It may well be wishful thinking on my part, but in the three years that I’ve been covering the world of cars, I do feel like I’ve seen a subtle but perceptible improvement in the general quality of the automotive media. Obviously the progress hasn’t been evenly distributed, but more outlets seem to be tip-toeing towards more in-depth stories, better analysis and more independence from the forces of OEM PR. Why? Possibly because the industry’s many challenges are providing more and better stories about cars, or possibly because the recent downturn made OEMs more open to less obviously-friendly writers, outlets and story pitches. One thing is certain: the growth of online automotive media has certainly played a role, putting more pressure on the established outlets, branching out into media criticism and reconnecting auto writers to the readers they serve.

For a while now, blogs have benefited from a lack of faith in the entrenched world of automotive print journalism. But, as print outlets have started to respond to the online threat and online outlets become increasingly sucked into the “PR Friendly” maelstrom that engulfed the buff books’ credibility, a new phenomenon seems to be on the rise which threatens the blogs from the very point of attack that helped them vault into the ranks of the auto media establishment: the “enthusiast reporter.”

The WSJ gets a little closer to the truth about the UAW’s incredible disappearing transplant organizing campaign, reporting

On Tuesday, UAW leaders meeting here described plans to reach out to foreign unions and consumers in what would be their first major campaign since failed efforts in the last decade at Nissan Motor Co. and auto-parts supplier Denso Corp. They hope to be more successful by reaching out to foreign unions at the auto makers’ overseas plants and bringing pressure from prayer vigils, fasts or protests at dealerships.

A person familiar with the matter said the union is now planning to target one foreign auto maker and has narrowed its list to three or four companies. Inside the union, much of the talk centers on targeting the now-struggling Japanese auto maker Toyota or Korea’s Hyundai, this person said.

The UAW has set aside tens of millions of dollars from its strike fund to bankroll its campaign. International actions are to be coordinated with foreign unions and run by some three dozen student interns recruited globally, UAW officials said. When the interns return to their home countries after learning about the UAW efforts in the U.S., they’ll be expected to organize protests against the auto maker, UAW officials said.

OK, so it’s a little bit strange that the UAW is entrusting a campaign that UAW President Bob King calls “the single most important thing we can do for our members ” to a bunch of interns. Still, with “tens of millions of dollars” allocated towards the campaign, some automaker somewhere will be feeling the union’s hot breath on its neck in due course. So, which automaker will the UAW target? Which automaker should they target? And with the UAW apparently refusing to fight the two-tier wage structure, will any transplant or foreign workforce want to join up?

Our friend, frequent RoundAbout Show guest Mirko Reinhardt, has found an Infiniti dealership that’s kind of like Surf City. In Surf City, as our older readers will remember, there are two girls for every boy, but in Germany, there’s an dealer with two Infinitis in stock for every one sold across the entire country last month. What’s a Japanese wanna-be luxury brand to do?

We’ll let Mirko tell the tale:

Unless you’re checking in on TTAC from your private jet, chances are you have never driven a car worth upwards of a quarter-million dollars. Hell, TTAC’s writers are more likely to be invited to strap into the latest hi-po machinery than most honest paycheck-earners, and it’s a rare day when we get access to the true elite of the global auto game. But as enthusiasts, we all have opinions about even the cars that massively exceed our purchasing power (let alone our ability to use them to their true abilities), so we’re curious about which next-gen supercar leaps out as the most appealing based solely on what you’ve heard about them.

There’s an interesting (if troubling) perception out there that there is no longer such thing as “bad cars.” Certainly compared to what was available just ten years ago, the market has improved its offerings, making most new cars consistently better than the vehicles they replaced. But the corollary to this rule, that each new car is always better than the one that it replaced, does not actually hold up to scrutiny, at least according to Consumer Reports.

In fact, in its most recent auto issue, CR gave a number of vehicles worse scores than their predecessors earned, indicating that progress is not a given in the world of cars. And no wonder: automakers aren’t simply trying to wow consumers, but must constantly balance increased performance, content and features with lower costs. The VW Jetta is a poster child for the kind of decontenting that we’re beginning to see creep into the market, as Volkswagen is emphasizing the Jetta’s price in its marketing materials. But are there other, less intentional examples of automotive “value inflation”? What car is/was the biggest “step down” from its predecessor?

