This to me is a classic case of the corporate world trying to flex its muscle on the “nobodies”. Is the MOCA the appropriate place for this kind of flexing? Of course not …or is it? Giving the power of curation and enforcement of corporate policies on an exhibition and venue like this is not the way it is supposed to go down. Is MOCA a car lot? Is MOCA a venue for advertisements where the interests of the brand comes before the art? Who empowered them to simply go around and pluck whatever art out of the show to throw in the trash? I made this art on my own dime, traveled down there on my own dime, displayed it on my own time.

According to the HuffPo, media artist Chris Silva had his exhibit at Mike D’s MOCA Los Angeles show, “Bring Your Own Beamer (Projector)” turned off by event staff before the show could even begin. Why? Silva’s “art” was a projected picture of the Peugeot 908 HDI LeMans racer. Quoth Silva,

I was then told that I had to take down what I was showing and that I could show something else if I had it. I was also told that the reason I couldn’t show it is because someone from Mercedes corporate was “pissed” about it and basically took it as a “fuck you” to Mercedes. I asked to talk to the person who made this decision, and was denied, literally told “you don’t want to talk to them, they are pissed”.

While your humble author’s involvement with the “art world” is limited to the occasional Chihuly purchase and the strategic positioning of H.R. Giger prints in his senior-year dorm room to further aggravate a roommate who was already a known suicide risk and prone to terrifying, grotesque nightmares, this whole thing seems a little bit difficult for us to believe. Peugeot and Mercedes-Benz no longer compete in North America, either for sales or for motorsports dominance. Indeed, unless one is simply an ironclad fan of the dearly departed 505 Turbo, it can be easily argued that the two firms have never competed here. Most art-show goers, upon being confronted with a large picture of a Peugeot race car, would probably just think “generic racing vehicle,” not “OMFG I AM GOING TO SELL MY C300 AND FLY TO PARIS TOMORROW TO IMPORT A PUG JUST LIKE CAPTAIN MIKE SOLOWIOW!”

While this incident hasn’t done anything to increase the number of Peugeots brought into the country, it has raised the profile of Mr. Silva, who has been able to firmly position himself as an “artist” who uses a projector to put pre-existing pictures on a wall. Perhaps this is less about intra-European rivalries and more about Mr. Brainwash…

Thanks to Ronnie Schreiber of Cars In Depth for the tip!

A credit to my parents (among many); they turned everything into a “teachable moment”. A new addition to my vocabulary came with a lesson on the root word, and whether it came from Latin, or French or Greek. A new song came with a quick history of Manchester  80′s New Wave, or Delta blues. My allowance was paid after chores and before a lesson on budgeting. A new car magazine had to be read and not just scanned through for pretty pictures.

And so came one of the lessons that ended up changing how I viewed the world. I was in my early teens, and had just discovered Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, when my father suggested I read Paul Fussell’s Class. “It’s even got some car stuff in there; he talks about how people buy SUVs to look like they’re rich enough to have a country home. Just read it. You’ll like it.”

I devoured Class, as well as Bad, which I considered the advanced, up-to-date version, and never looked at the world in the same way. Not many books have done that. To explain both would take another essay entirely, but both books do a wonderful job of deconstruction consumering, advertising, marketing and most importantly, how all three prey on people’s insecurities relating to social status. Read them and you will feel both immune to “aspirational brand” marketing and also wondering about the class signals given off by friends, peers, people you interact with – and yourself.

Paul Fussell died today at age 88, and while his body of work is incredibly important in an era where class and money no longer have anything to do with one another, and the push to define ourselves through consuming goods has never been stronger. I leave you with the passage below, from Class, where Fussell ruthlessly dissects the semiotics of the automobile (and also perhaps, shows some indirect Panther love – remember, this book was written in the early/mid-80s)

“If your money and freedom and carelessness of censure allow you to buy any kind of car, you provide yourself with the meanest and most common to indicate that you`re not taking seriously so easily purchasable and thus vulgar a class totem. You have a Chevy, Ford, Plymouth or Dodge, and in the least interesting style and color. It may be clean, although slightly dirty is best.

You may not have a Rolls, Cadillac or a Mercedes. . . . The worst kind of upper-middle-class types own a Mercedes, just as the best own elderly Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Chryslers, and perhaps Jeeps and Land Rovers, the latter conveying the preppy suggestion that one of your residences is in a place so unpublic that the roads to it are not even paved, indeed are hardly passable by your ordinary vulgar automobile.”

And of course, some wisdom from my own mother, upon seeing the first $399/month lease deal for a BMW 320i

“Anyone can have a BMW now…and [redacted, her billionaire godfather] drives an old, beat up Buick.”

Two teachable moments, expressed in slightly different ways, updated for our times. Go out and buy the books. For the cost of a couple spark plugs, your outlook on the world will never be the same.

