguided car collectors and the guys in Brussels who make the rules about CO2 emissions.”

GM: “Dear Santa, Peace on Earth, good will to us. P.S. Who knew you delivered early?”

Chrysler: “Dear Santa, Please can we keep that cloak of invisibility another year?”

Ford: “At this point, we’d just like a chance to continue making the strongest lineup of domestic cars and trucks in modern history entirely on our own, without the constant fear of supplier failure, residual-value collapse, crucifixion in the business press, Stockholm-syndrome Southern senators, suicidal UAW demands, and know-nothing bloggers who swear up and down that they would crawl over broken glass to buy a ‘Euro Focus’ while studiously avoiding doing so much as opening the door of a Saturn Astra. Also, it would really, really be nice if people stopped calling our now-discontinued wood-side luxury pickup truck the ‘Black ‘N Da Hood’. Thanks.”

A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Bad November for Toyota: Toyota’s Japanese production dropped 27.2 percent in November from a year earlier to 288,138 vehicles as exports sagged 23.9 percent and domestic sales skidded 27.6 percent Overseas production fell 26.1 percent to 301,367 in the month. Other Japanese companies share in the misery, but not as much as ToMoCo: Honda down 3.9 percent in November. Mazda minus 19.8 percent. Suzuki shed 7.3 percent, writes the Nikkei (sub)

Itai-itai!: Nissan’s and Mitsubishi’s numbers came in by the end of the day in Tokyo, and they are nasty: Nissan’s domestic output shrank by 35.6 percent in November, their exports tanked by 30.2 percent, the Japanese domestic sales down 22.8 percent. Mitsubishi not much better: Output in Japan down 2.6 percent.  November exports minus 13.8 percent. Domestic (Japanese) sales evaporated to the tune of minus 31.1 percent. The Nikkei (sub) carries this moral-enhancing comment: “Some analysts warn that earnings could get worse further down the road, indicating more output drops may come.” Kota Yuzawa, analyst at Goldman Sachs, said: “We still cannot see an earnings bottom.”

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The U.S. new car market is officially dead in the water. Well, not officially officially. As the UK’s Guardian points out, December’s best selling days are its last. But the paper quotes Edmunds projection for the month’s sales, and it’s an unmitigated disaster. Edmunds expects December auto sales to crater to 9.8m units. “That would represent a further decline from 10.2 million units in November, which marked 26-year lows.” Sales analyst Jesse Toprak expects U.S. new vehicle sales to fall by more than 38 percent in December. More specifically, “Chrysler… is expected to lead the industry decline with a more than 45 percent plunge in December sales… while GM sales are seen down 39 percent and Ford sales down 34 percent. Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co are all expected to report declines of about 40 percent.” BarClays Capital analyst Brian Johnson predicts bad things for Detroit’s hometown hero. “We continue to see little equity value in the restructured GM. A greater decline in sales raises the possibility for additional funding needs.” Any guesses who pays that bill?

Eamonn Fingleton is the author of insightful books titled “Blindside: Why Japan is still on track to overtake the US by the year 2000” and “In Praise of Hard Industries – Why manufacturing, not the new economy is the key to future prosperity.” Whoever followed his advice either has committed suicide by now, or lives in a place where sharp objects are banned. Except for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader, who think Fingleton is a swell guy. In truth, the Tokyo-dwelling Irish author has few friends left. He just found a bunch of new ones: the editors of The Detroit Free Press (Freep).

The Freep was so desperate to find a new scapegoat for The Big 2.8’s woes that they scoured the Internet and found and republished a two-week-old rant on Fingleton’s whacko blog “Unsustainable.”

“Detroit’s problems are partly – but only partly – its own fault,” Fingleton states in his opening salvo. The trouble with Detroit, Fingleton wrote, is not managerial incompetence, greedy unions nor wrong cars. Blame those numbnuts in Washington who failed to lock-out the foreigners. Without foreign competition,  Detroit would be just fine.

