Steve Parker, Motoring Journalist

WHAT!?!? BOB LUTZ BACK IN THE SADDLE AT GM!

Bob Lutz was vice-chairman at Chrysler when the PT Cruiser was ok'd for production ... but don't hate him for it; maybe it's just the type of vehicle GM needs

General Motors has come out of bankruptcy after a somewhat-biblical 40 days and nights of massive reorganization, as a new, smaller company more than 60% owned by the US government (that's US, as in "us").

Yet GM is stubbornly holding onto Buick and GMC, when the other two of the General's remaining "Core Four," Chevrolet and Cadillac, are all they really need and all that make sense.

It appears, though, that the vestiges of cars and trucks past aren't the only things GM is clinging to: Bob Lutz, 77, has "unretired" and will continue as GM's vice-chairman.

He will head the company's marketing, advertising and communications and have significant input on product design. In February, Lutz had said he would retire by year-end after eight years as GM's product development chief.

In an interview heard on All Things Considered on NPR Friday, Lutz told host Robert Siegel that, "We took our eyes off the ball in the '70s, '80s and early '90s," when it came to product quality.
GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz

Siegel naturally asked Lutz how the company might overcome more than 20 years of admittedly poor product and with a reputation and market share dropping almost by the minute, and all Lutz could offer was, "Well, none of us were here when that happened."

During the interview, he also managed to work in the usual litany of thinly-veiled anti-union rhetoric; "legacy costs" and the like.

The always-quotable and sometimes-acerbic Swiss-born Lutz, a favorite of reporters, has also been at Ford, BMW and Chrysler --- where he served as one of the top two executives along with Bob Eaton --- is an ex-Marine fighter pilot who collects cars ... and fighter jets.

THIS WEEKEND'S AUTOMOTIVE TALK SHOWS

Join us LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com for our exclusive LIVE motoring and motorsports talk shows!

Steve Parker's The Car Nut Show
Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific

The dreaded Clunker Law! If you're an enthusiast, what does it mean to you? Peter MacGillivray, vice president of SEMA, the world's largest auto aftermarket trade group, joins Steve and explains what the law means and how SEMA fine-tuned it in the halls of Congress to make the law fit the world of the car collector! And he'll take your calls, too. Plus, GM exits bankruptcy, if your GM and Chrysler warranties will be in effect when you need them, and a look at one of the many cars Steve's driven recently. Be sure to call-in and join the action!

Steve Parker's World Racing Roundup
Sunday starting at 5pm

The economy is hitting racing worldwide, and hitting it hard. Jim Peltz, motorsports writer for the LOS ANGELES TIMES, joins Steve live and on-the-air to go over the crucial happenings - and cutbacks -- in IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula 1 and other major series. NASCAR's Jeremy Mayfield, suspended indefinitely for an alleged drug test violation, beat NASCAR in court but they still won't let him race --- what's up with that? Plus all the results from this weekend's world of racing. Be sure to call- in and let us know what you think!

The call-in number is: 213-341-4353. Podcasts of the shows are available one hour after the live shows' conclusions. That's this Saturday and Sunday at 5pm USA Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com!

Follow Steve Parker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/autojourno

BREAKING! HITLER PRAISED BY F1 CHIEF!

Brawn-Mercedes, a team which didn't exist a year ago, is currently dominating the F1 series

"In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done. In the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator.""

Who said this last week? Some White Power or KKK leader? A Kremlin apparatchik? Mel Gibson?

All wrong --- It was none other than Bernie Ecclestone, commercial rights-holder to the Formula 1 series, the world's most-watched and most-expensive motor racing series; he's essentially the boss of Formula 1. Throughout Europe, he's known simply as "El Supremo" and is one of the top ten wealthiest people in the UK.

The scandal might have passed quickly, but this isn't the first time Ecclestone (and his minion, Max Mosley) have have been seen as cheerleaders of a sort for the Third Reich.
Bernie Ecclestone (l) confers with his sidekick, Max Mosley

As a result of Ecclestone's comments, the governor of Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state, Guenther Oettinger, canceled a planned meeting concerning the German Grand Prix.

Other indications of Ecclestone's brain activity were his comments about women, to paraphrase, after being asked if a woman could become a F1 driver, that they "should dress in all white and stay in the kitchen like the other appliances."

Also, when asked about the racist banners, taunts and threats aimed at the current F1 champion, Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver in F1 history, rather than condemn them, Ecclestone dismissed it as, again to paraphrase, fans "just expressing their opinion."
Current F1 champion Lewis Hamilton

WARRANTIES --- AVOID THE RIP-OFFS!

Hope you all had a wonderful and safe holiday! Please excuse my recent absence, but starting today we're getting back to business.

Now, let's try and save everyone some money and hassle when it comes to auto warranties.

First of all, in spite of the sometimes-confusing terminology you might hear when someone's trying to sell you a warranty, keep this in mind: "warranty" in this case is just a fancy word for "insurance policy." When it comes down to it, that's all a new- or used-car warranty is --- an insurance policy for car repairs. You pay the premium, usually in one lump sum after you buy the car; when it needs repair, the company backing the policy pays for them, depending on what's covered in the policy.

And they are very profitable for dealers, which explains the "hard sell" which usually surrounds them.

Normally, in a blog post like this, we'd talk mostly about the potential dangers of "third-party" warranties, those backed by companies not affiliated with the car-maker. There have been instances (one I remember happened with the #2 Japanese car-maker some 20-or-more years ago) when the third-party company backing the warranty goes out of business, leaving the warranty holders high and dry. It's very rare, but it's happened.

But buyers never thought they'd have to worry about a warranty purchased at a dealership from the car-maker. Today, though, both Chrysler and General Motors are putting out confusing messages about their own factory-backed warranties. That has a lot of people worried, and rightly so.

Both companies are making noises about refusing to honor warranties on older cars and trucks, claiming those sales have become part of their "old" selves, "bad Chrysler" and "bad GM," the parts of the companies which are now being closed or sold-off as part of their respective bankruptcy and reorganization plans.

We came across the following information from the Service Contract Industry Council (www.go-scic.com), which describes itself as "a national trade association whose member companies collectively offer approximately 80 percent of the service contracts sold in the U.S. for home, auto, and consumer goods."

