My wife and I were talking about Tom Cruise the other day. After discussing the diminutive actor's parenting skills and religious beliefs, we came to the somewhat inevitable conclusion that Hollywood's number one Scientologist is as crazy as a loon. In this, he's not alone. At least not in Hollywood. You don't have to read the celebrity gossip mags or watch their TV equivalents to know that Tinsel Town's "elite" have lost all grip on what we outside of their realm commonly refer to as "reality." It's only common sense. Take a group– any group– of good-looking, highly ambitious, ultra-competitive people, give them each a couple of thousand toadies or so and ten or more million dollars, and watch their neuroses bubble to the surface like magma heading for the top of a pre-eruption Mt. St. Helens. Money on that scale still can't buy you love, but it can buy you drug addiction, divorce and up close and personal access to a panoply of mental illnesses. And if these well-loved and lawyered-up people happen to be actors/actresses, they'll be able to hide their insanity from the outside world. Until they can't. I mention all this because I've been searching for a reason why so many carmakers make such boneheaded branding decisions. And I've decided it's because they're cruising along without a care in the world, burning through other people's money as if it were… other people's money. When one of the heavy hitters goes Chapter 11, the resulting chill may cause a change. Then again, maybe not. And how dull would our world be if we couldn't laugh at the foibles of others?

You may remember Sweden's infamous Älgtest (a.k.a. moose or Elk test). A kamikaze professional driver guides a fully-laden vehicle (simulated passengers, genuine cargo) down a closed course at 35.5mph. He/she then swerves to avoid an object, then swerves back; simulating the manoeuvres needed to to miss both an errant moose and oncoming traffic. Back in '97, pictures of Mercedes' newly-launched A-Class flipping over during moose testing led the German automaker to retrofit every single car sold with a new Electronic Stability Program module. And now those crazy bastards at Teknikens Värld have put the Toyota Hilux through the same test — with similar results. (TTAC's American readers may remember the Hilux as the previous generation Toyota Tacoma pickup.) The video in the link brings back memories of the 1988 Consumer Reports exposé on the Suzuki "Somersault" Samurai. Anyway, hands-up anyone who thinks Toyota is going to retrofit ESP on old Hilux pickups? Yeah I thought so.

According to WardsAuto.com, there will be no '09 Ford Crown Victoria. It was bound to happen sooner or later, what with sales of Ford's last full-size rear wheel-drive sedan tanking by 90 percent since 2000. Twisting the knife, Wards says Ford moved just 46,188 Crown Vics year-to-date, down 9.1 percent from last year's totals. So that's it for Ye Olde Crown Vic, at least on the retail side. Ford will continue making a fleet-only Vic at its Ontario plant, alongside the newly relocated, equally doomed Lincoln Town Car. Meanwhile, the Grand Marquis variant will continue not to clog Mercury dealer parking lots for the forseeable future, despite underselling the underselling Crown Vic by about 15 percent. By 2010, when job guarantees to Ford's St. Thomas-based Canadian Auto Workers' union expire, all of Ford's full-sized RWD sedans will be toast. What a waste. 

In another case of under-informed greenery, Slate.com attempts to answer the question vexing America's automotive environmentalists: should American drivers switch to manual transmissions to save the planet? Answer: yes. Author Brendan I. Koerner says self-shifters can shave 15 percent off their annual gas consumption. "The Department of Energy estimates that the average American driver uses 500 gallons of gas per year, so we're talking about a reduction of 75 gallons. Since a gallon of gas emits 19.564 pounds of carbon dioxide… you'd be reducing your annual CO₂ output by approximately two-thirds of a metric ton." But then again no; American drivers lack the right technique/attitude to harvest the savings. "If you're lazy about shifting and allow your RPMs to soar unnoticed, then you might actually guzzle more gas than if your car were equipped with a well-engineered slushbox." Koerner seems blissfully unaware of the wide variety of cog-swappers on the market: slushbox, CVT, DSG, automatic clutch. But he's convinced that manual transmissions are a better bet, if only because "The brake pads on stick-shift cars… tend to wear out less rapidly than those on automatics. And manual transmissions are relatively cheap to fix and replace, so you can wait longer to buy a new vehicle." Who knew?

With the pickup truck market headed for the crash barrier and consumer demand shifting from SUVs towards more fuel-efficient cars and CUVs, GM has decided to introduce a pickup truck version of one of its slowest-selling SUVs. CNNMoney reports GM is wasting spending $73m to equip its Shreveport, Louisiana plant to build the Hummer H3T alongside Chevy Colorados and GMC Canyons. You may recall– then again why would you?– that the H3T was introduced as a two-door concept at the LA Auto Show in 2004. Although the concept looked kinda cool and (relatively) compact in a Jeep Gladiator kinda way, the new Hummer pickup will have a four-door cab. GM describes the forthcoming H3T as "larger than a mid-sized truck but smaller than a full-sized truck." Which raises an interesting question: "Why?"