One of the eternal battles of the car world has broken out in New Hampshire, where angry seniors have introduced a bill [ HB 549] to remove that state’s requirement of annual driving tests for motorists over the age of 75. According to the New Hampshire Union Leader,

In 2008, 1,088 state residents 75 or older failed the road test. In 2009, the number rose to 1,405, and in 2010, there were 615 failures through October… New Hampshire and Illinois are the only two states that require license-renewal applicants 75 and older to take a vision test and a road test. Nine states require some form of vision test. Maine requires one at first renewal after age 40.

The AARP and angry seniors say the elderly do not actually cause more crashes than young people, and in recent years, the New Hampshire accident statistics bear them out, as 16-25 year-olds were involved in around 10 percent of crashes there in 2008 and 2009, while the 66-75, 76-85 and 86+ cohorts each accounted for around 2-4%. But then, those statistics are based on years in which over a thousand seniors were denied the right to drive… without the law, it’s hard not to argue that those numbers could be higher. But seniors call testing “age discrimination” and say the tests often fail good drivers who become nervous and allow poor drivers to pass.

Given that your state likely doesn’t have a mandatory senior driving test law, would you support one? Is mandatory vision testing enough? What about mandatory video games? Or, should government stay away from age-based conditions on drivers licenses?

Back in 2001 VW was the comeback kid . Sales had grown over seven-fold in only eight years from less than 50k in 1993 to over 350k and change. It seemed like the company was offering everything an aspiring Yuppie wanted to buy. At least here in the States. Cute Jettas and Beetles for the successful young female (and a few males). Turbochargers, stickshifts, and GTI’s for those who coveted a sport model. Diesels for the frugal and the long-term owner. Even wagons and convertibles for those who were flipping between becoming a ‘family man’ or a mid-life crisis. VW was hip and profitable… but then the market woke up.

Niche vehicles are possibly the toughest task for automotive product planners, offering huge risks and often modest rewards. Many, like the Acura ZDX and Chevy SSR fall flat on their faces, often for very different reasons. A few, like the Lexus RX300 launch entire segments from which future niches will eventually grow. Others, like the Nissan Juke, simply sell in reasonable numbers to the people who like them while turning off most everyone else. But one thing is for certain: in an era when mass-market sedans and crossovers look increasingly alike, a good niche product is one of the few real brand differentiators, a rolling symbol of a brand’s identity and values. And with common platforms and components, certain kinds of niche vehicles are even becoming easier to build. But there’s one very small, very postmodern problem: it’s all been done. When you’ve tried convertible crossovers, four-door-coupe-crossovers, five-door-coupe-wagons, pickup roadsters and minivan coupes, where’s an industry to go next? Time to break out your thick-rimmed designer glasses and explain just what form of nonsense the industry should try now.

I don’t think the industry learned a lot of lessons from 2008—they will this time around

…said GM CEO Dan Akerson at the Geneva Auto Show [via the WSJ]. But which “lesson of 2008” is Mr Akerson referring to? Overproduction? Incentive and fleet sale dependency? There were so many lessons to be learned in 2008… right Dan?

It would not be a good thing to see $5-a-gallon gas right now.

Oh, he’s talking about getting caught flat-footed by gas price spikes. Fine, let’s ignore the other “lessons of 2008” and hash out the truth behind Akerson’s comment: is the industry ready for $5 gas? Remember, consumer choice tends to exaggerate changes in the price of oil. Or, is it possible that some OEMs are “too ready” for high gas prices? After all, if automakers overcorrect for high gas prices, profits will suffer when the spike subsides. Or is, as BNET’s Matt Debord suggests, Akerson just trying to get the market to price risk into GM’s stock value?

Thanks to embargo issues and a mild amount of player-hating among my so-called peers in the auto media, I cannot disclose my current location. I can, however, note that I had to fly there. I’ve come to utterly detest air travel in the modern age. As a child, I bounced around L-1011s and 747s, indulged by my parents and pinned with Eastern “junior pilot” wings by fresh-smelling, gorgeous young women, often flying alone among urbane, well-dressed fellow passengers, and being greeted by relatives right at the gate.

Today, of course, the story is very different. Modern commercial flight combines two of my least favorite experiences from the 1990’s: being processed into a municipal jail and riding an old Greyhound bus. In fact, air travel nowadays is exactly like prison processing followed by bus travel, with one critical exception: if somebody takes a picture of your, ahem, rooster in the county jail, you are about to be on the payoff end of a lucrative civil case. In the past year I’ve had my genitalia photographed so often I’m starting to wonder where my residual checks might be.

