GM CEO Rick Wagoner Falls Off Motor Trend's "2009 Power List"

Print is so dead. How anyone could expect a magazine with a two-month lead time to compete with the internet on the news front? It’s like pitting a semaphore line against G3 cell service. In case they don’t know it, the buff book’s business model is as dead as the carmakers’ they support. And while we await the car mag medium’s reinvention and rebirth (U.S. Evo please), we get to admire their attempts to remain au courant. I mean, poor todd lassa. Not only is the Motor Trend scribe’s name chronically under capitalized, but he also had to decide whether or not Red Ink Rick Wagoner would still be at the helm of GM in January 2009. What are the odds, eh? Unfortunately, todd erred on the side of common sense.

“Rick Wagoner led Motor Trend’s Power List for the first time in 2008. In the time between this writing and its publication, Wagoner may be running the company, he may be replaced, or he may not have an automobile company to run anymore. [Apologia alert!] Such has been the catastrophic effect of $4 a gallon gas followed by the meltdown on Wall Street– a perfect storm that has overwhelmed the vulnerable Detroit automakers in the midst of radical and and far-reaching restructuring.”

Yada yada yada. No Wagoner. At all. Anywhere.

Honda’s Takeo Fukui has replaced Rick at the top of Motor Trend’s power player list, for possessing “global vision that pays off in a depressed market.” So todd’s oh for two; this was obviously written before Honda joined its fellow automakers in the new car sales toilet. todd’s sub-logic is equally amusing. He gives Fukui the nod for creating the hydrogen fuel cell Clarity and a Prius-killing hybrid– that hasn’t even hit the market yet.

Well, at least Motor Trend online has a “Top Ten People We Watched in 2008.” Topping that list? You guessed it. Rick Wagoner.