#Media

Since TTAC is already “ noted for dissing its mainstream competitors for cosseting carmakers,” we might as well not try to resist temptation on this one… because Car And Driver may have just outdone themselves. It starts with the one of the best headlines in ages:

10Best Surprise: Plastics Make the Chevy Volt’s Interior Possible

Surprise? Where? But in spite of the painfully unambitious headline, what follows is a symphony of strange. The ultimate point of which appears to be that C&D is absolutely thrilled about GM’s decision to make the Volt’s interior out of plastic. Yes, really.

Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is an agonizing character. There can be no doubt that he’s one of the smartest execs in the business, and yet he so often comes off as the stuffy, pedantic college professor, who sputters into ad hominem at the faintest sign of criticism. His speeches often revolve around stock speaking points and a copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and as the video above proves, his delivery is rarely inspiring. But between the Einstein quotes and plaintive self-sympathy, Marchionne can offer moments of unexpected candor. His speech to Chrysler’s dealers earlier this week offered several such moments, and though it’s too long (and, frankly, boring) to reprint in its entirety (click here for the whole thing), here are a few stunners from the mind of Marchionne.

First of all, TTAC doesn’t exactly hate Suzuki. The SX4 and Kizashi are fun little cars that don’t generally get the cred they deserve. But Road & Track’s assertion that

Suzuki’s huge success following the introduction of the Kizashi this past year should only get better in 2011

is about as misleading as they come. Even by the most generous measure, 15,331 total brand sales over eight months does not equal “huge success.” In fact, R&T’s blatant Suzy-boosting has given Autosavant‘s Chris Haak pause to reconsider the way things work at the Buff Books. He writes

Call it naïveté, call it giving folks the benefit of the doubt, call it whatever you want to. But as a long-time buff book reader (I subscribed to Motor Trend continuously between 1987 and July 2010, or about 23 years), I never paid much mind to critics that accused media outlets of providing favorable editorial coverage for certain manufacturers and vehicles in return for advertising dollars. Is the Motor Trend Car of the Year award driven by the best car, or by the best advertiser? I’d always assumed that these magazines would take the high road and provide a fair and accurate description of the industry and its vehicles so that their readers could make informed choices when considering how to part with their hard-earned money.

One of the world’s foremost authorities on Automotive Journalism recently got their hands on a trio of Corvettes just for fun. But what unfolded was on the verge of hilarity, if not for their self-proclaimed journalistic superiority over us “punk kids with lots of servers and a desire to get free test drives.”

One of the reasons why I started writing for TTAC was that, as a lifelong resident of the Detroit area I was tired of watching people with little direct knowledge of this region using stereotypes and caricatures to demean my neighbors. Typically people outside the region will describe Southeastern Michigan as a place of unemployment, indifferent workers, crime and racial disharmony. As with most prevarication, there’s an element of truth to those stereotypes, but it’s not the whole truth.

I can understand finding that kind of behavior in comment threads online, but it’s distressing when what is generally considered the leading newspaper in the country, the New York Times, lazily relies on a ‘usual Detroit template’ when covering an event in this area.

Editor’s Note: Part One of Michael Karesh’s review of Sixty To Zero can be found here.

Journalists write stories. A coherent story is a partial truth at best. If it’s portrayed as the whole story, it’s a lie.

In Sixty to Zero, veteran auto industry journalist Alex Taylor III provides an unusual level of insight into the relationships between top auto industry journalists and the executives they cover. He acknowledges getting too close to these executives more than once, and blames this for several embarrassingly off-base articles. But even in his most self-reflective moments, Taylor fails to recognize an even larger source of distortion.

Editor’s Note: With GM’s S-1 IPO filing hitting the web today, every IPO and auto industry analyst is weighing in on the offering, and the state of GM. Here’s a collection of some of today’s more notable comments.

It looks to me that GM should be worth no more than Ford. If that’s the case, then the taxpayers will lose about 50% on their investment.

Francis Gaskins, president of IPOdesktop.com, commenting in the WSJ [sub] on GM’s IPO. More analyst commentary on GM’s just-released S-1 filing after the jump.

You may have caught a version of this ad on television not long ago, in which an actual monkey fires a confetti cannon. Notice that the monkey doesn’t show up in this version? That’s no coincidence. The Dodge brand, which has previously baffled audiences with such retrograde nonsense as calling the Charger R/T “Man’s Last Stand,” has backed down from using a monkey in its advertising after being criticized by PETA. So much for that thin veneer of über-macho, anti-PC gloss. Hit the jump for Dodge’s petulant response to allegations of animal cruelty.