Reports of a next-generation Cadillac Escalade, due in 2014 after a brush with the Grim Reaper, have us asking the all-important question; what was GM thinking in trying to kill the car off in the first place?

The Escalade is, without a shadow of a doubt, the Cadillac brand. Sorry, the CTS-V isn’t it, and the XTS is destined to become something that you ride in the back seat of when you get dropped off at the airport.

The SRX may just be a generic GM crossover with Cadillac styling, but the Escalade is even more cynical. It’s just a Yukon with a few plastic Cadillac bits. And yet, it is the core product of Cadillac, offering irresistible profit margins and peerless name recognition.

Why GM wanted to kill it off is an utter mysery. Even with gas prices at record highs, the Escalade could still have lived on as a status symbol for the vulgar and ostentatious. GM claims that the margins on the Escalade were too fat to walk away from, but let’s be real for a second. Killing off the Escalade would mean that Cadillac would flounder, Lincoln-style, with a bunch of product that can’t quite hold its own next to the foreign competition that Cadillac is so desperately trying to fight.

The fact is that Cadillac needs this truck in the same way that it needs to stop trying to sit at the same lunch table as the cool kids. The Escalade, awful as it may be, is American luxury. Big, bold, over-the-top, profligate and firmly in opposition to everything the cap-and-goggles throttle-steer crowd stands for. Beyond that, the Escalade is an important halo vehicle for a lot of buyers reared on hip-hop music, many of whom are the target customer for the ATS (hey, even MCA of the Beastie Boys was pushing 50). Kill it off and what’s left? The SRX? Well, I’ll let ODB tell you what I think of that one (NSFW language)

Back when I was searching for my first car, I briefly found an Alfa Romeo Spider that looked like it would be in passable condition. Before I could even call the number from the classified ad, my father chimed in with his usual wisdom. “Oh, you don’t want to start with those. They were crap! Just get a Miata and finish!”.

Now, after 25 years of utter dominance, the Miata has finally consumed the last icon of European two-seaters, the Alfa Romeo Spider. Mazda and Fiat signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop new, lightweight roadsters specific to each brand. Both would be built at Mazda’s Hiroshima plant. While the new MX-5 is just around the corner, the Alfa would start production in 2015.

Alfa Romeo cars, particularly vintage ones, have an enormous following in Japan, and the tie-up with a “premium” brand will reflect well on Mazda, which is saddled with financial troubles and a gloomy future, despite a new wave of promising product. Unfortunately for Miata owners, it will be hard to harp on Alfas for oil leaks, electrical issues and other maladies once Mazda starts building the Spider to the Miata’s superb level of reliability.

The big question here is the implications for Mazda and a potential Fiat alliance. Mazda has been adamant about forming partnerships in order to ensure its survival, and Sergio Marchionne told Automobile this month that a broader partnership with Mazda would be attractive. When you think about it, a Mazda/Alfa partnership isn’t too much of a stretch…

Optimism sure ain’t what it used to be. Introducing its latest survey of auto industry executives [PDF], Booz & Co. proclaims that “optimism is skyrocketing,” and that “a new wave of optimism is overtaking the U.S. auto industry.” They’re not wrong, but for those used to the pre-bailout days of unabashed optimism dressed up as analysis, the “new optimism” is remarkably guarded. And it’s all relative to the pessimism that was beginning to set in when the industry began to realize that the “old optimism” was wildly at odds with the slow-motion market recovery.

So, just how optimistic is the “new optimism”? Which companies have the most reason for optimism? What do industry executives worry about most? When do they expect a Chinese invasion? The answers to these questions and more after the jump.

The “somewhat better” scenario that industry execs tell Booz is defining their business planning looks something like this graph. Overall, 86% of suppliers and OEMs expect auto sales growth to be consistent with GDP growth. This steady market growth outlook puts a premium on market share growth, and the execs polled certainly seem to have strong opinions on that front:

This chart is amazing to me. Clearly the US industry is terrified of two automakers: VW/Audi and Hyundai/Kia. More executives think VW will gain share than think Nissan, Honda, GM or Chrysler will gain or maintain their market share, and the optimism around Hyundai/Kia is straight-up out of control. It’s almost as if auto execs are haunted in their sleep every night by hipster hamsters and the disembodied voice of Jeff Bridges repeating the words “forty miles per gallon” over and over in a congenially bemused voice.

And where do executives think success comes from? Product, product, product. After all, market growth may be slow, but companies expect their revenue to rise. Cost, inventory and pricing discipline can deliver improved profit in a low sales growth environment, but only if the product sells itself.