You get the point. Consider the baggage issues, the utter lack of personal hygiene displayed even by business-class passengers, and the fact that one must arrive 90 minutes before the flight to have a fighting chance of making it on board, and it’s no surprise that more and more people are telling me that they’d rather drive.

Good news! The 2012 Acura TL has had a beak-ectomy. I was so personally affected by the super-Accord’s gorgeous front end that I spent a full hour talking about it to the, ahem, auto-show professional assigned to said entry-luxury sedan. She was quite knowledgeable, and when she wore her heels we happened to be exactly the same height.

This ad, for the Chevy Camaro, was the most-watched spot during the Super Bowl, pulling in 119,628,000 sets of eyeballs according to the ratings agency Nielsen. A Chevy Cruze ad took second place in the “most-watched” category, and Chrysler’s much-chattered-about 200 spot tied for fourth (with 5 other spots, including one for Bridgestone Tires), with 17.565m viewers. In short, cars and car-related products not only accounted for many of the ads, they managed to snag the time slots where the fewest people were taking bathroom breaks or grabbing more bacon-wrapped buffalo wings. But remember, there’s more to effective advertising than merely drawing eyeballs…

Reuters reports that GM is upping its sponsorship and promotional spending, as it seeks to re-establish its media presence which retracted considerably during and after its bailout and bankruptcy. In addition to boosting sports sponsorships and

co-producing TV shows, like a documentary about a year in the life of a Detroit fire station or a three-part Discovery series on the city,

GM has another strategy in mind as well: product placement for the Chevy Volt. According to the report

GM also is in talks with a reality TV producer about the inclusion of the automaker’s new plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt car in a show under development

but what about movies? After all, if Chrysler (which has plans for only one niche electric vehicle, the Fiat 500 EV) can feature heavily in a movie which was promoted using the line “Electric cars are gay” (see video above), surely GM could get a movie made called “Range Anxiety” in which the Volt rescues the President’s daughter from an evil, but range-limited foreign car by driving farther than 100 miles. Subtle, right? Why don’t I just stick to blogging and let you come up with Volt product placement ideas.

As noted by Ed Niedermeyer, “it’s that time of year: the media dead zone between Christmas and the New Year, when traditional “news” and “content” gets laid aside in favor of lists of things that happened last year and might happen next year.”

So instead of making more predictions, let’s look for the absolutely worst, most awful, epic fail prediction of the year (please with source). Here is my current favorite:

They’re a fixture of holiday television: car ads showing a loving family member presenting a new car as a Christmas gift, complete with an oversized red bow. But is there any truth to this popular advertising cliche? CNW Marketing Research says nearly 57k new and used cars will be given as gifts during this holiday season, but I sure don’t know anyone who has given or received a car (let alone a new luxury car) for Christmas… do you?

It’s a strange question to ask, considering that Hyundai is already selling the Genesis and Equus luxury sedans, but apparently Hyundai decided to bring out the cars before launching a brand. According to the Wall Street Journal

There are three branding scenarios under consideration. The most likely is to create a subbrand called “Genesis,” and sell the models under the same dealership roof as Hyundai but in a separate part of the showroom, possibly with dedicated salespeople, said John Krafcik, the president of Hyundai Motor America.

The other scenarios are to keep the premium cars badged as Hyundais, or—in the most ambitious move—spin off the brand into separate dealer facilities, much like Lexus or Honda Motor Co.’s Acura

Those are the options, but for a little more context, let’s check in with Hyundai USA boss John Krafcik…

4:45am and I’m rolling down a chilly Ohio freeway, cruise control set to seventy-four, Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion saturating the interior with quasi-mechanical music. Up ahead is a GMC Envoy, doing perhaps sixty-eight. I pass him and return to the right lane. He speeds up. I’ve seen this movie before. Yup… settled right into my blind spot and matching my speed exactly.

I poke at the Town Car’s steering wheel and drop to seventy-one. He stays right in my blind spot. I poke at the wheel again and accelerate to seventy-seven. After perhaps a two-second delay, he’s right there with me again, invisible but for the glare in my mirror.

“F*** it,” I said, and started swerving wildly.