“For 40 years the Detroit companies have been systematically undermined by foreign competitors’ predatory pricing in the U.S. market,” writes Fingleton. Whoever priced an import lately will beg to differ, but neither Fingleton nor the Freep are fazed.

The theorist then asserts that the Japanese “have kept their home market as a protected sanctuary, operating in cartel fashion and free from effective foreign competition.” As in: if the market be open, the Japanese would all drive Chevys. Living in Japan, Fingleton must be blind. But let’s play the numbers game…

Statistics from the Japan Automobile Imports Association show that the island nation imports some 300K cars a year. The U.S. only accounts for 15K of model year 2007’s imports, including, of all things, HUMMERS (favored by the Yakuza.)

According to Japan’s Automobile Inspection Registration Association, Mercedes makes the most popular imports, with 633,402 on the road. Next up: VW, with 623,089. And a little less than 200K units later, BMW accounts for 489,106 cars in the land of the rising yen. (We’ll get to the yen part soon.)

In Fingleton’s original piece, these statistics were misrepresented as “two German manufacturers, Mercedes Benz and BMW, enjoy token positions.” The Freep wisely (or maliciously) left it out. It would have begged the question: how many American cars are on the road in Japan?  In all, just 50K Chevys. That’s less than 10 percent of Mercedes’ total. Not including 1473 of the aforementioned HUMMERS.

At some point, it should have dawned on Fingleton and the Freep that American exports have been on the rise. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “exports of light vehicles have increased by 52% since 2002, with exports of new vehicles up 21% and exports of used vehicles up almost fourfold.” Ignoring that factoid, Fingleton fingers another culprit for Detroit’s dementia: “the unrealistically high dollar.” Excuse me?

Until July, the greenback was so dirt cheap, that – damn the real estate crisis – there was a bubble in Manhattan condos, snapped-up by the Euro trash with wildly depreciated greenbacks. And now the dollar is heading back down, in the “unrealistically low” direction last seen in July.

The unrealistically weak dollar had its effect. “Between 2002 and 2007, exports to the NAFTA countries actually fell by 5%,” writes the Chicago Fed. “In contrast, Europe received 52% of the net increase of 287 thousand in new vehicle exports over that period; the Middle East accounts for about 40%.”

The rise of the Japanese Yen is the talk of Tokyo. Fingleton must not be just blind, he must also be deaf.

The Nikkei writes today: “The yen’s steep appreciation and the global economic meltdown have turned the tables on Toyota Motor Corp. and other Japanese manufacturers that had sought growth in foreign markets in recent years.” Even the Financial Times, which certainly is not biased towards Japan, concedes that “Dented consumer demand is exacerbated on the bottom line by the strong yen , which lopped a third off Toyota’s November forecast operating income.”

“So, yes, the U.S. car industry’s fate reflects in large measure American incompetence,” Fingleton’s piece ends, undeterred by simple facts. “But the main source of this incompetence has not been the engineers of Detroit but the opinion makers of New York and Washington.”

Apparently, even the Freep must have come to the conclusion that the $17.4b of taxpayers’ money is the last Detroit will ever see. The begging has ended. So let’s throw dirt at those who gave. Let’s demand quotas. Let’s demand a Detroit cartel. Let’s demand high prices.  Let’s demand inflation. Nothing short of a full frontal assault on the forces ranged outside Fortress Detroit will save the Big 2.8. At least, according to Fingleton and the Freep.

A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Toyota doesn’t just sit there. They do something: Toyota is facing its first full-year loss ever, $1.68b for the whole fiscal 2008. Never mind that this is approximately the cash GM burns through in a bad month. For Toyota, it is a huge embarrassment. Toyota will do immediately what GM ignored: Embark on drastic production changes. “The speed, breadth and depth of the global economic downturn is beyond what we had imagined,” says Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. Their measures will be likewise drastic. Toyota aims to revamp its operations so that it can turn a profit even if parent-only sales fall by 17% from 2007 results. All new production upgrades, including the opening of a plant in the U.S. state of Mississippi scheduled for 2010, will be postponed or scaled down. Capital spending planned for fiscal 2009 will be cut 30 percent to less than 1 trillion yen. For starters. By the way, directors will forgo their bonuses this fiscal year.