NEW PHOTO ALBUM - BEVERLY HILLS' RODEO DRIVE FATHER'S DAY CONCOURS 2009

This Ghia Streamline is powered by a trunk-mounted turbine jet engine and was built as a concept in the mid-1950s ... the crowds at the Rodeo Drive Concours on June 21st showed great interest in this Jetson-style car!

Photos (c) by Steve Parker and Don Kent and www.SteveParker.com.

Click on this line to see the first extensive photo album of one of the nation's best-known Concours!

For over 15 years, the Rodeo Drive Concours d'Elegance in Beverly Hills, CA, has grown into one of the most prestigious and enjoyable Concours events in the world. Held on what's often called "the world's most famous shopping street," the Concours began more than 20 years back as a fundraiser for the Beverly Hills Fire Department at Beverly Hills High School.

The event has moved from the high school to the best-known street in the famously upscale city, yet still raises monies for the local fire department and various other charities. The Concours is free, open to the public, and attended by many stars ... with their cars.

"Eclectic" is the byword of the Concours.

My automotive talk shows this weekend

Join us LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com for our exclusive LIVE motoring and motorsports talk shows!

Steve Parker's The Car Nut Show
Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific

Some good news for a change from the world of domestic cars: GM is re-hiring 900 workers for their Lansing, MI crossover plant ... and Dodge is re-opening their Viper plant, of all things! Makes sense - expensive car with a TON of profit built into it ... Plus the rumor is Fiat will use the existing Chrysler 300 sedan platform for their new large car. And John McCain tweets he's buying a Ford Fusion hybrid. Also, for over a decade the biggest auto event in the world has been the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise on that legendary road which runs from downtown Detroit to the city's 'burbs ... but this year there's trouble brewing. Learn the details! And Steve reviews the new less-cost-than-a-Prius Honda Insight gas/electric hybrid. Be sure to call-in and join the action!
Honda's new Insight gas/electric hybrid is priced fully-turned-out at under $24,000

Steve Parker's World Racing Roundup
Sunday starting at 5pm

We talk with racing journalist/ex-racer Kurt Hansen about everything and anything in the world of motor racing. Several Formula 1 teams have announced a new "breakaway" series, which has become something of an annual event in that sport. F1 is in the UK this weekend. NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield was under the influence of speed, and not the car kind, when he turned-up dirty on a drug test which got him suspended from the sport, probably forever. NASCAR is on the road course at Sonoma, CA, possibly the most fun event of the NASCAR year as drivers struggle to stay on the race track. And IndyCar is at Iowa Speedway for the "Indy Corn 250." Great name. And GM has announced the monetary death knell for some of their NASCAR Sprint Cup teams. Be sure to call- in and let us know what you think!
Ferrari says they're joining a new breakaway F1 series ... again

That's this Saturday and Sunday at 5pm USA Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com!

Follow Steve Parker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/autojourno

UPDATED - No "clunker" over 25 years old ; program shortened to four month lifespan

This Suzuki SX4, set-up for rally racing, was a featured car at the 2008 SEMA Show in Las Vegas...all the parts can be bought over-the-counter from Suzuki and other SEMA member companies

Good news for car collectors - Your pride and joy may not be a clunker, thanks to the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA).

But was was originally supposed to be a one-year program has now been shortened by Congress to only four months (see update at end of post).

SEMA has managed to inject an addition to the clunker law wending its way through Congress which will limit clunker vouchers, ranging in value from $3,500 to $4,500 and given to owners turning-in older cars and trucks for new, cleaner and higher-mileage models, to cars and trucks of 1984 and newer vintage.

Vehicles older than 25 years will be exempt from the program. This is a godsend to the car-collecting community.

President Obama has backed the clunker plan and passage in the Senate is expected soon. Proponents claim that the so-called "Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (CARS)" may spur an estimated 625,000 vehicle sales. The program will last for one year (but that was the plan for the original federal income tax, too). The vehicle scrappage legislation was passed by the US House of Representatives by a 298-119 vote last week.

SEMA is a professional/lobbying group representing many of the world's car-makers and especially thousands of "aftermarket" companies, those outfits which dream-up, design, build and sell performance and appearance products for cars and trucks. It's a huge, near-$30 billion annual business in the US alone and thousands of Americans depend on the automotive aftermarket for their livelihoods.

You buy anything lately at AutoZone, Pep Boys or a Goodyear store? You bought it from a SEMA member. I'm a SEMA member, for cryin' out loud (media division).
A custom Dodge Challenger at last year's SEMA Show (all photos by www.SteveParker.com)

PEUGEOT DIESELS WIN 24 HOURS OF LEMANS; DRAMATIC NASCAR FINISH AT MICHIGAN, TOO

Peugeot team members get their due earlier today on LeMans' "victory bridge;" after years of challenging the Audi juggernaut, France's Peugeot finally won their "home" race at LeMans, utilizing the V12 turbodiesel technology developed by Audi; it was, as you might imagine, a popular win among the crowd of several hundred thousand who braved crepes, ferris wheels, the French language and daytime temps in the 80s to enjoy the 77th running of the event (for maximum enjoyment, you may 'click to enlarge' all photos on this site)

There's no greater test of cars, drivers, teams, technologies ... and race fans.

Peugeot broke Audi's five-year domination at the 24 hours of LeMans this weekend, winning the overall victory of the world's most important sports car race for the first time for the French company in 16 years.

Marc Gene, David Brabham of Britain and Alexander Wurz of Austria completed 382 laps in 24 hours, one lap more than the second-place Peugeot No. 8 driven by French trio Sebastien Bourdais, Franck Montagny and Stephane Sarrazin.

Bourdais is best-known in the US as a former Indy Racing League champion and Indy 500 competitor. He was born and raised in the small town of LeMans near the Circuit Sarthe, the track which 77 times counting this year has combined public and purpose-built roads to create the legendary super-high speed racing venue.
Peugeots placed 1-2 in the 2009 24 Hours of LeMans, which, along with the Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix, is one of the world's most popular racing events

Both the Peugeot and Audi LMP1-class cars, the fastest and most-exotic on the near-eight-mile long track, were powered by V12 turbodiesel engines producing some 600-horsepower in whisper-quiet, fuel-efficient fashion.

