End of Days: GM Denies Saab's an Orphan, Chrysler Talks Up "Lifestyle" Pickup

GM has responded to yesterday’s story “revealing” that no one wants to buy the Saab brand. The fact that the denial is off the record [via AFP] tells you that either A) The General is involved in delicate, top-secret negotiation to transfer ownership of the Swedish near-luxury brand to a third party or B) they’re lying. The off-the-record comment from “one GM official familiar with the proceedings” smacks of B: “It’s still early in the process. It’s going to take some time.” Which is the one thing– well one of many things– that GM doesn’t have. Meanwhile, Chrysler is also involved in a smoke and mirrors campaign as part of its ongoing and increasingly incredible effort to convince the world that it’s an ongoing and credible commercial enterprise. Ahead of the don’t call it the Detroit Auto Show, Chrysler product development chief Frank Klegon is talking-up the possibility of building a car-based lifestyle truck. It’s a fiction so boneheaded that even The Detroit News was impolite enough to mention that GM had just abandoned said genre (G8 ST RIP), and that Honda’s Ridgeline is a flop. In fact, scribe Alisa Priddle does a yeoman’s job proving that Klegon is lost in space. “This is a segment where many automakers have recognized there isn’t enough volume for all of the players to invest in their own platform, and there is a lot of sharing going on.” And that’s as good as it gets…

New Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards argue against any such venture.

“Among the proposals for calculating fleet fuel-efficiency in the future is the idea of measuring a vehicle’s ‘footprint’ by multiplying its wheelbase (length of the vehicle as measured between the center of the front and rear wheels) by its track (width as measured between two front or two rear wheels).

“This would force a higher-percentage improvement on small vehicles, [auto analyst Jim] Hall said. If the new standard allows for lower fuel economy for large vehicles, there’s no incentive to do a small one, Hall said.

“‘If footprint stays in there the small trucks are dead,’ Hall said.

“Automakers would have to equip a smaller pickup with such a small engine to meet CAFE that it would lack the power to function as a working truck, Hall said.”

You’d kind of hope ChryCo’s Klegon knows all this. Wouldn’t you?