Meanwhile, 55% of the OEM executives polled say their companies are “capacity constrained” and 36% say they are comfortable with current capacity. As sales rise slowly, higher capacity utilization will  help drive the revenue improvements the industry sees. Once again, as long as the product is good and discipline can be maintained.

And though 69% identified current product portfolio as a top-three driver of growth in 2012, only 17% expect their current portfolio to turn in a “strong performance” vis-a-vis the competition, with 44% expecting a “good performance.” Cost position and financial position are two factors that could always be better from an executive’s position, but the fact that 26% of execs say customer experience and relationship performance could be “poor” or “very poor” is worrying.

Meanwhile, all the talk of price and capacity discipline and improving profit rather than buying market share will only last as long as there’s no major effort to break into the US market. But by 2020, 32% of auto execs expect Chinese manufacturers to have broken into between four and eight percent of the market. By attacking the low end of the market and aggressively trying to buy a foothold in the US market, Chinese firms hold the potential to wreck the disciplined, realistic “new optimism” by putting severe pressure on pricing discipline.

For now, though, the automakers in the US market seems to be settling into a quiet phase of profit-taking rather than adventurous market share grabs. Clearly there’s a sense of having learned tough lessons from the auto bailout, and from the ongoing capacity issues in Europe. But rather than focusing on bailout-era lessons as they did last year, Booz’s 2012-specific questions now center on dealing with “black swan” events like last year’s tsunami and Thai floods. All of which adds to the overall perception that automakers are playing defense, concentrating on profits and hedging against uncertainty.

According to Booz & Co.: Two hundred and eight automotive executives from more than 75 automotive vehicle manufacturers and suppliers participated in the online survey. Thirty-two percent of the respondents were employees of OEMs, and 68 percent work for auto parts suppliers. Three-quarters of the executives were from U.S.-based firms. More than 50 percent of respondents were VP level or above.

If you’re depressed about the current state of your Laguna Seca laptimes, don’t read any further: Marc Gene has set a new “unofficial” record for the iconic hillside track. How does his time compare to that of mere mortals and/or members of the TTAC crew?

Gene’s flying lap of 1:05.78 in a 2003 Ferrari F1 car narrowly beats Sebastian Bourdais’ 1:05.88 effort, set in a Panoz DP1 five years ago. Laguna Seca is far too tight and narrow to even consider the idea of holding a modern F1 race there, so those of us who follow the sport will have to settle the 2003 Ferrari v. 2012 Williams argument at our garage benches somewhere.

How’s that compare to real cars? Well, during the Skip Barber Media Challenge the best times for our lightly-modified Miatas were in the high 1:51 range. According to video data evaluated after the fact, your humble author soft-pedaled a Boss 302 Laguna Seca edition around the track in 1:43.1. Ford claims to have snuck that same car just under the 1:40 mark in private testing. Dodge’s Viper “1:33 Edition” ACR is supposedly the fastest dead-stock car money can buy around the course, running a — you guessed it! — 1:33. Take away the license plates, and you will find that the Audi R10 is the fastest closed-wheel car to run the course, recording a low 1:08.

If you want to experience Laguna Seca yourself, but you don’t have any of the above machinery and you aren’t keen on the idea of rolling your Prius down the Corkscrew, one great alternative is to try the Twlight Rides. Ten bucks a head, and from what I’ve heard, most people feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth on about the third lap!

Five years ago, car dealers throughout the country were hit hard by carmageddon. Now, they are about to get hit again where it really hurts: In the workshop, where the real money is being made. The auto sales collapse of 2008 winds its way through the years like a diet through an anaconda. While showrooms were empty five years ago, now it’s the service bays that are deserted.

Says a J.D. Power and Associates study quoted by Automotive News [sub]:

“The number of vehicles in operation that are 5 years old and newer will dip to 63 million this year, forecast to be the low point of the industry’s downturn and recovery, according to J.D. Power and Associates. Late-model vehicles traditionally represent the sweet spot for repair and maintenance work for dealership service departments.”

Why will this be more painful than empty showrooms? In 2011, the service and parts business represented 13 percent of overall sales for the typical dealership but contributed 72 percent of dealership operating profits, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). Used car sales often contribute one third of the profits, new car sales often are loss leaders.

Dealer workshops would have no problem surviving the trough if they would have held on to owners of older vehicles. The servicing of older vehicles can be the most profitable part of the business, new vehicles on the other hand need less and less service. However, owners of older vehicles typically give dealer workshops wide berth.

If your car is out of warranty and still being serviced by a dealer, watch for serious upselling. They need your money more than ever.

With GM now dropping out of Super Bowl advertising, what’s next for the marketing bigwigs at the Ren Cen? And yes, I’ll take the Storm, thank you very much.

A report in the Wall Street Journal outlines GM’s plans for Superbowl Sunday.