Audi has the A3. Mercedes has the B-class. BMW has the 1-series. And now Lexus is jumping on the small car bandwagon. According to Redbook (the Aussie website, not the thirty-something fashion mag), Toyota's upmarket car brand is dumping plans to build a RAV-4-based SUV in favor of crafting the Lexus of small cars. An unnamed, overly-grammatical Lexus executive claimed "the booming small passenger market in Europe has required us to rethink the situation in terms of the sub-RX entry-level SUV. In response, we have decided to shift from SUV to passenger car, under the project name of C-Premium." The new baby Lexus will be offered in both sedan and hatchback versions. It should arrive just in time to help Lexus meet stricter CO2 and fuel economy standards. Let's just hope the "C" in "C-Premium" doesn't mean "Corolla."

Can someone please explain this to me? To field a credible small car stateside, GM has decided to import the relatively diminutive Opel Astra from Europe into the U.S. and re-badge it a Saturn. Because of the unfavorable exchange rate between the U.S. and the Eurozone, and the fact that the Astra will be screwed together in a high-cost country (Belgium), GM will make a loss on every Astra sold. So the more Astras they sell, the more money they'll lose. And yet, Just-Auto [sub] reports that GM has decided to increase the number of Astras headed stateside from 30k to 40k per year. Originally, we heard that the Opel Astra was a "placeholder;" if it sold in sufficient quantities, GM would transfer production to the U.S. But building cars in the U.S. isn't any cheaper than assembling them in the land of mayonnaise on your french fries. It can't be a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) pleasing deal, as the imported Astra wouldn't count towards GM's domestic CAFE averages. Is it a union thing? A world car thing? A stupid ass hubris WTF GM thing? 

Now that the European courts have finally struck down the so-called "VW Law" preventing Porsche from taking control of the German automaker, VW's labor union is upping the ante in its battle for power on their future owner's board. As Just-Auto reports [sub], VW's works council is seriously pissed at the idea that Porsche's numerically inferior labor union will get the same representation on the new holding company's BOD as VW's One Man Army. So the VeeDub boys are downing tools; they're striking VW over the issue. For three hours. Only not technically. Technically, the VW works council is holding "information meetings" re: the Porsche takeover amongst its union brothers and sisters. The fact that these gatherings will stop production at all six of VW's German assembly plants is neither here nor there, presumably.  

Well duh. More importantly, why is Michelle Maynard over at The New York Times publicly humiliating Chrysler's CEO for his non-car guyitude? That debate is so last August. OK, so Nardelli made some Home Depot-esque gaffes during his speech to the Magazine Publishers of America conference. Such as “I think a vehicle today has to be your most favorite room under your roof. I really believe that. I mean, it has to bring you gratification, it has to be tranquil. It’s incidental that it gets you from Point A to B, right?” Well no, obviously. But we get the distinct impression that Maynard was, well, picking on Bob. "'An automobile also needs “cup holders — some for water and some for…,' Mr. Nardelli said, but he did not finish that thought." Is the Old Gray Lady (the paper, not Maynard) seriously suggesting that the Chrysler CEO's inability to name any other beverage suitable for a cupholder indicates a lack of pistonhead credentials? The article gives Nardelli's PR handler enough rope to hang himself the last word.  "It’s his own spin on it,” Mr. Aberlich said. “It’s good to have that fresh perspective, and he’s bringing that.” Fair enough?

Forbes' columnist Jerry Flint says rising U.S. gas prices are not changing– nor are they about to change– America's car-buying habits. "We can afford it. If we rushed out and sold our big, safe, comfortable cars and trucks, trading them for little minis, we would be driving uncomfortably and less safely. We would lose more money on the trade-ins than we would ever save in lower gasoline bills." Uh, what about sagging pickup trucks sales, or the switch from SUVs to crossovers? Don't the numbers reflect a new mpg-related car-buying paradigm? Flint dismisses the shift as nothing more than a continuation of a pre-existing trend– although the dean of automotive journalists fails to state what triggered these trends in the first place. As always, Flint's take on the hard numbers is let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may PC anti-matter. Until the last 'graph. "But all is not hopeless," Flint opines, suddenly revealing his disapproval for American consumers' recalcitrance re: downsizing their cars, carpooling or hopping onto public transportation. "Auto companies around the world, those in Detroit included, are developing improved engines that will push a car farther on a gallon. They will be here in a few years. And they'll fit under the hood of a roomy, comfortable American car." Well thank God for that!