Nissan likewise: Nissan is reevaluating its plans for new factories and may postpone construction or scale back the size of some of them, Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga said to The Nikkei (sub.) Nissan had plans to build a new factory in Russia in 2009 and new plants in India, Morocco and China in 2010. In addition, its subsidiary Nissan Shatai Co. had plans to build a new car body assembly plant next year in Kyushu. All of these plans are under review.

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Last Friday was a good news day for Detroit. No, I’m not talking about President Bush’s loan package. That wasn’t so much good news as a stay of execution, with a case on appeal. And it wasn’t shadenfreude. What joy can anyone in the auto biz take from the reports that previously invincible Honda is losing money and cutting production? Or that Prius sales are down 50 percent, Toyota has suspended work on their proposed Prius plant in Mississippi, and the company will have a loss this fiscal year, the first in 71 years? No, the good news came, from all places, The Michigan legislature.

The august body passed legislation funding projects that could help the city of Detroit recover economically. What got the most attention, both from the general media and from car folks: a $288m dollar plan between the state, the city of Detroit and Wayne, Oakland Macomb counties. The partnership will improve and expand Cobo Hall (by 166k sq. ft.) to provide more space for exhibitors and allow Detroit to keep the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The refreshed and enlarged Cobo will join the newly renovated Book Cadillac hotel in the effort to increase Detroit’s convention business.

The legislature also funded a 3.5 mile light rail transit system to link the New Center area and downtown. This will also help convention business, as well as nurturing the nascent development along the Woodward corridor in recent years.

Otherwise, meanwhile, let’s face it, it hasn’t been a good year for the Detroit auto show. Nissan/Infiniti and Mitsubishi dropped their factory displays. Porsche, Land Rover, Ferrari and Rolls Royce pulled out entirely, That’s notwithstanding the success of last year’s “Gallery” program, which gave hundreds of well-heeled guests from around the country a private showing. A marketing event that racked-up a reported $3m worth of luxury car sales.

In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, NAIAS’ senior co-chairman acknowledged the “dire times” facing the auto industry. Joe Serra sold the silver lining, asserting that the departing manufacturers had opened the door to other companies who wanted in. In fact, Serra said the total number of exhibitors on both floors will increase by two, and there will be more world premieres this year than last.

Still, this year’s NAIAS will be a low-key event. The New York Times reckons you can tell how the domestic auto industry is doing by the size of the shrimp at the Detroit auto show media preview. This year, swag shrimp of any size will be few and far between. Chrysler will forgo their usual showbiz introductions; all the manufacturers will have simpler displays. They’ll be fewer pretty girls, less glitz and more focus on product and business plans.

That said, the incrementally increased number of exhibitors will be displaying cars of particular interest to enthusiasts. The Bugatti Veyron will make its first ever NAIAS appearance. Lotus will have its first factory NAIAS display.

The success of the Elise and derivatives, as well as Lotus’ involvement in the development of Chrysler’s EV sports car, makes a NAIAS booth for Lotus a natural idea. Technology partner and electric car pioneer Tesla will have also have its first Detroit auto show factory booth, hawking their lithium-ion-powered Roadster. Self-appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be speaking to the Society of Automotive Analysts at a NAIAS related event on January 13.

Also on the electric car front, Chinese automaker BYD plans to use the NAIAS to introduce a serial hybrid with a 60-mile batteries-only range. BYD produces about 25 percent of the world’s cell phone batteries, so they may have a leg up on other manufacturers’ electric plans. China’s Brilliance Auto will display for the first time. Along with BYD, Brilliance will be the first Chinese manufacturers to display on the main floor in Detroit.