Super Bowl advertising is effective but has become too expensive to justify the cost, GM’s global marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, said in an interview. Buyers say ads for next year’s National Football League championship game—which is being broadcast by CBS—are so far selling for about $3.8 million for a 30-second spot.

Joel Ewanick, formerly at Hyundai, was once a believer in the efficacy of Super Bowl ads, and Hyundai’s been no stranger to them either. Perhaps we’ll see more details shake out in the next few days. Unlike Facebook, the Super Bowl seems to be a much more effective medium than a tiny ad space on a social network.

Automotive News posted a picture of a Kia K9 luxury sedan wearing manufacturer plates on the road near Orange County, California. Does that mean we’re due to get the K9 any time soon?

Once upon a time, my father worked for Kia Canada, and the company’s head office had a frequent rotation of Korean market cars sent over for evaluation. Some, like the Carens, made it over under a different name, while others, like the Enterprise, were merely showpieces for what Kia could do with a re-skinned, decade old Mazda platform. Nevertheless, I wanted an Enterprise, complete with back massagers and headrest mounted TV screens.

The K9 could very well make it here, depending on Kia’s push to bring themselves upmarket. It would need a new name, lest it evoke visions of Iams pet food and invasive, racially motivated vehicle searches. Unfortunately, a piece of forbidden fruit wearing Manufacturer plates is not always a reliable indicator of future product plans.

Well, it was bound to happen. The ugly step-child of the Lexus lineup, the HS250h, is dead. And the too-tall corpse has been decomposing for quite some time.

Toyota told Inside Line

“Production of the HS 250h ceased in January, 2012. Lexus continues to monitor sales for each product and we make adjustments to make sure that we meet market demand, and the discontinuation of HS was part of that adjustment. The ES 300h is not replacing HS in our lineup. It’s merely part of the hybridization of many of our existing vehicles in the Toyota and Lexus lineups.”

Sales of the HS dropped 74 percent in 2011, and with the ES300h and the CT200h, Lexus has all their bases covered in the hybrid car market covered. The fact that the HS250h has been dead for nearly 6 months without anyone noticing is a bit pathetic. If it had “Prius” in its name, it might have done a bit better. Perhaps this is proof that even a bulletproof nameplate like Lexus can’t just slap a hybrid system into any old crap and expect it to sell.

Holden is expected to make an announcement regarding the export of its Commodore vehicles to North America – essentially confirming the existence of the forthcoming 2013 Chevrolet SS Performance – and apparently it may not be limited to sedans. Utes and wagons could be arriving at some point as well.

Australia’s Drive, an auto publication affiliated with the Sydney Morning Herald, said that Holden is coming “very soon”, possibly on Friday. And it gets even better

The export deal is expected to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and form the basis for a crucial new V8-powered performance model for Chevrolet. It could also expand to involve ute and sportwagon variants.

Drive suggests that the recent $1 billion investment in Holden by GM and the Australian government not only re-affirms the Commodore’s place in Holden’s lineup (despite a growing shift to small cars, and the Commodore becoming more of a fleet car for companies), and that the next generation Commodore lineup – including the sedan, wagon, Ute and long-wheelbase versions, could be built in North America.

The low volume nature of the SS suggests that the car may be a test program for another large, rear-drive sedan as well as a halo vehicle for Chevrolet. A perfect storm of unfortunate events helped torpedo the Pontiac G8, but a new Caprice, with a more mainstream Chevrolet badge and a more defined focus could gain more traction in the marketplace. The lack of a small pickup to replace the Colorado could help pave the way for a Chevrolet Ute. And how about those LPG versions that are readily available in Australia. Maybe a CNG version, in line with GM’s full-size trucks? The possibilities are endless. Holden’s focus, on the other hand, seems to be shifting as well. Lots more rebadged Daewoo cars, and a focus on helping engineer cars for China. Today, the big, rear-drive sedan Commodore plays a role akin to the Chevrolet SS – a halo player that’s not the star of the show, but important for reasons beyond mere volume.

Ford has priced their C-Max MPV with a base sticker of $25,995, or $555 less than its main rival, the Toyota Prius V.

Ford claims that the C-Max has a few more cubic feet of cargo room, as well as a taller roofline than the Prius V for more headroom. Features like MyFordTouch will be offered as standard.

Ford expects the C-Max to best the Prius V in fuel economy as well, but figures weren’t announced. Also conspicuously absent was pricing for the C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid – which Ford claims can beat the fuel economy of the Prius Plug-In. The base C-Max uses the 2.0L Atkinson cycle engine and hybrid powertrain similar to the Ford Fusion Hybrid.

Our own Michael Karesh will be testing out Nissan’s new Altima this week. This is the car that Nissan is hoping will take the Altima from its current second place slot in the mid-size segment and up to the top of the pile. In lieu of Michael’s take, there are a few factors that are worth looking at.