LeMans is closely-watched by even casual sports fans in Europe, Asia and South America, all areas where diesel-powered cars and trucks are major sellers. Over 60% of all vehicles sold in Europe have diesel engines; a diesel winning at LeMans is a terrific marketing tool for the car's manufacturer.

Indeed, because of Audi's recent LeMans wins with their TDI diesel powerplants, "clean diesel" engines are now sold in Audi and Volkswagen models in the US; similar models fro Peugeot are expected in the US within five years. Unfortunately, because the ex-Detroit Three have not embraced clean diesels, mostly for economic reasons, the technology is still not well-known in this country.
2009 was the swan song for the once-dominant C6R factory Corvette, a car greatly developed in part by Canadian road racer Ron Fellows; Johnny O'Connell did double driving stints of several hours each, due to a co-driver's overnight illness, to help bring home this #63 'Vette to its final win in class

Chevrolet won the GT1 class in the final appearance of their C6R Corvette two-car race team at LeMans, a poignant but victorious coda to years of success which saw the Chevy bowtie command the class.

This weekend's www.TalkRadioOne.com automotive shows

The 2007 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance winner --- car show season has begun!

Join us LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com for our exclusive LIVE motoring and motorsports talk shows!

Steve Parker's The Car Nut Show
Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific

Special guest: Bruce Meyer, one of America's premier car collectors, the man responsible for hot rods being shown at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, talks about the upcoming Father's Day Concours on Rodeo Drive ... in Beverly Hills. There's a new man in-charge at GM, someone who admits, "I don't know anything about cars!" Chrysler is now officially part of Fiat, so can I buy the Alfa Romeo 8C supercar at a Dodge dealer next year? Great move: Fiat CEO Marchionne makes former Toyota exec Jim Press the top man at Chrysler. Ferrari is making a hybrid. The US is "churning" the vast government fleet, and buying more cars and trucks from Ford than GM or Chrysler ... And Steve reviews the amazing little Honda FIT. Be sure to call-in and join the action!

Honda's FIT, like Toyota's Yaris and Nissan's Versa, is a new-generation small car for the US which has seen success in its native Japan

Steve Parker's World Racing Roundup
Sunday starting at 5pm

This weekend, it's the greatest sports car race in the world, the 24 Hours of LeMans, and there's lots of live coverage of this monumental event on radio, TV and the Web for us to talk about. Steve reviews the movies "LeMans" and "Grand Prix," "the essentials" for racing fans - and those you'd like to become racing fans! F1, NASCAR, IndyCar and even NHRA continue to produce the same winners week-after-week ... how can racing survive this and the cutbacks coming from Detroit car-makers, too? Be sure to call- in and let us know what you think!
Peugeot (shown) and Audi will be running turbocharged V12 diesel engines at LeMans this weekend in the world's most prestigious sports car race

That's this Saturday and Sunday at 5pm USA Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com!

OBAMA PERSONAL PLATE ON SO CAL FREEWAY

As we've often demonstrated on this site before, you never know what you'll see on Southern California's freeways, always the world's greatest in-action car show. On the liberal Westside of Los Angeles, it's not unusual to see Obama bumper stickers on cars and trucks and motorcycles and bicycles of all manner and form ... what is strange is this: On the northbound I-405 this afternoon, the San Diego Freeway, just one mile south of its interchange with the always-left-leaning Santa Monica (I-10) Freeway, we spotted this bright new Maserati coupe with not simply an Obama bumper sticker, but the car festooned with a personalized "Obama 08" license plate ... from a foreign nation ... but apparently properly registered, legal and road-worthy. (iPhone photo by Steve Parker)

LIMBAUGH - GM AND OBAMA MUST FAIL

From The Detroit News:

A pair of right-wing radio hosts says there's only one choice for conservatives angry about government involvement in the auto industry: Boycott GM.

"Nobody wants to support an Obama company," Rush Limbaugh told his audience Friday, citing a poll showing that 17 percent of Americans backed a boycott of GM.

"Every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise," conservative talker Hugh Hewitt wrote online last week.
Rush Limbaugh

Conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have criticized the federally sponsored restructuring plan GM will seek to execute in bankruptcy court.

The plan would give the federal government a 60 percent ownership stake in the company; lawmakers such as Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., have labeled that socialism.

The popular, controversial Limbaugh didn't outright call for a boycott, but said he understood why people would want to avoid GM vehicles. "They don't want to patronize Obama. They don't want to do anything to make Obama's policies work."

A GM spokesman declined to comment Monday.

But the Democratic National Committee, which has spent plenty of time in recent months cataloging Limbaugh's calls for the failure of President Barack Obama's economic policies, leapt at the chance to do so again.
Sen. Richard Shelby

"While it's not surprising that Rush Limbaugh would root for the failure of a national institution for partisan political gain, it is surprising that the other so-called leaders of the Republican party are silently going along with him given how many hard working Americans rely on GM for a living," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

So far, there is little evidence that the government's involvement is turning off buyers. In bankruptcy for the entire month of May, Chrysler had its best sales month of the year.

GM MUST CUT BUICK, GMC --- AND DO IT NOW!

Will the 2010 Buick LaCrosse see production? Should it?

General Motors must drop their Buick and GMC divisions. And do it now.

The number of people already put out of work by the Amazingly-Shrinking General is sickening, outrageous; these workers didn't bring this on themselves, it's been forced on them and their families and the businesses where they trade by GM's own shortcomings and the collapse of the credit market precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis through the banks and Wall Street.

Yet the real horror of unemployment, no health insurance and in too many cases homelessness is going to continue to fall on the backs of America's working men and women.

Lay-offs at GM and its suppliers and the numbers of those put out of work by the thousands due to planned dealership closings will continue for at least another two years. The closing of Pontiac alone has resulted in 20,000 workers put on the street from GM and its suppliers; the sales of Hummer and Saturn will result in more people gone as will the bankruptcy and ultimate disposition of Saab.
2009 Chevrolet Malibu gas/electric hybrid

Estimates of "displaced workers" from GM's announced dealership closings range to well over 100,000, spread throughout the nation.

No one wants to see this trend continue or grow.

(In one humorous aside, GM and the Sichuan, China-based industrial firm which has agreed to buy Hummer stated in their joint press release that Hummer executives are part of the deal between the two companies; hope those GM and AM General folks in Detroit and Mishawaka and South Bend, IN, enjoy spicy Asian food; well, a job's a job these days).