Meanwhile, there’s other game afoot. To keep Michigan in the running for tomorrow’s battery technology, the state legislature approved a tax credit package intended to make the state a national center for the development of batteries for transportation. The bill will provide up to $335m in tax credits from 2001 to 2016.

Legislators and Gov. Granholm hope that the tax credits will help Michigan businesses access the $1b that Uncle Sam’s investing in battery research. While it would be better if the news was about private sector investment instead of government funding, it’s nice to see the state and federal government offerring local industry and innovation a helping hand.

When Chrysler stuck its nose in the bailout trough, the ailng American automaker’s executives  had to wonder what the Hell anyone within the company could possibly tell lawmakers/money givers about Chrysler’s viability. Except, you know, the fact that they don’t have any. But never underestimate the power of positive PR or, as we call it around here, bullshit. To wit: former ToMoCo Prez and current ChryCo co-Prez Jim Press’ comments to Automotive News [sub, AN]  last week. “He suggested that Chrysler could show the way to a sustainable model for a smaller U.S. auto industry. ‘If there’s one company in America that can build high-craftsmanship, innovative vehicles, it’s Chrysler,’ Press said.” Hey, is Jimbo saying American can’t build high-craftsmanship, innovative vehicles? Anyway, down ye olde rabbit hole we go…

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A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Toyota officially in the reds for 2008: Toyota announced today what we had reported a few days ago: “Toyota will make its first-ever operating loss in the fiscal year through March as recessions at home and abroad corral Japan’s biggest automobile maker into as tight a corner as it has ever known,” the Nikkei writes. The dark stars are in perfect alignment: The yen is too strong, the slump in vehicle sales in key markets like the U.S., Europe and Japan is too big. Toyota expects a consolidated operating loss of Y150 billion, or about $1.68 billion, in the fiscal year through March. Six weeks ago, the company still expected an operating profit of Y600 billion in the current fiscal year. Now, “it’s a kind of emergency that we’ve never experienced before,” said Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe, speaking at a news conference in Nagoya. “The environment surrounding us is extremely harsh.”  The Toyota stock went up on the news. The market had expected worse.

Daihatsu slimming also: In related news, Toyota’s small-car-making subsidiary Daihatsusaid it will cut domestic automobile production by a another 16,000 units, and will shed about 20% of its temporary work force,  the Nikkei (sub) reports.

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A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Canada paying their share for the bailout: Canada will follow the United States and give $3.3b in emergency loans to the Canadian arms of the D2.8, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said to Reuters. GM of Canada is eligible for loans of up to $C3b, Chrysler Canada Inc can get up to C$1 billion. The Canadian arm of Ford has not asked for assistance. Harper said the governments were attempting to attach some liens and secure some assets of the car companies “but I will not fool you — there is obviously some money at risk here.” Translation: Don’t ever expect to see the money again.

Toyota still has got the dough: One of the most important metrics in business is “free cashflow.” It’s the money you can spend: cash generated from operations plus capital available for investment. Despite the business downturn, Japanese companies added to their free cashflow. Toyota tops the list with an improvement of 500.7 billion yen on the year, The Nikkei (sub) reports.

And now, the Chinese bailout plan: China is thinking about its own bailout plan for the auto industry, says Gasgoo. The plan joins several that had been announced in the past. It could also be a retread of the bailout plan that was proposed Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in November 2008. What is interesting is that the plans get more focused. Or less diverse, however you may want to look at it. The first plan had nine recommendations. Further plans went to eight, then seven. The new plan now reportedly is down to six policy recommendations including jacking up domestic demand, expanding overseas markets, supporting homegrown brands, reforming fuel tax, boosting the second-hand vehicle market, and “preventing policies and regulations that may hurt auto sales.”  The last one sounds like a great idea.