The Altima’s reign as the beta wolf among mid-size sedans was helped along by the tsunami, which saw companies like Honda and Toyota have their production schedules become severely disrupted. The Altima’s combination of strong incentives, adequate supply and a lower MSRP than non-Japanese competitors like the Hyundai Sonata (Hyundai is known to try to keep the transaction prices of their cars higher than other OEMs, while reducing incentives and dealer discounts) helped it vault ahead in the sales ranking and shed its also-ran status.

But the Altima will need to keep improving and growing sales at an inopportune time – a new Camry is on sale, and new versions of the Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion and Honda Accord just around the corner, the 2013 Altima will face an incredibly tough field. So far, the Camry is outselling the Altima in 2012 by about 30,000 units, while the Altima has a nearly 16,000 unit lead on the third place Honda Accord. In fourth place is the aging Ford Fusion.

Nissan execs are stating that “We didn’t put all of the investment into this product and put in all the features with an expectation to be No. 2,” but as we all know, putting your best foot forward in this industry is not a reliable indicator of sales success.

Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

Ford’s social media head Scott Monty told Automotive News

“We’ve found that Facebook ads are very effective, and they’re most effective when we strategically combine them with great content and innovative forms of storytelling rather than a straight media buy,”

As we’ve seen with Ford before, lots of clicks, likes and other vague metrics under the vague “impressions” umbrella end up doing dick all to actually sell your product. The only Fiesta Movement occurring is a downward trend in sales, while the Focus lags behind Corolla, Cruze and Civic in its own segment.

In 2009, Jalopnik nailed it when it asked if all of Ford’s resources spent on social media and their SM guru Scott Monty really helped sell any cars.

I’d wager that based on the piss-poor numbers for Facebook ad click rates, the ability for internet-savvy users to block out advertising and the overall cynicism of consumers for even the most elaborate, narrative-driven advertising, that Ford is mis-allocating their ad dollars on Facebook, and with canned-advertorial reality shows like what were they thinking Escape Routes, a new reality show designed to promote the 2013 Escape.  Who in their right mind is going to spend half an hour watching this show? Take that money and find a way to go to every supermarket in areas where a small crossover is in demand (hint, they have Obama-Biden stickers on their CR-Vs) and let them know what you can open the tailgate by sweeping your foot under the bumper. More likely, it seems that these initiatives, undertaken by a number of OEMs beyond Ford, are what Ray Wert described as

“…another example of the dark side of “social media” — the masturbatory echo chamber re-twitting the same tweets …of the same piece of garbage over and over again to the same social media “gurus.”

Let’s go back to the Fiesta. Sales are in the toilet. Yet Ford seems enthralled with their apparently cutting edge marketing scheme that got 3.4 million Twitter “impressions” and 6.5 million collective Youtube views between the 700 videos produced by their team of 100 agents. To put that in perspective, a friend of mine directed a video for a B-List rapper who was a one-hit viral video wonder and it currently has 34 million views with basically zero promotional budget. By comparison, the number of views for the Fiesta Movement videos is laughable.

Any success that comes from Ford’s latest products will be in spite of whatever social media campaigns they end up running. Nothing short of shrewd product placement or simply having your vehicle out on the street will be truly effective in promoting the new Escape, or Fusion or any car really. A 110 x 100 pixel ad featuring a thumbnail image of a car and 90 characters of text isn’t going to snare anyone in, no matter how gripping the “story” about the car may be. Leaving a 2013 Fusion parked in a prime spot somewhere downtown and letting pedestrians do a double take to stop and look at “that four-door Aston…no, wait, it’s a Ford” costs $15 in parking fees and is sure to get them talking. Even if they don’t like cars, they know someone who does, and they will ask about “that new car I saw on the street”. I can tell you anecdotally that it happens all the time. It’s not worth much, but it’s worth more than a few million “impressions”.

Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.

The Wall Street Journal explains the move

“GM, started to re-evaluate its Facebook strategy earlier this year after its marketing team began to question the effectiveness of the ads. GM marketing executives, including Mr. Ewanick, met with Facebook managers to address concerns about the site’s effectiveness and left unconvinced advertising on the website made sense, according to people familiar with GM’s thinking.“

GM is said to spend (or, have spent) about $40 million per year on maintaining a Facebook presence, but only a quarter of that went to advertising. The remainder goes to creating content like fan pages and other social media initiatives, which will still continue. GM’s digital marketing guru Joel Ewanick told the WSJ that he still sees value in these programs, and a statement from GM obtained by Reuters re-affirmed their commitment to this side of the marketing equation.

