Ron Tadross.  Say it softly and it’s almost like crying.  If you’re GM that is.  The Banc of America Securities analyst isn’t exactly what you’d call bullish on GM.  Unlike his evil twin, analyst John Murphy, Tadross sees GM heading for a cash burn flame-out.  "We believe GM management is glossing over the current and future cost of rightsizing the business," Tadross declared.  More to the point, he recommended that investors sell their GM stock, with a target that’s literally half of its current price.  In other words, when Merrill Lynch talks, nobody should listen.

With all the talk in these parts about what it means to be an American automobile manufacturer, I couldn't resist Chrysler's press release about arranging some 200 employees to spell out the words "O Say, can you see" (complete with human punctuation).  Chrysler Group Spokesperson Jodi Tinson stepped into the podcasting breach, challenging my de-PR-speak abilities and facing the inevitable questions about Francis Scott Key's magnum opus (set to a bawdy English drinking song) and Chrysler's Americanosity.  The two-legged vowels and consonants will assemble on the front lawn of DaimlerChrysler's Auburn Hills Headquarters on Friday, July 7 during morning drive time.  According to the press release, the employees will sing the national anthem loud enough to be heard across I-75.  Here's hoping the DUB car show isn't rolling into town at the exact same moment the crooning begins. 

For a second consecutive year, GM’s Oshawa production facilities have received J.D. Power and Associates’ “Gold Plant Quality Award.”  The award is given to the production facility with the fewest number of defects per vehicle, as measured by J.D.’s famous “Initial Quality Study.”  Oshawa created cars with just 43 defects per 100 vehicles.  The industry average was 124.  So what do you do if you have the second most productive assembly plant on the continent?  If you’re GM, you do the only logical thing possible: you close it.  

If the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem, congratulations Ford, you’re on your way.  The Blue Oval Crew recently admitted that their overly-long product cycles were partly to blame for their current financial queasiness.  As the surprisingly satisfied owner of a 2000 Focus, I’ve earned the right to say: ‘bout time.  I was worried that the marketers’ standard question “Would you buy this car again?” had become strictly hypothetical.

Dear Mr. Nasscar,

How the hell y’all doin’?  I was down to the barber shop the other day when me and the boys got to talkin’ ‘bout cars an racing an stuff.  Clarence sed how he’d red that NASCAR was fixin’ to change all the cars all over again.  He said y’all was fixin’ to make all the cars the same, and the engines the same, and on top of that, they’s ugly.  He said they’s all gonna be slower too.  Then Earl piped-up and said that meant there weren’t gonna be no more good crashes no more.  Why them crashes is the only reason Ida Mae goes to the races in the first place!  Jake sed y’all gonna kill the sport ded.

Ford and GM are launching summer sales.  The development reveals an open secret: the automakers are selling vehicles at a loss.  There are plenty of reasons for this.  The need to maintain cash flow, pay the Union, generate business for their finance arms and protect market share.  But this trend can’t continue indefinitely.  At some point, both of these companies need to produce profitable vehicles, and lots of ‘em.  But what kind?

Let’s get this out of the way: the Jaguar XK8 is a grill-challenged automobile.  It's as if Ford sent all their leftover Taurus grills to the UK and then leaned on Jaguar engineers to find them a home.  Or maybe the XK8’s grill was intended as a comeuppance; a punishment to the brand’s designers for daring to create a “new” car that borrows so heavily from their up-market British cousin’s two-door. Or maybe the wide mouth bass grill is all about brand differentiation; a stylistic non-flourish designed to ensure that no potential buyer confuses the Jaguar XK8 and the Aston Martin DB9.  Now if someone had grafted the front end of a BMW 650i to the XK, we might have had something…

In my last post, we examined your basic alpha nature, your need to dominate other people.  Did you read the comments after the post?  Wow.  Not very happy are they?  No surprise there.  As you know, most people think car salesmen are the scum of the earth: cheating, lying, arrogant, ignorant, over-aggressive sumbitches with their own circle in Hell (where they try to sell each other five-year warrantees for all eternity).  Are consumers wrong to hate you so?  Nope.  But don’t worry about that.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with your innate desire for interpersonal dominance.  It’s what you do with it that matters.

It’s been said that prison is years of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by sudden moments of extreme terror.  I feel that way about commuting.  Despite driving’s many pleasures, the daily commute gradually erodes all sense of joy.  All those repetitive miles, one barely distinguishable from the next.  The same old CD’s in the changer, the same dumb ‘morning zoo’ antics on the radio, same streets, same turns, same times.  You eventually lapse into semi-consciousness; unaware, unable to recall the last five, ten, maybe fifteen miles. Until your autopilot slumber is rudely interrupted by, say, an oncoming tractor-trailer drifting over the center line.

This weekend, a conspiracy of  VeeDub owners will assemble in Roswell, New Mexico for the seventh annual New Beetle “2K Car Show Weekend."  According to VW PR flack Clark Campbell, this bizarre intersection of dead aliens and live Bug owners began with a VW ad claiming that the new Beetle was reverse-engineered from an alien spaceship.  Needless to say, TTAC has uncovered previously classified government documents that prove that the commercial was created by an ad exec who'd been kidnapped by aliens, given the usual complimentary colonoscopy and returned to earth to spread disinformation: an ad that claimed that the new Beetle was reverse-engineered from alien craft to make people think it wasn't reverse engineered from alien craft, when, of course, it was. You know, this stuff practically writes itself. How spooky is that?