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“La plus belles des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.” Baudelaire, straight out of The Usual Suspects. And while the world focuses on the usual suspects of the auto-industry collapse, something odd is happening over in a shadowy corner: Honda is running scared. It’s been less than four months since the Civic sold more than fifty-two thousand units in a single month, toppling the almighty F-150 from its two-decade-long run as the best-selling vehicle in the United States, but if anybody at the Big H is celebrating, they’ve apparently decided to hide their exuberant light under a bushel of program cancellations, production cutbacks, and a panicky sale of their backmarking F1 team. Why? Surely, if anybody’s in good shape to survive the coming catastrophe, it’s Honda; they have the small cars people “want,” unimpeachable planet-friendly credentials, and a solid base of non-union production. What’s causing them to huddle behind their hurricane shelters? The answer’s simple: when it comes to Honda, reality is very, very far away from the public perception.

Americans are accustomed to thinking of Honda, Toyota, and Nissan as being the “Big Three” of Japanese auto production. Not quite. Honda sells more Civics in the United States than they do cars in Japan. A quick troll through Honda’s annual report reveals a corporate iceberg: The tip: Japanese-market auto and motorcycle sales. The nine-tenths below the surface: North American cars-– and Chinese scooters (by unit volume are Honda’s best-selling products).

More than any other Asian automaker, Honda’s fortunes are tied to the United States. The collapse of the American auto market would effectively turn back the company’s clock to 1970, making them once again a small-time producer of two-wheeled vehicles for emerging markets.

So what? Honda’s the small car company! Surely, they’ll benefit more than anyone else from the recession-that-isn’t-quite-yet-a-depression? Not so fast…

When Honda began producing Accords in Ohio twenty-six years ago, all of their cars were smaller than a Chevrolet Citation. Today, the upmarket versions of the Accord tip the scales at close to two tons, while the Civic is bigger than BMW’s 135i. The 2009 Fit is certainly small, but in stick-shift form it can’t even match the Chevrolet Cobalt XFE or (gasp) Ford Focus for EPA highway mileage.

Time for that iceberg analogy again: the public image of Honda in the United States is as a purveyor of small, fuel-efficient models, but the bulk of their sales happen below the water with the Accord, the Acura TL, the forty-five-hundred-pound Pilot and the Cyclops-sized Odyssey. Nor could Honda quickly change their Marysville, Ohio and Lincoln, Alabama plants over to small-car production; these facilities are built around Accord-width vehicles and would require a nontrivial investment of time and money to retool.

Faced with a market which preferred the Fit to the Acura MDX, Honda might just do the easy thing and bring Fits in from their Chinese factories, allowing them to scale back US production to the bare bones.

Honda has plenty of money in reserve– over nine billion dollars in cash and investments. As we’ve seen in the past few months, it’s easy to burn through billions of dollars if you can’t move the metal. Some of that money will also be needed to expand motorcycle production for the Chinese market, and you can bet that, given a choice between spending money in a collapsing American economy or making money in an expanding Chinese one, Honda’s board of directors will choose the sure thing.

While relatively adventurous by the standards of other Japanese companies, Honda doesn’t like to take any risks which aren’t absolutely necessary to its survival.

That same relentless pragmatism has informed Honda’s indifferent attitude towards its enthusiast owner base in the past decade. It has now been a full decade since Honda introduced a new sporting vehicle for the American market. The S2000, introduced to compete with the BMW Z3 and first-generation Boxster, now faces the second-generation Z4 and the second variant of the second-generation Porsche. The Acura NSX, fresh from the indignities of a bug-eyed facelift and a mercy killing, is now officially an orphan.

When times are good, Honda doesn’t do much for their biggest fans; when times are tough, it does nothing at all. The company which powered the mighty Ayrton Senna to three World Championships has just abandoned his nephew Bruno in its ignominious quick-march backwards from Formula One, an unfortunate coincidence that emphasizes Honda’s unsentimental attitude towards the men and women who are fans, not merely owners.