Yet if the Obama Administration really feels that this ritual death and resurrection of GM is so crucial to the economic and psychic health of America, this part of their plan leaves a lot to be desired.
Orange, CA's Robby Gordon driving his Chevy off-road race truck to victory this past weekend in the 41st SCORE-Tecate Baja 500; Chevy's long-time racing activities give it a high profile

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS - LOS ANGELES CONCOURS d'ELEGANCE!

This Dodge Bros. car was a hit at the 2009 Los Angeles Concours d'Elegance. The Dodge family was surrounded in mystery and intrigue, with both Brothers dying early deaths; the company built Conestoga wagons for settlers heading west in the 1800s, and the corporate logo was a Mogen David, or Jewish Star, though no one knows quite why!

Yesterday we visited the fourth annual Los Angeles Concours d'Elegance. Benefiting the Assistance League of Southern California (www.AssistanceLeague.net) the show was held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, attracting well over 200 vehicles and thousands of spectators. Finally, a proper Concours for Southern California!
A new car at the Concours among the old -- a 2009 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione

We shot a lot of photos and invite you to view them.

To view our exclusive photo album of this event, just click anywhere on this line ... and enjoy!

This weekend's auto shows on TalkRadioOne.com

Join us LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com for our exclusive LIVE motoring and motorsports talk shows!

Steve Parker's The Car Nut Show
Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific

Legendary mega-dealer and race team owner Roger Penske is buying Saturn and a Chinese company is buying Hummer as GM divests itself of ... itself ... as fast it they can. The state of Indiana is taking Chrysler to the US Supreme Court saying their deal with Fiat is unfair to state investment funds. And Ford keeps rolling along, introducing a new program which has put their crucially-important 2011 Fiesta in the hands of a few dozen 20-something's for free for six months. Plus Steve test-drives a couple of new cars sold in the US for under $10,000. Call-in and be part of the show!
Roger Penske in the Long Beach Grand Prix pits (www.SteveParker.com photo)

Steve Parker's World Racing Roundup
Sunday starting at 5pm

The racing continues unabated as the season builds momentum towards it half-way mark. The IndyCars are in Texas, F1 is in Turkey, NASCAR is in Pocono, where naturally it's been raining all weekend NHRA is just outside Chicago for a huge racing weekend. Cole Coonce, author of TOP FUEL WORMHOLE, a wildly alternative, grass roots history of American drag racing, will be our guest. Has Tony George found a job yet? How will the GM an Chrysler failures affect their privateer and professional racing sponsorships? Call the show and join us!

That's this Saturday and Sunday at 5pm USA Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com!

 

New GM, Chrysler leaders - Wrong for the jobs

End of the line for cars like this 2009 Chevy Corvette ZR1?

It took fewer than 60 years for America to forget the causes of the Great Depression, unbridled greed and avarice in the banking industry and on Wall Street, until we made all the same mistakes again, and invented some new ones, too.

But throughout the reorganization of the US auto industry, some of the much more recent lessons of the past 30 years have already been forgotten.

Frighteningly, at least to those of who focus on the product side of the auto industry, few if any of the Obama Auto Task Force members and the new leaders of Chrysler and GM taking over after the bankruptcies have product-sector experience.

And as you'd have thought Detroit and Washington might have learned the past few years, the Harvard MBAs in the auto executive suites wouldn't know a good car if they got run over by one.

And ultimately it's the cars which are going to save GM and Chrysler.
Steve Rattner is yet another finance person involved in the auto industry debacle; he's heading up the Obama Auto Task Force

The announcements this weekend that GM will build a series of small cars in the US rather than make them in China, and that Fiat will sell their Mini-like Cinquecento (500) in some Chrysler dealers within the next 18 months were welcome, but not nearly enough to guarantee these companies' futures.

With the sad facts now well-known, with Chrysler's assets being sold to Fiat and General Motors entering bankruptcy, the men appointed to lead these companies post-bankruptcy don't have any background in the automotive business.

This weekend's LIVE motoring and motorsport talk shows!

Join us LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time on www.TalkRadioOne.com for our exclusive motoring and motorsports shows!

Steve Parker's The Car Nut Show
Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific
www.TalkRadioOne.com

No lack of topics this week on our general interest live call-in automotive talk show - General Motors approaches bankruptcy, or maybe is in it already. Chrysler leaves bankruptcy this weekend ... but will Fiat really buy all their assets? Fiat also wants to buy GM's Opel and the Italian people don't like it. Plus Steve test-drives the Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell electric car ---- which makes its own electricity! Call-in and be part of the show!

Steve Parker's World Racing Roundup
Sunday starting at 5pm
www.TalkRadioOne.com

Tony George fired! After over a dozen years of spending tens of millions to create and shore-up the Indy Racing League, overseeing the Indy 500's devaluation, making and breaking a deal with Formula 1, opening the Brickyard to NASCAR, a sacrilege in the eyes of many, and inviting motorcycles to race at Indy, Tony George, the CEO of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has been voted out of that position by his own board of directors --- a board made-up mostly of his own relatives. What do you think? Call the show and join us!

That's this Saturday and Sunday at 5pm USA Pacific on www.TalkRadioOne.com

SHOCKER - TONY GEORGE OUT AS CEO AT INDY!

The Tonight Show's Johnny Carson test-drove this STP-sponsored turbine-powered race car at Indy in 1967; though the race and the track are known for technologial innovation, turbine engines were banned after the car almost won the race and other teams complained

Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and the other team owners of what was called Championship Auto Racing Teams have finally gotten their personal revenge.

Tony George, scion of the George and Hulman families which saved the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from being sold for a housing development following WWII, has been ousted as Chief Executive Officer of the world's oldest purpose-built motor race track.

Opened in 1909 by businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune with Prest-O-Lite, the first acetylene-powered automobile headlight system, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has today entered another stage in its storied history.

Our coverage is from Robin Miller of SPEEDtv.com:

The controversial, ground-breaking, tumultuous 20-year reign of Tony George at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is over. SPEEDtv.com has learned George was voted out of power in a Tuesday night board meeting in Indianapolis.

A source close to the situation confirmed that the 49-year-old grandson of Tony Hulman would no longer be CEO of the Speedway after a vote of the IMS board of directors which includes mother Mari, sisters Josie, Nancy and Kathy, attorney Jack Snyder and George.