As much as GM gets singled out in this column, GM may be doing something right in terms of both budgeting and strategy. One report claims that 57 percent of respondents have never clicked on a Facebook ad. For young people who have grown up next to online content and advertising, this number is undoubtedly much higher. This demographic sees these kinds of ads more as background noise than anything of value – or, as marketers would say, “a way to forge an authentic connection with the brand and enter into a conversation with the consumer.”

The bigger leap of faith for GM, and a number of OEMs, is to refine how they interact with consumers via social media. What do Facebook “likes” or Twitter followers really mean in concrete terms? The field of social media has impacted many of us in positive ways, but it’s also create a disproportionate number of charlatan “social gurus” who pitch their dubious knowledge to companies that are afraid of getting left in the dust if the let their Twitter or Facebook pages lie dormant. Ford likes to cite how many millions of “impressions” the Fiesta Movement program got, but sales of the Fiesta have given Ford little reason to throw a party. In fact, GM’s apparently ineffective Facebook campaigns have helped the Cruze outsell the Focus in 2011 (though the Focus is ahead through April, 2012), while the Sonic (which only went on sale last fall) is outselling the Fiesta through April, 2012.

Tout them all you want, but “likes”, “retweets” and “impressions” (perhaps the most ill-defined of them all) are empty metrics that sound great when trying to justify one’s absurd consulting fees, but don’t translate into good products or good profits, the two things that make the automotive world go ’round. Then again, cognitive dissonance is a powerful force.

This story really has bigger implications for Facebook than GM. GM is the third biggest spender on ad dollars in the USA. Their exit may not harm Facebook in the short term, but if big institutional clients keep dropping out, then Zuckerberg’s baby may see some compromised revenue streams. I’m going to take this as a sign of positive changes for GM. Maybe they’re starting to take a closer look at the social media mania that’ stricken other OEMs and realize that it has to be done right, or you will lose them forever. And by them, I mean the people you are trying to bring in, and targeting with marketing initiatives that really need to be axed right this second.

Even though the BMW 1 Series M Coupe is gone forever, performance-minded 1-Series customers must  have a high-end performance model, even if a lot of them don’t even know if the car is front-drive or rear-drive.

With a 320 horsepower 3.0L twin-turbo six making 317 lb-ft or torque (versus 300/300 for the regular car), the 135is can be had with either a 6-speed stick or a 7-speed dual clutch gearbox. A coupe will cost you $44,195 while a ragtop will run $44,895.  Whether the extra 20 horsepower, 17 lb-ft and cosmetic tweaks justifies the price premium ($1,895 for the coupe, $795 for the convertible) is up to the buyer.

As TTAC’s official reviewer of all things “emerging market cast-offs sent to Canada”, I’ll be busy again in Q4 2012, when I get my hands on a Chevrolet Trax.

While General Motors American arm said that “…because of the strong position of the Equinox, there are no plans to introduce the Trax in the U.S. market…”, the Trax is a no brainer for Canada. And isn’t it so much more attractive than the gawky, pencil-eraser-proportioned Encore? I’m personally interested to see how different the interior is from the Buick and Opel version.

“On a clear day,” John Z once famously wrote, “you can see General Motors.” The day has yet to come, however, when the works of GM will be made plain to the mortal man. Consider, if you will, the bizarre story of the “Theta” platform in the United States. It’s a huge success; the Equinox and Cadillac SRX (which, we are assumed, is totes different from the Equinox, but we will will discuss that contention below) combined for about a quarter-million sales in 2011. It’s a perfect example of the way GM is supposed to work nowadays: there are two platform variants with very little visual similarity combining to provide high volume in one model and high profit in another. Theta is NAFTA-friendly, with the cheapie being made in Ontario and the luxury model in Mexico. The two models are generally well-reviewed. The obscurity, stupidity, and thrown-darts decision-making which used to characterize the General are nowhere to be seen. What’s to criticize, even here at TTAC, where we typically cast a jaundiced eye on the RenCen fire drill?

Well, there is the minor issue of a third Theta, which is as perfect an example of GM’s undiminished ability to screw things up as the other Thetas are of the company’s ability to get things right.

What is the Theta platform anyway? The more one reads about it, the less clear things become. It was engineered by Daewoo and badge-engineered by Opel — or is it the other way ’round? How much of a difference is there between Theta, which underpinned the original Vue and Equinox, and Theta II, which is the current Equinox, and Theta Premium, which is the basis of the SRX? Where did the second-generation Saturn Vue fit into all of this?

The Vue-2 was supposedly developed by Opel to be the Opel Antara, after which it was brought to the United States with as few changes as possible. It predated the SRX but GM sources claim there are significant differences between it and the SRX. Take a look at these two shots and tell me you can’t just see the common bones. You don’t need to be Sajeev Mehta to recognize “hard points” under the skin on this pair:

Supposedly the major difference between the Vue and the SRX was the “premium wheelbase” of the latter. The new Equinox, however, has an even longer wheelbase. Who’s premium now?