In a perfect world, Honda’s reaction to an economic crisis would be the creation of exciting, enthusiastic cars that met the needs of the economist, the enthusiast and the environmentalist in one brilliant design. It’s happened before: the 1989 Civic Si that I am contracted to drive in NASA’s endurance-race series next year is a prime example of a car that was all things to all small-car buyers. Today’s tubby Civic, lumbering beneath the burden of half again as much weight as its predecessors, isn’t the car for the job, and two-ton Accords won’t carry the company very far into a fuel-starved twenty-first century.

Perhaps the new Insight will be the answer to Honda’s problems. I suspect it will be nothing more than a pale Prius copy. The next generation of Honda cars needs to recapture the tradition of those brilliant early Civics and Accords. More importantly, the company needs to recapture its bond with its most fanatical owners. Without that bond, well, another quote from The Usual Suspects: “And like that, poof. He’s gone.”

A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. Note: For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.

Cerberus wants to unload Chrysler, keep GMAC: That’s what Automotive News says. I’m sure TTAC’s day shift will have more on this.

Honda uses the F-word: Honda President Takeo Fukui had already dropped hints about locating the Honda HQ outside the land of the rising yen. Now, even more sinister threats. Fukui said to the Nikkei (sub) that Honda “may have to abandon one of its key principles of protecting the jobs of its full-time workers next year, if the Japanese currency remains at current levels of around 90 yen to the dollar.” That means F as in fire, unless the effing Yen is getting cheaper against the greenback. Honda is bracing for a group operating loss of 190 billion yen in the second half of the current fiscal year. “I think the dollar will move back to above 100 yen because the level of below 90 yen is abnormal,” Fukui said. Hint, hint, hint.

Toyota and Fuji Heavy put joint sports car on back burner: Toyota decided to delay the compact sports car it has been developing with Fuji Heavy, the Nikkei (sub) writes. The two automakers had planned to begin manufacturing the car in late 2011 for the domestic market, but the start of production will now likely be postponed until 2012 or later.

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Or the best, if you’re into the whole “half full” thing. And there’s no shortages of possible answers. Honda has dumped F1, but Toyota hasn’t. Subaru and Suzuki are dumping the WRC, but Chrysler‘s just “throttling back” (the technical term) its NASCAR involvement. Incidentally, NASCAR just settled a lawsuit for $225m involving “23 specific incidents of sexual harassment and 34 specific incidents of racial and gender discrimination.” And then there’s Ferrari, who is staying in F1 but at the staggering price of a Tata Motors sponsorship. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for Tata to field the first-ever factory LeMons team. There may well be more storylines that I’m missing, but the trend is clear. Thanks to the economic downturn, motorsports aren’t the priority they used to be in terms of brand building. Or are they? Or did they even matter much in the first place?

Walking up to the Jeep dealership, I nearly bumped into the Compass, idling in the gloom. Before I could assimilate its sheetmetal’s unintentional humor, Mike emerged from the fishbowl. His leather coat and tie were almost as dour as his face. My hand disappeared in his meaty paw as he greeted me with two words: “Take it.” My arched eyebrow worked its usual magic. “No really,” Mike insisted. “It’s got half a tank of gas. Take it for a long drive.” I waited for “and never come back.” No such luck. I mean, it would be lucky wouldn’t it? A free vehicle? I’d never driven a Compass. How bad could it be?

A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off.

Bridge loan, possibly today: According to Reuters, “General Motors Corp and Chrysler are close to securing emergency loans as part of a U.S. government aid package that would demand sweeping restructuring at the troubled automakers, according to sources familiar with the talks.” Reuter’s sources say that bridge loans could be announced today, staving off – for the time being – the prospect of a  bankruptcy. The aid package being spearheaded by the White House demands that both automakers restructure by seeking new concessions from unions and creditors.

Japan aghast: The shocks of Toyota’s announcement of a loss were so great in Japan, that there are no auto related news out of the country today while they crawl out from under the financial rubble.

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