Over at Edmunds.com, automotive journalist Alistair Weaver reckons Dubai's Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road is "The World's Greatest Driving Road." Judging from Marty Padgett's rhapsodic description of Maui's Heavenly Hana Highway, The Car Connection scribe may beg to differ. It's a dual-branded debate. BMW paid for Weaver's wanderings; Volvo footed the bill for Padgett's peregrinations. I'm not saying these corporate subsidies rendered these writers less qualified to choose the world's best tarmac, but neither journalist could make that call without car company cash. In other words, once again, money talks, bullshit walks.

Both Edmunds and The Car Connection neglected to tell their audience that their travelogues were made possible by a grant from a company whose cars were described glowingly therein. I have no qualms with Weaver's assertion that the MINI's "success is a testament to the brilliance of its design." Nor do I quibble with Padgett's assessment that Hawaiian C70 drivers should "bring great music for the C70's top-notch 910-watt audio system." But these stories wouldn't exist without the manufacturers' undeclared interest. Withholding that information from site visitors is unethical.

Last Thursday, GM's Vice President of Global Communications sat with the suits and outlined his plan to rescue The General's image from public crucifixion. The man in charge, Steve "Twisted Sister" Harris, had been lured out of semi-retirement from a PR firm specializing in "reputation challenging situations." Ironically, The McGinn Group's website lists GMAC and The US Department of Justice as customers (although the federal seal is too blurry to be sure exactly which federal agency spent our tax dollars burnishing its image). More to the point, the opening animation silently intones "Experience. Accountability. Judgement". Talk about foreshadowing…

Yup, GM's Judgement Day is on its way. Meanwhile, Twisted Sister wants American consumers to know what a great job General Motors has done, is doing and will do, bet your bottom dollar, tomorrow. We're talking high mileage vehicles, clean-running ethanol engines, JD empowerment, we-must-be-doing-something-right sales figures, that kind of thing. Like most people paid to spin straw into gold, Sister doesn't trust the media with this message. He prefers working with cappucino-fuelled creatives to fashion fabulously expensive TV, print, radio, direct mail and web-based campaigns– rather than sitting down with cynical journalists prone to going "off message" and arguing about silly things like facts.

The SUV is dead. Long live the sedan on stilts! Yes folks, Chevrolet has transformed their Tahoe from a cheap and cheerful workhorse for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms, to a deluxe cruiser for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms. The change is so well executed, so completely earnest in both scope and scale, you almost feel sorry for the beast. Like the Wild Things watching Max sailing back to his bedroom (already regretting his rumpus at the pumpus), the new Tahoe cries out to departing SUV buyers "Come back! We love you so!" What say you, America?

The new Tahoe is certainly a more alluring monster than the big bland boring box it replaces. Bob Lutz– the GM executive who once dismissed a passel of motor show concept cars as "angry appliances"– will be delighted with what Chevy's American Revolution has wrought: a happy appliance. The Tahoe's sheetmetal displays all the subdued modernism, implied practicality and aesthetic solidity of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, right down to the sleek door handles– I mean "pulls". The Tahoe's hood is as perfectly creased as an Armani suit. The SUV's bowed nose and tail, the gently curving C-pillar, the side mirrors' blacked-out bottoms – every detail reflects an entirely successful attempt to give the Tahoe's exterior a contemporary kitchen's supercool coherence.

As our GM Death Watch series gains traction, I've taken to scanning the skies for black helicopters, stashing Glocks around the house and avoiding the fine city of Detroit. But I would have loved to been at RenCen to see the look on Bob Lutz' face when his boss sliced the Car Czar's salary by 30%. If you recall, Turnaround Tycoon Jerry York originally suggested executive pay cuts as a way to send a clear message to workers throughout the world's largest automaker: WE'RE IN DEEP SHIT. At the time, Maximum Bob responded to the suggestion with characteristic bravado: "I gave at the office." I guess he's learned that bankruptcy is the gift that keeps on giving.

To be fair, Mr. Lutz had something of a point. Although his employment contract isn't a matter of public record, much of Bob's compensation package is tied to the company's performance, both directly (through incentives) and intimately (through stock options). As GM bleeds out, shedding value like a dot com bomb, Bob's lost theoretical millions. OK, it's more than partially his fault. But as an employee stockholder, Lutz has GOT to be worried. Yesterday, Deutsche Bank took a hard look at the state of GM's finances and issued a Lutzian pronouncement: "sell."

There are three basic markets for any car: price, value (price plus quality) and quality (price no object). Automobiles aimed at the top and bottom of the food chain are relatively easy to produce; price-oriented manufacturers can let things slide, quality-oriented carmakers can afford perfection. Value is a bitch. Automakers in this arena have got to do it all, do it right and do it at a price. One false step and competitors on either side of the financial divide reach down or reach up and snatch your bread and butter. In short, the new Hyundai Azera is something of a miracle: a car that hits the value bulls-eye with supernatural precision.

If there's one group of people within the GM universe who elicits less sympathy than the current management team, it's the legions of loud-talking, loudly-dressed GM dealers. Despite the media's fixation on the corporate mothership, the survival of the world's largest automaker depends just as much on its dealer network's success as any new initiative coming from GM's RenCen HQ. All the flailing and failing in Detroit shows you that all is not well on the sharp end. In fact, GM's dealer network mirrors the automaker's ancient, costly production process: a fundamentally flawed institution in need of radical restructuring. Ah, but who will bell the cat?