Calls to Snyder and Fred Nation, IMS vice president of communications, were not returned and George did not respond to an email.
Indy Motor Speedway savior Tony Hulman and grandson Tony George, who some say might have lost the track in years to come, pictured in the 1950s

George, who started the Indy Racing League in 1996, will continue as CEO of the IndyCar series and is expected to take more of a hands-on role after Tuesday's developments at the Speedway.

It had been rumored for several years that his sisters were concerned with the amount of money George had spent on keeping the IRL afloat and changing the look of the Speedway.

It's estimated that between paying purses, supplying cars, engines and parts for other teams, hiring high powered public relations firms and starting his own IRL team, plus remaking Indy to accomodate Formula One, the IRL founder has spent more than $600 million during the past 13 years.

And his siblings were reportedly concerned about running out of money.
Cover of the 2009 Indy 500 souvenir program, by "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade, who apparently is painting things other than light these days ...

The Speedway currently has two Challenger airplanes for sale, sold the helicopter used by George's family and has cut some 60 people from its IMS and IRL staffs during the past six months.

GM AND CHRYSLER - THE LATEST YOU NEED TO KNOW

Brand-new 2010 Chevy Camaros ready for shipping to whatever dealers are left; Jay Leno says, "This is the car that'll save GM!" Leno knows his stuff, but on this one, is he nuts or what?

GM creditors have refused a deal which would have seen trade $27 billion in bonds for 10% of a "new" GM. This will almost surely push the company into bankruptcy either on or before June 1.

It will be the largest bankruptcy in American and probably world history.

A similar deal with those bondholders could be worked-out in bankruptcy court; I don't understand their rejection of the deal, because this way they'll get nothing when the company enters bankruptcy.

While GM is selling Saab, they also have their Vauxhall (UK) and Opel subsidiaries (the rest of Europe) on the block. Opel has over 50,000 employees in Germany alone and German PM Angela Merkel is offering the company billions in loan guarantees to try and keep their factories open and their employees working.
Traditionally quirky and aimed at a very specific niche of buyers, Saab, "born from fighter jets," prospered for many years in Europe and for quite some time in the US; some said GM's purchase of Saab homogenized the company's styling and spirit and Saab lost some of the unique aspects which attracted buyers

Fiat has emerged as the leading bidder for Opel, but they've said a minimum of 2,000 Germans will be laid-off if the Italian giant does buy the company.

But there is heavy criticism in Italy itself over Fiat's desire to add a huge GM entity to their already-planned purchase of Chrysler assets. All the costs involved in these purchases are seen by Italian labor unions and many in the government as cause for eventually laying-off workers in that country, where Fiat is the largest industrial corporation.
Opel has been in business since 1899

In the meantime, the mayor of Warren, MI, home to GM's futuristic, advanced technical centers and design studios for many decades, is urging the corporation move their headquarters from downtown Detroit to the suburb. GM corporate is currently ensconced in "The Tubes," a complex along the Detroit River which was originally built by Ford Motor Company.

Chrysler is now asking a bankruptcy judge to sign-off on allowing the former Detroit giant selling its assets to Fiat. This would effectively end the existence of Chrysler.

Founded by Walter P. Chrysler, who designed and built everything from gigantic locomotives to some of the world's first economy cars, called Plymouth, it was the only American car-maker founded by an engineer and known for almost 100 years for its combination of cars and trucks for the proletariat, enthusiasts and luxury car-lovers.
Chrysler's revolutionary 1934 Airflow reflected the streamlinig craze of the era

From the important, radical and art deco (and surprisingly poor selling) Airflow of the 1930s to America's sensible shoes of the 1980s, the K-cars and the first minivans, and to the wild, rambunctious Prowler faux hot rod and Viper musclecar and luxury performance cars from the Imperial to the 300, as well as home of the legendary Hemi engines which have powered the world's fastest and quickest drag racers for 50 years, Chrysler's disappearance will leave a void in the hearts and minds --- and garages and race tracks --- of America's car-lovers and American history which will never be properly filled.

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! BE THERE! WERE YOU?

AJ Foyt Racing teammates Vitor Meira is on the wall while Raphael Matos escaped injury during this late-race wreck in the 2009 Indy 500; would have loved to have heard Foyt's "discussion" with his drivers afterwards - Meira broke two vertebrae in his back, will not need surgery but is expected to be out of racing for up to a year

The racing season is about one-third over, so a quick survey of this weekend's major races, three signature events of world motor competition, seems in order.

THE 93rd INDIANAPOLIS 500, 2-1/2 mile oval, Speedway, Indiana

Whatever you do, don't get between Helio Castroneves and whatever he wants. You'll wind up with tire tracks on your chest. It's Helio's world and we're all just squirrels in it.

The "Dancing With the Stars" champion, now a three-time Indy 500 winner and the guy who, along with his sister and attorney just beat a severe federal rap for income tax evasion where prosecutors were asking for six-year jail terms, seems headed for a kind of crossover success not seen before in motor racing, at least not in this country.

Heck, this week alone he's appearing with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, along with David Letterman and probably Regis and Whoever She Is during a NYC tour swing.
Helio Castroneves

Castroneves took home a record purse of $3,048,005 at the Indianapolis 500 awards banquet held Memorial Day evening.

That money does not include his paycheck from his team, Penske Racing, nor his income from advertising, marketing and promotional activities or personal appearances, of which there will be plenty in the next year.

Second-place finisher Dan Wheldon won $1,258,805 and Danica Patrick, highest-finishing woman in the history of the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing," brought $763,305 worth of Indiana bacon home for her coming third.