In its first and only full year on sale at Saturn dealerships, the Vue-2 knocked out 86,000 units or thereabouts. That’s not small volume, and it would be reasonable to assume that GM would like to hold on to some of that volume. It’s also reasonable to assume that one years’ worth of Vue sales didn’t pay the bills on bringing that vehicle. What to do?

Here’s what they did: the Vue returned for 2012 as the “Chevrolet Captiva Sport”. You’ve probably seen a few of them prowling around. Don’t confuse this with the Chevrolet Captiva sold elsewhere in the world, which is a Daewoo Theta aimed at, and assembled in, developing markets. This is just a re-animated Saturn Vue. They look exactly like Saturn Vues, with the exception of Chevrolet badging. The few reviews and/or news stories I have seen about the 2012 “Captiva Sport” have a surprising number of comments from 2008 Vue owners who would like to buy another one.

Unless their last names are “Avis” or “Budget”, however, they won’t have any luck. The Captiva is a fleet-only model designed to keep the Mexican SRX/Captiva plant humming. If you reserve an “SUV” from a GM-affiliated rental company, odds are you will be receiving a Captiva.

What’s good about this idea? Well, it keeps Mexico working, which is important to GM. It also keeps Equinoxes out of fleets, which is good because four-cylinder Equinoxes have been thin on the ground at dealers for some time now. When my brother went to buy his Equinox last year, he had to do some serious looking around. V-6 models and unpopular option combos were about all you could get without waiting.

What’s bad about this idea? Once again, GM is selling an old vehicle through fleets. This doesn’t help the brand’s image, and it ensures that a lot of people have their first “GM experience” in an obsolete car. The Captiva is five years old and hasn’t been revamped even slightly.

Since the Captiva isn’t sold in dealers, even if people do enjoy a Captiva rental, they can’t convert it into Chevrolet ownership. Instead, they will be shown an Equinox, which isn’t really the same vehicle, doesn’t drive the same, and isn’t priced to the same value standard as the outgoing Vue. The same is true for those Vue owners who would like to get something similar. It’s Equinox or nothing for these buyers, who are then forced to watch a parade of Captivas leaving the airport every afternoon.

What will the resale value of ex-fleet Captivas be? Will they sit next to Equinoxes at used-car lots? Will parts be widely available? Will GMAC finance them at attractive rates? What will it cost GM in the long run to keep Mexico humming at full chat?

Short-term thinking at the expense of long-term benefit is, of course, the truest hallmark of GM. It’s outlasted the soft-square seatbelt buckles, the Rallye steel wheels, and the formal roofline. Nothing says “GM” like chasing today’s dollar. It’s tempting, and depressing, to think that it will ever be so.

In the meantime, TTACers on the lookout for a nice, solid pre-owned SUV might want to check out the Captiva when it appears at the auctions. It’s not as “Premium” as an SRX, and it’s not as, um, “2″ as an Equinox, but it will be dirt-cheap and rather satisfying for the price. In fact, from a certain point of VUE, it might even be CAPTIVAting. Chuckle.

With Opel’s fortunes in the toilet and Chevrolet vehilces gaining ground in Europe, Opel brass are looking at an obvious solution – stop building Chevrolet products in South Korea and start building them in Europe.

Opel CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke told the New York Times that

“We are in talks with our colleagues in Detroit and Shanghai to find out whether we can build Chevrolet vehicles in Europe, to improve utilization of capacity,” 

The article touches on the many familiar Opel problems – the need to close factories, excessive capacity, staggering losses (Q1 2012 saw Opel lose $300 million), but the Chevrolet solution won’t be an umbrella cure of Opel’s ills. Building Cruzes and Sonics (or Aveos, as they’re known) in Europe brings to light whether the cost advantage of building in South Korea can be maintained.

Opel is also looking to export markets, like Latin America, Australia and the Middle East for growth, but given the popularity of brands like Chevrolet and Holden in those markets, is there room for yet another sort-of premium brand when established GM nameplates and more prestigious European marques are already fighting it out in their respective spheres?

If anything, the way out of this mess may be the PSA alliance. GM puts Russelsheim to use by twinning the Citroen C5 and Opel Insignia, while PSA uses their excess capacity at the Rennes plant (just like Opel, PSA’s unions fear the closure of the factory) to build the Zafira/Picasso/Peugeot MPV. Meanwhile, mum’s the word over at PSA headquarters. That would allow Astra production to be sent to a lower-cost facility in Poland, and England, where the Astra is a key product for Vauxhall.

An article in Automotive News lavishing praise on the Chrysler/Fiat merger of equals marriage inadvertently spilled the beans on a couple upcoming products from Marchionne’s minions.