Sitting here in China, I nearly forgot (if Ed wouldn’t have reminded me: ) It’s Turkey Day. The day to wax poetic about giving thanks to … nah, let’s do something different:

With the federal deficit balooning out of control, President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has publicized its preliminary proposals, and goodness are there a lot of them. But only one of the commission’s proposals gets to the heart of this nation’s automotive future: a proposal to increase America’s gas tax. Federal fuel taxes currently stand at 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel fuel, but the commission has proposed a 15 cent per gallon increase, to take effect starting in 2013.

Anyone who’s ever spent more money than they really could afford on a car they absolutely couldn’t live without knows that a certain amount of buyer’s remorse comes with the territory. I certainly felt a fair share of doubt about my own such purchase, when, just days after buying my ’99 M Coupe, I drove a friend over the Mt Hood pass in heavy weather. Having driven the car only a few times by then, I knew little about the M’s handling characteristics beyond its reputation for making fast decisions at the limit of grip. Sure, I’d blasted it around some dry sweepers, and even strung a few corners together, but I had no idea what to expect on rough, wet roads with poor visibility until I found myself pushing to get around traffic a few miles from the top of the pass.

The opportunity wasn’t endless: about a quarter mile of passing lane had opened up just as Highway 26 disappeared around a long but sharp corner. As the M’s suspension loaded up, rebound off the battered road suddenly made the back end go all light, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled as some internal G-meter began to worry about where the rear tires’ next bit of grip was going to come from. And then, just as my right foot was easing back off the throttle in hopes of calming the rear end’s polka dance, minor potholes became full-on ruts filled with water, and the M’s oversized rear tires started hydroplaning. As the rear of the car started to pull back into a fishtail, I realized that my beloved new car was scaring me a little… and that the Oregon winter hadn’t even properly begun yet. Could it be, I wondered, that I had just spent a lot of money on the wrong car?

I’ve test driven new cars during three periods in my life. The first of those periods, the year before I bought the Saturn in ’93, I went out every couple of weeks with a friend to do test drives. The second period was in ’96, when the same friend had me test drive the cars he was interested in while he sat shotgun, telling me that if I didn’t scare him, that would mean the car had passed the handling test. He rejected a Volvo 850 and several others, and bought an Audi A4. Then, in ’00, I helped a friend buy his Boxster, breaking my personal Vmax record on Rt. 128, Boston’s beltway in the process. My testing procedure didn’t call for 115 mph; but the car felt so firmly planted–like the Pentagon!–that I had no idea how fast I was going until I checked the speedo.

TTAC commenter esager writes in:

I have a dilemma that may interest our readership (yes, I feel a sense of ownership after being a daily reader for 3-4 years now).

A few years back, my wife and I bought a nice 2007 CPO 328i that was formerly used as a customer service loaner car for the one of our Seattle area BMW dealerships. We really enjoy its performance and sophistication and are happy with the car for the most part, save for the various and sundry trips to the dealership to fix a few warranty items – more trips than I think should be necessary, though not truly excessive. She drove it to work every day and was glad to have it. It’s under CPO warranty coverage for 2 more years.

Earlier this year, a note I left on the windshield of a 1991 318is (the one year E30 model with the M42 engine) allowed me to purchase said car from a co-worker as a daily driver and fixer. I got it for very cheap and have been dutifully cleaning, updating (oil pan gaskets, rear shock mounts, hydraulic timing chain tensioner, differential output shaft seal replacement, etc, etc), and generally enjoying the heck out of it. Lower control arms, ball joints etc. are in the future for this car.

Live Chat: Ask Editor-in-Chief Ed Niedermeyer about the Chevy Volt

The truth tends to be a more subtle animal than many imagine, and nowhere is this more true than with the Chevy Volt. Although today’s review was long by any standard, a number of key issues were under-addressed, and on the whole it seems to raise more questions than answers. Accordingly, I will take to Coveritlive tomorrow at 4pm Eastern (1pm Pacific) to answer as many questions about driving the Volt and touring its production facilities as I can manage. No need to create a new account, just check in on TTAC tomorrow at 4 pm Eastern and join in the conversation immediately. I won’t be able to explain exactly how the Volt’s drive unit operates at all times, and I can’t tell you exactly how well it will sell, but if you’re looking for closure on a persistent Volt question, stop by and ask it. Every question of relevance that I’m not able to answer will get forwarded on to GM for official reply, so we should all be able to end the week with a much better understanding of this enigmatic automobile.

