On the A4 Autobahn near Friedewald, Germany. The police is on the ass of an obscure vehicle: Banged-up, holes in the bodywork, huge rivets everywhere. Highly suspicious in a country that doesn’t have HOV-2 lanes: A puppet sits in the right hand seat. Germany’s finest pull him over. Highly embarrassing: They caught themselves a prototype of a yet to be launched BMW. Supposedly a 535d. Even more embarrassing: There is a video of the whole affair, brought to you by BILD Zeitung. Knowing that the test driver will be punished at the factory, the police let him go.

The New York Times:

For taxpayers to be made whole, the new mini-G.M. would have to produce earnings sufficient to support an enterprise value of at least $95 billion, the sum of a $69 billion market cap and its $26 billion of debt and preferred stock under the restructuring plan. Using market valuation multiples of five times that means New G.M. must generate operating cash flow somewhere in the order of $19 billion annually.

That would require both increasing annual sales to some $150 billion, almost 50 percent more than the entire company, shorn of its various financial and international businesses, is expected to generate this year, and matching the whopping 14 percent operating cash flow margin that Toyota achieved in its best year ever. It requires a vast leap of faith to believe that can happen.

And going, it seems. As many as 450 dealerships with franchise agreements coming due in the next 17 months will be dropped by GM, according to Automotive News [sub]. GM’s Mark LaNeve insists that “less than half” of the 450 number is more accurate, but admits that cuts will be announced when GM files for bankruptcy on Monday. “These are dealers who have very specific issues,” LaNeve tells AN. GM will be using “very similar” criteria for these cuts as the last round, when 1,124 dealers went to the big closeout sale in the sky.

Holy global overcapacity, Batman! Trading Markets reports that the world’s largest automaker is cutting Japanese production in half and overseas production by 43 percent, as it struggles to touch bottom. Toyota and its Hino and Daihatsu subsidiaries will produce 433,979 units gobally in April, down 46 percent from April 2008. Exports from Japan have been hit especially hard, dropping 70 percent (year-on-year) in April. According to the WSJ, all of the Japanese majors are dramatically decreasing domestic production on falling sales. Even without bankruptcy filings, it seems everyone in the gobal car game is facing some form of reorganization. Like Renault/Nissan’s new attempt to find another $2 billion in “synergy” savings. Try looking under the couch cushions, guys.

Malcolm “Call Me Malcolm” Bricklin and I had our little chin wag this morning. As expected, the serial entrepreneur dominated the initial conversation. Less predictably, Bricklin began by bludgeoning me with Google-sourced biographical data. “I know about the Subaru [flying vagina] thing,” Bricklin pronounced. “You’ve got balls. I assume you’re not just saying all this stuff to be controversial.” After admitting his own insanity, Bricklin started recounting the entire history of the Yugo. His no-word-allowed-in-edgewise tale included the Cadillac Allante’s inhibiting effect on X1/9 production and Henry Kissinger’s contribution to the car that launched a thousand jokes. At some point, I interrupted Bricklin to ask about his latest venture: hydrogen. Turns out I got it wrong. Bricklin isn’t proposing a societal switch to hydrogen fuel. He’s got one of those 100mpg carburetor things. Only his creates “hydrogen-on-demand.”

Apparently no good deed goes unpunished in Auburn Hills, as Reuters reports that Lee Iacocca will lose his retirement benefits under Chrysler’s bankruptcy reorganization. The man credited with saving Chrysler from bankruptcy in 1979 will lose all of his supplemental executive retirement plan (SERP) benefits and his lifetime use of a company car, according to CEO Bob Nardelli’s testimony before Chrysler’s bankruptcy court. Although Chrysler’s employee FAQ states that “SERP contributions are placed in a trust fund and are not subject to creditors in the event of bankruptcy,” it seems that applies only to tax-qualified contributions. “We are required by law to stop the payments of non-tax qualified SERP benefits,” the FAQ reveals. Clearly Iacocca’s benefits fall into this category. Time to make another ad with Snoop Dogg?

The marathon meeting at the Adlon may not have been for naught after all. “After hours of talks with Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International, GM has reached an agreement, in principle, ” Reuters reports. Now they have to agree on a memorandum of understanding that will serve as the basis for bridge financing of €1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) and the trustee plan that comes with it. The German government will not give the bridge financing without the trustee scheme. Otherwise, their money and Opel will be drawn into the black hole of the Chapter 11 filing that is expected for Monday.
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Jim Fouts, the mayor of Warren, Michigan, has made GM an offer he hopes it can’t refuse. According to the DetN, Fouts hand-delivered a proposal to GM’s Renaissance Center that offered the automaker a 30-year tax abatement on personal property taxes if it moved headquarters to its Warren Technical Center. The offer, which Fouts calls “unprecedented,” would give GM 100 percent off taxes on all machinery and equipment and 50 percent off the taxes associated with any new construction for a period of 12 years.

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Sent to us from a member of our Best and Brightest, who’s been following former GM parts maker, and bankruptcy-stuck, Delphi’s implosion at an unsafe distance:

One bit of news last night, and two old known facts, that may be the tip of something bigger. 1. As expected, yesterday, Judge Drain extended the hearing on Delphi’s emergence plan until Tuesday, the day after the GM C11 2. The PTFOA [Presidential Task Force on Automobiles] has never said, and still won’t say, what price they are paying for the five US Delphi plants. 3 Platinum Equity has been sticking their nose in here [Delphi] trying to get to FMV for Delphi’s stuff. The first two on this list don’t make sense. The Platinum thing does. Here’s what could be going on . . .

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The Texas state Senate voted Monday to give federal, state and local authorities the ability to track and identify every passing vehicle on state highways. The provision calling for “automatic license plate identification cameras” was slipped into the Senate version of the must-pass Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) reauthorization bill. The provision was not part of the bill introduced in the state House of Representatives, whose less sympathetic members will have to accept or reject the entire 1274-page compromise hammered out by a conference committee. The House voted yesterday to instruct its conferees to insist that the House-passed ban on red light cameras remain in the final text.

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