Patrick's third-place has also, finally, enshrined her in the pantheon of "serious racers" and not just "sexy oddity" among the cognoscenti. A third-place at Indy is no fluke, as many say her win at Motegi, Japan was, coming as a result of race strategy rather than true skill and the necessary killer instinct for any champion in any sport. A third at Indy is a win anywhere else; that's how tough it is.
Danica Patrick won an IndyCar race at Motegi, Japan last year, the first woman ever to do so; her third at Indy this weekend proved she's no fluke of a race winner

THIS WEEKEND'S LIVE TalkRadioOne.COM AUTOMOTIVE SHOWS

Shuttered auto and auto parts supplier factories dot the US and their numbers are growing

Steve Parker's "The Car Nut Show"
LIVE Saturday starting at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern
On TalkRadioOne.com

No lack of topics this week on our general interest live call-in automotive talk show - General Motors approaches bankruptcy, Volkswagen says they'll continue to develop their hydrogen fuel cell car even if Pres. Obama doesn't like the technology and thousands of dealers bite the dust and the big one. And will our cars and trucks really reach 39mpg on average by 2016 as the president proposed this past week? That's all it was - a proposal. Laws still need to be written and past to increase mpg and lower emissions. Call-in and be part of the show! At TalkRadioOne.com.
Chip Ganassi (left) with the boys after winning Indy; since 1999, these teams have won the Indy 500: Marlboro Penske Racing, Target Chip Ganassi Racing, Andretti Green Racing, Rahal Letterman Racing and AJ Foyt Enterprises. Rahal Letterman and Foyt have little chance this year; Danica Patrick is an Andretti Green driver, and for the future of open-wheel racing in the US, I hope Patrick wins and it's not another Penske or Ganassi clone this weekend; did Helio Castroneves win American Idol, too?

Steve Parker's "World Racing Roundup"
LIVE Sunday starting at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern
On TalkRadioOne.com

The Indy 500, the Monaco Grand Prix Formula 1 street race and the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600, the longest event on the Sprint Cup circuit --- all today! Three of the signature events of world motor racing and we'll cover them all from the inside out. Steve still says, "Anyone but a Penske or Ganassi driver" has to win Indy; a Danica Patrick victory would be the best thing for American auto racing in 20 years! But a woman winning the Indy 500 has about as much chance of happening as a black man becoming president of the United Sta ...oh, wait a minute ...

OBAMA - MPG UP, AUTO FUEL CELLS DEAD

Honda's FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell sedan in front of the company's US headquarters in Torrance, CA - a 100-acre site the company bought from US Steel

He giveth, and he taketh away.

President Barack Obama has rightfully received positive reviews for his proposal this past week to raise vehicle mile per gallon standards for cars to 39 mpg and light trucks to 30 mpg by 2016, for a combined "corporate average fuel economy," or CAFÉ, of 35 miles per gallon. Harmful emissions will also be lowered dramatically by the rise in fuel mileage.

But his administration also just gutted $100 million worth of federal research into hydrogen fuel cell EV technology for cars and trucks. Is there a White House technology double-standard, is it more Obama-ish realism or are oil companies lobbying as they must to keep their black gold from turning into clean, abundant hydrogen?
People get instructed on how to fill 'er up when their Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen-fueled fuel cell sedan (there's a mouthful) needs a pit stop; the gas station is a Shell facility in West Los Angeles, CA, fitted in 2008 with hydrogen fueling equipment

Some of the people gathered at the White House with Obama to cheer the mpg increase are angry that hydrogen is not only apparently taking a back seat to plug-in EVs and hybrids, clean diesels and conventional gasoline engines as far as Washington is concerned, but is now practically off the table, without the important implied endorsement of the US government which comes from the research project.

Why can't we do it all? This is for our planet's future, after all. What's $100 million these days for such a promising - and proven - technology?

Now, rather than spend $168 million in ongoing automotive hydrogen fuel cell research in 2010, new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu cut $100 million from that total and said the remainder would be spent on development of stationary fuel cells, not for cars, but which are used as backup power systems in factories and as primary electricity providers in remote areas where traditional energy sources might not be the best solution (large industrial fuel cells are already fairly common in Asia and Europe, and they're being developed for home use, too).
Volkswagen's 2009 Jetta TDI clean diesel is a remarkable auto which manages over 40mpg from its twin-turbo, 140-horsepower diesel four-banger; it's the 235 foot pounds of torque which make it fun to drive! But why not continue government R&D funding into hydrogen fuel cell EVs which could eventually replace most internal combustion engines of all types?

Chu has a background in biofuels and has received heavy criticism for this move. Detractors say he hasn't had enough hands-on experience with hydrogen fuel cells to make an informed decision.

The concept of fuel cells has existed for almost 200 years; they were first put into practical use for the US space program, beginning with the first manned Mercury space shots in the 1960s. To this day, fuel cells are used onboard space ships and satellites to help provide power, oxygen and water.

My interview with Ron Cogan of Green Car Journal

At the Tesla dealership in West Los Angeles                                                                                                                                                     On my Saturday CAR NUT SHOW on TalkRadioOne.com this weekend, we spoke at length with Ron Cogan, an old friend of mine from our days together at the infamous Petersen Publishing.

It was the Obama Administration's recent, quiet deep-sixing of $100 million worth of funding for an ongoing hydrogen fuel cell vehicle project which got me to call Ron. But naturally we went off on all sorts of tangents, from the BMW Mini E to the EV1 (Cogan was a lessor) to anything and everything "green" when it comes to cars. He knows his stuff.

I know you'll find it interesting, and you can find it here: http://www.talkradioone.com/2009/05/16/next-steve-parker-the-car-nut-live-saturday-5pm-pdt8pm-edt/. The interview starts 1/2-hour into the one-hour show but do us a favor - listen to the entire podcast and we bet you'll join us next week ... and the week after ... either for the live show (so you can call-in and participate) or the podcasts, which get posted within an hour of the live show conclusion (depending on how frisky I'm feeling after the show and how my computer's working).

Bob Petersen started his publishing company with a little mimeographed two-sided newsletter he called HOT ROD, which he sold for a nickle at car events all over Southern California in the late '40s. That became HOT ROD magazine and Petersen then started MOTOR TREND, CAR CRAFT, GUNS AND AMMO and all the rest and became the only billionaire I personally knew. This son of a So Cal Edison lineman from Barstow made damn good.

In 1992, Ron Cogan started a little two-sided newsletter aimed at auto industry insiders which has grown into Green Car Journal, probably best-known to the public as the purveyors of the annual Green Car of the Year awards.

Just go to GreenCar.com for all the pertinent info. And remember - we're on TalkRadioOne.com Saturday with THE CAR NUT SHOW and Sunday's with WORLD RACING ROUND-UP for motorsports fans. Both shows start their live broadcasts at 5pm Pacific.

THIS WEEKEND'S TalkRadioOne.com AUTO SHOWS: IS HYDROGEN DEAD? WILL OUR GUY MAKE THE SHOW AT INDY?