So there I was, minding my own business, driving down the road, enjoying the new Isobel Campbell record and relaxing in the right lane, when I saw two Crown Vics from the local sheriff’s department running up hard behind me, lights, sirens, the whole deal. I moved halfway onto the shoulder to let them by, and then, motivated by nothing more than a love of mayhem, decided to follow them for a while.

We smell a trademark fight

This Autoweek article gave me a college flashback: when UT Austin’s Petroleum Engineers offered me a scholarship, but the Mechanical Engineers said no dice. Mostly because high tech, high mileage oil talk is rather boring. Much like discussing a cutting edge, long-life coolant before the Dex-Cool fiasco. So let’s open a can of worms for the Best and Brightest, and hit the high points of General Motor’s Dexos1, a somewhat revolutionary engine oil with a distinct lack of testing from the American Petroleum Institute. As per Autoweek, matters stand like this:

Tomorrow your humble Editor boards a plane for Michigan, en route to a date with the Chevrolet Volt. TTAC has followed the Volt’s bumpy road to production-readiness since Bob Lutz decided that the Prius had to be “leapfrogged,” and we’ve tracked every change to the Volt’s mission, message and mechanical blueprint along the way. And though cars don’t exist in a vacuum, giving the Volt a fair review will require us to leave a lot of this contextual baggage at the door.

TTAC’s long been used to playing the “heel” of the auto journalism world, and sure enough, our skeptical approach to the Chevy Volt is already renewing accusations that TTAC “hates GM.” For the record, this accusation doesn’t fly. We have the tendency to obsess on GM because that company’s rise and fall is the most compelling story in the automotive world. To read GM’s history is to watch a person claw their way up a cliff by his bootstraps, and upon reaching the top, spend the next several decades strangling himself with the very same bootstraps. I challenge anyone who is interested in the world of cars to look away from that.

In any case, our Volt coverage has focused thus far on dispelling myths, so in the interest of seeking the truth everywhere, I thought we should take a moment to make a few Volt myths of our own. After all, despite planning to build only “10-15k” Volts next year and 60k in 2012, Automotive News [sub] says

And even though my personal and professional obligations to the truth make me the worst marketing candidate ever, I may just have an idea of where to start…

Government’s solution to distracted driving: hold summits and tweet at Jersey Shore cast members. The OEM solution: run ads legitimizing unfocused driving and then sell an electronic solution (in the example above, a $2,950 “Driver Assistance Package” for the $49,400 Mercedes E350). Or argue that voice-controlled in-car Facebook updates pose no more of a distraction than, say, radios. Or roll out a “feature-disabling feature.” What Ray LaHood calls an “epidemic,” and “ menace to society,” the automakers call big business. If LaHood is as serious about distraction as he says, should he not be calling out the trend towards increased in-car communication? And if he is exaggerating the problem, shouldn’t the automakers be more actively defending their decision to market distracting in-car technology?

If LaHood keeps his rhetorical War On Distraction alive long enough, the current OEM approach will inevitably come under the microscope. Given that private concerns generally prefer self-regulation to government regulation, what should the automakers do to keep the government off its back? Ignore LaHood and hope his crusade blows over? Fight him, commission studies, and definitively prove the safety of in-car communication? Or change course, risking a huge disadvantage but possibly carving out a new branding opportunity? Now that the least safe part of the modern car is the human doing the driving, everything has become a lot more complicated…

Scion brand manager Jack Hollis tells the WSJ [sub] that

The sales are nowhere where they should be and they will never be this low again

And with only 29,672 units sold through 2010, he ain’t kidding either (well, except for maybe the last part). Meanwhile, with the Yen headed up, profits on Scion’s small, Japanese-built offerings aren’t in great shape either. In short, it is with good reason that Scion is the subject of the most-recent TTAC Deathwatch. Meanwhile, Scion’s bid for renewed relevance hangs on the success of two cars: the neo-Corolla Coupe tC, and the A-Segment Scion iQ three-seater. TTAC will have an early review of the tC before the end of the week, but before we get into the specifics of that vehicle, let’s ponder the wider question of Scion’s viability. Will these two cars bring back Scion’s sales to their previous levels? Let’s take a look at Scion’s historical sales for answers…