Actually, euthanasia would be a better option. It's a little known fact The General's dealer network is roughly the same size as it was forty years ago. Back in the day – when GM owned the US car market lock, stock and double-barreled carbs – The General's network provided a significant advantage to both franchisees and the corporation. (Potential customers were never more than a twenty-minute ride away from their local GM dealer.) Now that GM buyers are increasingly thin on the ground, dealers must squander precious resources warding off "poaching". (Disgruntled customers are never more than a twenty minute ride away from a rival GM dealer.) Internecine warfare for conquest sales is even more damaging, forcing each store to engage in cut-throat pricing and blanket advertising. And that's without considering competition from rival brands, some of which may be closer than they appear…

It's no surprise that the Ford GT garnered a huge amount of publicity for its parent company. It was fast, sexy and charismatic. It showed the world that Ford can build a world-class car at a budget price. It pioneered new building techniques. It refocused attention on Ford's racing heritage. It drew crowds at autoshows. It made dealers feel like serious playas. It sold out. It earned a buyer's premium. It will be worth serious money at auction some day. But Ford was right to kill it.

Like the Bugatti Veyron, the GT was never going to be a mainstay of its parent company's lineup. For one thing, the GT was simply too expensive; the "budget supercar" cost almost five times as much as the starting price of the company's next-most expensive vehicle, the Excursion. For another, Ford's current model range is about as sporty as a pair of woolen socks. Sticking a Lamborghini Gallardo next to a Golf GTI in a VW showroom would be far less incongruous than positioning the GT next to just about anything wearing the Blue Oval badge. Since Ford dropped the Focus SVT, it has only one sports car affordable by mere mortals: the ubiquitous Mustang. Placing a Ford GT next to a Mustang simply makes the Mustang look bad.

I'll never forget driving a red-with-white-striped Ford GT to a photo shoot one misty Manchester morning. By then, I knew car and road well enough to use the former to annihilate the latter. The GT hurtled through the woods like an Imperial speeder, its supercharged V8 sounding like God scrubbing the world clean with a wire brush. The 550-horse GT also did an excellent imitation of pre-Army Elvis: thrusting obscenely in time with the changes, moving in perfect synch with the mechanical melody. After that run, I wanted a Ford GT more than a Porsche Carrera GT, Ferrari Enzo, Pagani Zonda or Lamborghini Murcielago. The GT is that charismatic, that much fun to drive.

On Friday, Ford announced it's idling its Wixom assembly plant in the second quarter of next year. As a result, production of the Ford GT will end this September. Speaking to the Detroit News, Ford spinmeister Jim Cain handed the mid-engined supercar its gold watch with only a slight hint of sentimentality: 'It was our plan all along to wind up production on the 40th anniversary of the 1-2-3 victory at Le Mans… It's not being canceled. It's just run its race.' Yes, well, checkered flag or no, FoMoCo's 'dismissal' of the GT is the automotive equivalent of Buddy Holly's plane crash: a sad day for a special car.

Novice violin students using the "Suzuki method" aren't allowed to touch their instruments for months. Aspiring musicians who aren't driven insane by repeatedly fingering cardboard cutouts often go on to make beautiful music, once allowed. Too bad Suzuki doesn't practice Suzuki; we could have all avoided the underpowered and funny-looking last gen Grand Vitara in favor of the infinitely more accomplished 2006 model. Despite obvious improvements since the Vitara's dress rehearsal, the question remains: is the new Grand Vitara finally ready for Avery Fisher Hall?

To make the Grand Vitara a headliner, Suzuki's engineers stripped their mid-sized ute to the frame and started afresh. While the new Grand's exterior is a radical departure from the old two-toned, plastic-clad and dimpled Subaru wannabe, it's still a deeply conservative design. Super-spy stealth touches — sleek rails that rise ever so slightly from the roof, black-trimmed wheel wells, black side gills on the hood — add a welcome touch of aggression. Sure, some clunkiness remains. The side mirrors are a dress size too big for the cute ute, and the huge tail lights give the rear end a decidedly dated demeanor. But they're the only flat notes in an otherwise harmonious composition.

Getting old is not for sissies. Aside from a general degradation in motor skills, sensory perception, memory and earnings, the 401K set is prone to health complaints that are both fantastically expensive and endlessly annoying. Fortunately, there are compensations: grandchildren (kids free from a no-deposit, no-return policy) and the Mercedes Benz E350 4Matic. I'm not saying the E350 was specifically designed to salve the fading sensibilities of the blue rinse brigade, but any car this numb, beige and expensive is clearly aimed at Baby Boomers who are wealthy as Hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Unless you ask nicely.

The E350 is a polite request on wheels. While Mercedes' product developers have been busy performing bizarre genetic experiments in pursuit of The Next Big Thing– carbon fiber supercars, mutant crossovers, four-door chop tops, re-imagined Nazi staff cars– their mid-sized model remains reassuringly bland– I mean, conservative. On the downside, the E still suffers from the swoopy dorkiness of its oval headlights, which make the grill look small, which denies the E350 get-out-my-way gravitas. And it continues to share far too many family traits with the lower-priced C-Class to please the legions of status conscious Mercedes buyers.