The AN piece, which focuses on the birth of the miracle child known as the Dodge Dart, briefly touches on the car’s platform, known as CUSW. Discussing the ability for CUSW to underpin both C and D segment vehicles, AN states

“Some of those next vehicles are already out in testing, including the successor to the Jeep Liberty that will be built at Chrysler’s Toledo (Ohio) North Assembly plant and a Chrysler 100 hatchback that will join the Dart on the line in Belvidere, Ill. Both of those vehicles are expected in 2013.”

That should provide more grist for the online automotive content mill for the next few weeks. At the very least, all those spy shots of jacked-up Alfa Romeo hatches conclusively prove that the newest Liberty is going to become an American pseudo-Q5 (in the same way that the Grand Cherokee is an American-flavored premium SUV) while the Chrysler 100 exists largely as an offering to Lancia.

If the new Liberty really is going to be a smaller version of the Grand Cherokee – an off-road capable SUV that’s primarily concerned with luxury and on-road manners, then re-naming the car as a “Cherokee” makes a lot of sense. The 100 now looks to be a go after a series of long, drawn out teases from Sergio himself.

And with that said and done, let’s pour one out for the mail Jeep.

Tesla Motors has almost used up funds from a Department of Energy loan program – but the startup car maker also says that they’ll start paying back the money at the end of 2012.

Regulatory filings made by Tesla show that the company still has nearly $104.5 million in DOE money left over, and claims that deliveries of the Model S will begin in June. Tesla’s CFO told Automotive News that the money is earmarked for the company’s third quarter, with re-payments starting in December.

Has Mini’s over-propagation of vehicles gotten so bad that we’re actually cheering when a new special isn’t a silly two-seater or pseudo-crossover? The Mini John Cooper Works GP may be overpriced, but at least it’s got its heart in the right place.

It could do without the gauche aerokit, graphics and pizza-cutter wheels but the “race spec” suspension will only add to the Mini Cooper S JCW’s already fantastic chassis. Upgraded brakes, extra power (the new car will surely make more than the 214 horsepower than the last GP edition did) help enhance performance, and the GP also loses its back seat in the name of weight reduction.

Only 2,000 GP editions will be made, with sales going on across the globe. Expect prices to be astronomical for what this car is. But it will probably be a hoot to drive all the same.

Even as the wagon Gods smile down upon on this Mother’s Day, BMW’s announcement of an all-new 2013 3-Series Wagon still has us waiting with bated breath with the announcement of not one but two diesel powertrains.

We will almost certainly get the 328i, with the controversial turbo 4-cylinder engine, but BMW also announced a 320d and 330d. A 335i is conspicuously absent, but with two torquey oil-burners, who cares? The 320d, with 181 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque returns 52 mpg. A 330d with 250 horsepower and 358 lb-ft of torque will also be offered, but BMW is being coy, stating that American spec models will be announced at a later date.

What will be offered is xDrive all-wheel drive, all the usual overwrought F30 3-Series gadgets, and a power tailgate similar to the 2013 Ford Escape, that can be opened be sweeping your foot underneath the rear bumper. And no, we’re not sure if the diesels will get a stick shift. The 328i will surely get a 6-speed manual as well as the 8-speed T1000 Cyborg Automatic.

Nissan isn’t the only company to get an outrageously priced performance SUV this month – Infiniti will be pricing its FX Sebastian Vettel Edition at $120,000 euro, or about $160,000.

With 24 extra horsepower massaged from the 5.0L V8 (for a total of 414 bhp), top speed is now an incomprehensible 186 mph, but the 0-60 time is “only” 5.6 seconds – at this point I’d like to take the satisfaction away from the commenters in noting that a sub-$30k Toyota Camry V6 is just as fast in the sprint to 60.

A carbon fiber bodykit and bespoke wheels are the main changes, but somehow the sum seems far less than the parts.

Toyota’s sales forecast of 220,000 Prius models forecast looks like a lowball number now that Toyota has moved 86,000 examples of the hybrid from January to the end of April. Sales of the Prius V and Prius c have helped the nameplate see a 56 percent rise year over year, and now Toyota is clamoring for more units – but it may not get them.

Rising gas prices and new government incentives in Japan may create a situation where Toyota’s US arm may not be able to get enough Prius models. Bob Carter, Toyota’s US sales head, told Just Auto

“We’re tracking well ahead of [220,000]. I’ve ordered additional production. I’m confident we’ll get additional production but globally we’re seeing high demand, particularly in Japan.”

Aside from the Prius V and Prius c, the new plug-in Prius has been enjoying fairly brisk sales despite its reduced EV-only range compared to some other plug-in vehicles. But American appetites for the Prius, whatever you may think of it, apparently aren’t being satiated. Stateside Prius production can’t come soon enough for Toyota.