Thomas Kinkade, that "painter of light" guy, is now painting cars - maybe because his galleries and sales of the little, cute Hobbit-type homes he paints haven't been breaking any records lately and he's also involved in a bunch of lawsuits (we always being you the good news, right?). Anyway, Indy got Kinkade to do the cover for this year's Indy 500 Souvenir Program, and here it is

Just go to www.TalkRadioOne.com at 5pm Pacific every Saturday and Sunday to hear our live broadcasts. Podcasts of previous shows are available on the site, too, for downloading or real-time listening. And podcasts of this weekend's shows are available within ½-hour of the live shows' conclusions (that is, if my computer is working okay ...).

SATURDAY, THE CAR NUT SHOW

Join me, Steve Parker, live and worldwide Saturday at 5pm (Pacific) for THE CAR NUT, our weekly talk show where the issues affecting all drivers are brought to the fore. This week: Is the hydrogen craze over? Recently the Obama Administration quietly ended a government program begun under George W. Bush to develop hydrogen-fueled fuel cell EVs. The news didn't get a lot of publicity, but there's more than one car-maker and environmental group angry over this apparent change in government focus on these once highly-touted future vehicles, especially when Washington has unprecedented power over Detroit. Ron Cogan, editor/publisher of Green Car Journal joins us with the facts. Plus a review of a remarkable value, the all-new 2009 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI with the revolutionary high-mileage clean diesel engine, and of course your phone calls at 213-341-4353.
Honda has reportedly spent over $100 million developing their FCX Clarity hydrogen-fueled fuel cell EV, currently undergoing real world trials in the US as "members" of average families participating in the testing. What happens to the car - and the technology worldwide - now that Washington's focus is off using hydrogen as a fuel? (www.SteveParker.com photo)

SUNDAY, WORLD RACING ROUND-UP

Sunday it's our weekly STEVE PARKER'S WORLD RACING ROUND-UP, the latest from the world of motor racing. On last week's show we spoke with Stanton Barrett, a successful NASCAR driver making his debut as a rookie in this year's Indianapolis 500, about his efforts to get into next week's race. Yesterday was Stanton's last shot at making the 33-car field and we'll find out from him how he and his Curb/Agajanian/3G motorsports team has fared. Did they make the show in their Honda-powered Dallara ... or not? Plus the new Brawn Mercedes Grand Prix Formula 1 team juggernaut keeps rolling along, decimating their still-shocked competition (next weekend is the Monaco Grand Prix, F1's signature event) and NASCAR's Camping World Truck Series, the Nationwide Series cars and Sprint Cup all ran this weekend at Charlotte. In fact, for the Sprint drivers it was the annual NASCAR All-Star Race. I enjoy this weekend because it includes the Pit Crew Competition held in an indoor arena in Charlotte, one of the strangest "sporting" events in the world. We'll talk about all that and more, with your calls at 213-341-4353.

It's all at www.TalkradioOne.com! See you there!

BILL MAHER ON CAR INTERIOR LIGHTS

To enjoy a short car video from Bill Maher and the Huffington Post, just click anywhere on this line.

BMW'S MINI E EV - THE REAL THING OR OLD NEWS?

GM's EV1 came to market in 1996; Mini E doesn't appear to be any great advancement in the field while EV1 was truly revolutionarry ... and would still be if we could buy them

If you could have done something in 1996, why do it (again) in 2009?

As Johnny Carson said about comedy, timing is everything. And Americans today seem ready for electric vehicles (EVs) of any and all types, even if the "new" foreign-made EV they're driving had been done, and many say done better, by a Detroit company more than a decade before.

As a longtime resident, I love this city (Santa Monica, CA) for its appreciation of (and demand for) the latest in technology, whether for keeping the ocean clean or getting us down the road; when we're not saving humanity, at the Farmer's Market or chanting for world peace, we're the classic early tech adopters.

Mini E on the stand at its US introduction at last year's Los Angeles Auto Show

Outside of Santa Monica, the only places I've ever seen more Prius gas/electric hybrids was in a place outside Nagoya, Japan, called Toyota City (the company's headquarters) and the staff parking lot at NBC in Burbank; go figure, right?

And now, with what I see as poor -- or maybe very cynical -- timing, perhaps trying to take advantage of a new-generation of EV enthusiasts, BMW, through their Mini division, is starting performance field trials on their electric car called Mini E.

These tests are going to be conducted by the public, who will have the privilege of paying for participating. "Make the customers pay us to do our job!" Genius!

And the funny thing is, Mini says this car will never be mass-produced; it's a development mule (as we call them in the trade) for an EV they plan on selling here in 2012 (Mitsubishi and Nissan/Renault have also announced plans to sell "pure" EVs" worldwide that same year).
Mini E interior, with a few exceptions, is like the standard Mini's

THE RECKONING - THOUSANDS OF DEALERS TO GET CUT THIS WEEK

This Toyopet was the first major competitor in the US to US-made cars

And now, with Chrysler in bankruptcy and General Motors probably in it in another week or so, the other shoe drops. The one that's really about Main Street. 

This week, General Motors is expected to tell between 1,000 and 1,500 of their 6,200 dealers nationwide that the corporation will not renew their franchise agreements, and Chrysler will notify 25% of their US dealers - 800 out of 3,200 total - that their days as new car dealers are over, too.

As Ken Bensinger, who has been following the dealer crisis for the Los Angeles Times, wrote this weekend, "... it amounts to a blood bath for dealers, who employ hundreds of thousands of people nationwide and pump billions of dollars into their area economies. With dealers unsure whether their names will be called, a pervasive sense of dread has crept into showrooms."

GM is said to be considering moving their corporate headquarters out of the iconic Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit (GM bought "the tubes" from Ford) and out to Warren, MI, where GM has their huge technical center.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and groups of Chrysler and GM dealers are taking various steps to try and stem the tide of forced closings, many involving complicated and expensive legal challenges to the car-makers but some aimed at the general public, too. NADA is taking out advertisements in major publications urging President Obama "to choose Main Street over Wall Street."

The strong state franchise laws which govern the sales ballet and love/hate relationship between car-makers and their dealers (most all written with dealer-only input) are from the same eras when Detroit was concerned with only five things: 1) Making enough cars to fill demand, 2) Avoiding any trouble with unions or dealers which could slow sales, 3) Spending all the money they were making, 4) Protecting executives' annual bonuses, and, in GM's case, especially, 5) Avoiding being labeled a monopoly by Washington and being split into separate companies.


