In a report to appear Monday, the German magazine Der Spiegel will write that “several law firms are compiling material for lawsuits to hold Porsche liable. They are working for hedge funds which had lost billions of Euros.” That’s news to Porsche CFO Holger Härter. He says he hasn’t heard of anybody who wants revenge or restitution. “I don’t even know who might have been hurt.” On Sunday, FAZ will publish an interview with Härter. First question: “When will the hedge fund called Porsche close its sheet metal factory?” Härter’s answer: “Our core business is and remains the automobile.” Everybody knows: not true. Porsche made more profits than sales in the last fiscal year. Of €8.6b in profits, only €1b were generated in that sheet metal factory. €7.6b were generated with derivatives. That was in the last fiscal year, which ended July 31. God, Härter and Wiedeking only know how much the Porsche hedge fund generated in the months thereafter, when the VW stock went wilder than girls at Mardi Gras. Härter now says they didn’t really mean it. Here is Härter’s version:
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Rick Wagoner lost control of General Motors this week. Forget about his title; game over for the embattled former Duke basketball wannabe. There’s a new sheriff at GM – and it’s a bunch of Wall Street guys that few on Main Street can name. It’s the hedge funds that have been acquiring GM’s bonds. So here’s how these guys will play The General to make a killing on the pending government bailout:

Beijing’s sizable German community congregated today at the annual Weihnachtsmarkt. At the German Embassy inside the People’s Republic of China, party-goers loaded-up on Bratwurst, Christstollen and got seasonably drunk. Volkswagen China, headquartered ’round the corner, sponsored a stand at the festival. Not to sell cars. No, they were hawking their fabled “VW-Currywurst,” a culinary delight served every Thursday to the working classes at Wolfsburg’s cafeterias. At the sidelines of the event, and under the influence of truth serums such as Radeberger Pilsner or Glühwein, leading Volkswagen of China execs reiterated what had been the talk around Sanlitun for months: VeeDub is defying gravity in China. In fact, they’ll probably sell more cars in China this year than their parent sells in Germany. According to Gasgoo, Jörg Müller, CFO of VGC (Volkswagen Group China) made the prediction in August. In October, VGC pronounced themselves over target.

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Thank God it’s the weekend-edition of While America Slept. That’s pretty much all we have reason to be thankful for. WAS is a daily round-up of the news that happened in other continents and time-zones. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or that has its wheels coming off. If you hate bad news, don’t tread it.

Japanese car market commits seppuku: Japanese domestic new car sales are likely to drop by around one-third in November, “raising the odds that the full-year tally will be the lowest since 1974,” writes The Nikkei (sub.) Folks, Japan has it worse than back home, so cheer up! Full-year sales of all types of cars, including mini vehicles, are forecast at around 5.1 million units — the lowest total in 28 years. Japan gave up its rank as the world’s second largest auto market to China in 2007, but remained the world’s second largest producing nation. It is expected to relinquish that rank also to China in 2008. That spells major itai (pain) for Nippon. Soon they’ll complain about exporting all those jobs to gaijin America.

It’s all in the brand: To add insult to injury, China’s Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group (GAIG) announced that its two subsidiaries “Guangzhou Toyota” and “Guangzhou Honda” will be renamed as “GAIG Toyota” and “GAIG Honda.” Harmless so far. Here comes the unusual part: Toyota and Honda will be required to pay for the honor of carrying the GAIG trademark, Gasgoo reports. It used to be the other way. The two brands will be sold through one “GAIG” sales channel. GAIG’s chairman Zhang Fangyou said his focus will “shift to brand marketing.” Of the GAIG brand.

GM says bondage no fun: GM is trying to talk their debt holders into exchanging bonds for stock, the WSJ (sub) says. That would help GM avoid C11. The proposal, along with the daring assumption that doubtful investors will accept it, will make its way into the business plan due in DC on Tuesday.

GM BOD to sacrifice Wagoner? The WSJ (sub) also picked up indications from GM’s BOD that the directors may be increasingly inclined to serve Wagoner’s head on a platter to mollify the angry gods of the Beltway. More than one-fourth of the automaker’s 14 directors have already privately expressed frustration with Wagoner, the WSJ says. COO Fritz Henderson is being floated as a successor.

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CNN Money’s Chris Isidore writes that if all the stars aligned, the Big Three could return to profitability by 2010. He qualifies his comments often, with phrases like “if they make it to 2010,” but the bigger issue is the specious nature of his explanations for how the companies would return to profitability. Isidore’s claims are essentially underpinned by the philosophy of “cutting your way to profitability” — as such, he highlights the Big Three’s smaller workforces, supposedly reduced pension obligations, and cuts in overcapacity. The only actual increase in income Isidore speculates about is increased new car sales, an argument barely more sophisticated than “they’re really bad now, so obviously they have to get a lot better.” This kind of journalism is dangerous, not just because it’s overly optimistic (in spite of its own acknowledgements to the contrary), but because it’s wrong. There is no reason to believe sales will be up to 14 million units in the US by 2010; there’s even less reason to believe that GM’s share of those 14 million units would be the same percent that it was in 2007. Isidore’s math on the potential savings from cost cutting is calling the glass 1/8 full at best, by assuming the UAW will allow GM to just defer its contribution to the pooled-benefit VEBA account to another year. That might work in accounting ledgers, but the bottom line is that this is the kind of nonsense that contributed to GM’s collapse in the first place.

This is what I get for taking a moment to check in at GM-Volt.com. The angry young Volt-lovers are freaking out about the possibility of GM not surviving until the Volt’s launch date, and the prospect of losing their beloved fetish object has folks in a “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship” kind of mood. The emotional fervor that these people feel towards this nonexistant vehicle is such that their suggestions make handing a blank check to Detroit look like a good idea. The “GM-Volt.com Viability Plan Suggestion,” was put forward by semi-retired NASA engineer Phil Toney, and man is it a doozy. The plan boils down to congress legislating that the entire government fleet (600k+ vehicles) be replaced with, you guessed it, Chevy Volts. But that’s not all…

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MINI has sent out the press release and photo pack for its new MINI convertible, and I have to say “eh.” It the same looks as the MINI hatchback, and the first generation new MINI convertible. The interior is still cartoonish, the back seat appears to be of about the same usefulness as the first gen convertible (which would be nearly none) and the trunk still has the funny fold-down tailgate. MINI says they’ve made incremental improvements (in addition to the new platform for the car, which is now the same as the hatch has had for the last two years). The roof also slides back to function as a moonroof without actually folding the whole top down, like on the last model, and now the roll hoops don’t stick out as much. Engines are the same as the MINI Cooper and Cooper S hatchback versions, so 118 or 172 ponies are your options. As for me, I’d rather have a Miata. Fortunately for MINI, loads of people won’t agree. I’d bet on a waiting list.

What the heck’s an Innova? While the Toyota website and Wikipedia give no hint to what the word actually means, I suspect it was supposed to evoke the feeling of being innovative, exciting, something new and vogue. Well, so was the Oldsmobile Achieva. And just like the Achieva, no amount of marketing and media shots of active couples rampaging around the country side will convince me the Toyota Innova is anything more than a marketing focus group’s bastard child. Then I found out that the platform and mechanical bits are donated from Toyota’s legendary Hilux pickup truck. Now we might be on to something.

As Farago wrote, the Caravan of Love broke down before it even left Motown. Supposedly, it went virtual, and took the information superhighway instead of routes 76 and 70 as even the most half-witted GPS would recommend. Jeez, they can’t even do what a 3 year old can do in 10 minutes: Build a website. TheEngineOfDemocracy.com displays the dreaded “Our site is currently under construction.” It promises:  ”We will be back online Monday, December 1st as promised.” What do they mean with “back?” Where they ever on-line before?

And then, that logo: I bet, trademark lawyers in Wolfsburg are right this minute arguing with Volkswagen top management: “We recommend sending a cease and desist. They are diluting our Autostadt mark.” “It might not be politically expedient. They’ll say we hate them.”  “If you don’t send the letter, we may lose our mark.”  Anyway, the thing on the site looks terribly like Volkswagen’s Autostadt logo. The Autostadt logo looks back at a long line of German Heritage: It was purloined from Volkswagen’s New Beetle, which was inspired by the old VW Bug, which was ordered by old Adolf himself. But at least: It was all in the family. The Engine Of Democracy: In the ass, and cooled by hot air?

“The caravan bound from Detroit to Washington, D.C., to support federal bridge loans [a.k.a. bailout] for Detroit’s Big Three automakers will take the information superhighway instead of the interstate… Grand plans of an automotive cavalcade to the nation’s Capitol grew to the point of impossible once the idea was floated last week by a number of influential people in Detroit.” And so The Detroit News pronounces the T.O.D. for the Caravan of Love. “The outpouring of support was huge,” said Jason Vines, Compuware Corp.’s vice president, TTAC podcaster and former chief spokesman for Chrysler LLC. “We’ve changed this into a virtual march, in part because we didn’t want to become targets for environmental groups or others.” Whoa! Hold on there. First, GM CEO Rick Wagoner can’t drive to DC with his $25b bailout bowl because of “security concerns.” Now the Caravan of Love is bummed-out by possible bad vibes from whacko tree huggers? Talk about a bad trip! So… now what? The bridge builders are launching a site called TheEngineofDemocracy.com. “There, people can share their stories about how the auto industry impacts their lives.” Customers too?