This is a V8-powered custom 2009 Opel GT, cousin to the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice; GM announced this weekend that the Delaware factory where the Solstice and Sky are built might be put up for sale, like what Dodge is doing with their Viper brand sports car -- just selling off as much of it as possible including all the factory tooling.; the GM sports cars became the best-selling two seat convertibles in America, surpassing even the fabled Mazda Miata (MX5); Opel's GT remains a-building in Europe

OUR WEEKEND BROADCASTS - JOIN US LIVE OR CHECK-OUT OUR PODCASTS!

It's the official head shot you used to get when radio stations had the money to provide them ... this one's from KMPC, Los Angeles, where I spent a decade one year ... and it's from something like 1990!

STEVE PARKER'S CAR NUT SHOW
SATURDAY MAY 9
5pm PACIFIC
Join us and call-in LIVE on TalkRadioOne.com and visit anytime for podcasts of previous shows

Bad roads cost the average driver in America over $400 a year in extra vehicle operating costs; drivers living in urban areas with population of over 250,000 pay more than $750 extra a year because of those lousy roads. Steve covers the facts and figures from American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials ... AASHTO ... and figure out how much money and how long it will take to get our national road infrastructure back up-to-speed. Fast answer: A lot and a long time. Then, GM and Chrysler are cutting 25% of their dealers and don't want to pay them a cent. What happens next? Plus, today is qualifying day for the Indianapolis 500 - by show time we'll know the first 12 starters, including the pole position winner, for May 24th's race, the 100th anniversary of the Speedway itself. Plus listener
phone calls on everything automotive!

STEVE PARKER'S WORLD RACING ROUND-UP
SUNDAY MAY 10
5pm PACIFIC
Join us and call-in LIVE on TalkRadioOne.com and visit anytime for podcasts of previous shows

Danica Patrick goes, uh, a little over the top while promising her love to a 427 Cobra - probably a replica, anyway; someone must have told her this was for a Carl's Jr commercial...

Winning the Indy 500 becomes a part of a driver's life from that moment on, with every news story about them for the rest of their lives, right their obituaries, beginning with, "Indy 500 winner ...". But a lot of people think winning the pole for the Indy 500 is more important, because the pole winner gets two weeks of free press worldwide with every story covering the pole winner. For that reason, many racing and team sponsors would rather their driver win the pole than the race. Today, Steve covers the Indy 500 pole winner (and he predicts it'll be Danica Patrick), talks live with a rookie Indy 500 driver, covers the F1 race in Spain and NASCAR at Darlington - and more, with your phone calls, naturally.

ROGER PENSKE - SATURN SAVIOR?

The late Bob Holbert, one of the country's first Porsche dealers and stand-out drivers of the rear-engine, air-cooled exotics, leads Roger Penske at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterery, CA during a sports car race in 1966

Roger Penske is making a bid for Saturn.

The 72-year old Penske, the highly successful head of Bloomfield Hills, MI, Penske Automotive Group, which operates more than 300 franchises in the United States and internationally, selling 40 different brands, told the Paul Smith Show on WJR radio in Detroit on Tuesday morning that he's not interested in manufacturing Saturns, but in distributing them between the factories and their dealers.

General Motors' once highly-touted and progressive Saturn division is on the auction block, along with Hummer, Saab and Pontiac, the GM nameplates most-recently slated for death. A group of Saturn dealers have shown interest in buying the manufacturing end of the business from GM.
The Captain in full regalia and in full command at last month's Long Beach Grand Prix IndyCar race (www.SteveParker.com photo)

With his vast experience at every level of the auto industry, why would Penske shy away from actually making cars, which many would consider the ultimate involvement in the business, but show interest in being the middle-man between a factory and its dealers?

Because in doing so (and possibly in financing cars and trucks for dealers, too) he can make billions - in relatively "easy money" -- without the huge financial overhead and exposure of manufacturing.

Penske owns all the trucks and logistic operations and expertise he would need to be a major car distributor in the US or anywhere else; shutting-down that kind of operation in the face of an economic downturn is a lot cheaper, safer and easier than closing factories and laying-off tens of thousands of workers when car sales go south.

Also, in the eyes of the public, Penske's name would lend instant credibility and trust to any newly-revamped Saturn.
A forelorn engineer nonetheless beams at his baby, a 2010 Saturn VUE Green Line Plug-In Hybrid; Saturn sells over 25% of the GM hybrids in this country and the division's loss was initially thought to be a blow to some future pollution, mpg and safety standards, but GM said this week that they will try to make or buy the former Saturn-made gas/electric hybrids and sell them at other GM division showrooms

Usually the car-makers control the distribution of their cars and trucks to their dealers, but there have been several independent distributorships operating between some import car-makers and their US dealers, left over from the days when the imports couldn't afford every step of making the cars, shipping them to the US and then getting them to dealerships.

Some of these distributors, including JM Moran, also known as Southeast Toyota Distributorships, still get the cars from the plants, the ports and the parking lots to the dealers and make billions in doing so.

For instance, Moran recently signed a new 25-year contract with the Jacksonville (FL) Port Authority. The agreement extends the 33-year relationship between Southeast Toyota Distributors and Jaxport, and ensures the vehicle processing facility's presence at the port through 2027.

In 1970, Frederick Weisman, a Russian Jewish immigrant who became head of Norton Simon's Hunt Foods, formed Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors. He sold the firm to Toyota in 1990, reaping a huge fortune. Along with his wife Marcia, the couple accumulated one of the world's best private collections of modern art.
Penske's DHL factory-supported Porsches shown here winning the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring

Incidentally, Marcia was Norton Simon's daughter - Weisman wisely married the boss's kid.

GUMBALL - THE VIDEO!

See Steve's two-minute video on the Gumball Rally produced by NBC-TV's Whipnotic ...

GUMBALL RALLY 3000 PHOTO ALBUM

Click on this line to see Steve Parker's exclusive photo album of the start of the 2009 Gumball Rally, the world's most politically-incorrect automotive street event.

It was kicked-off in the shadow of the Santa Monica (CA) Pier and drew several thousand spectators. Admission into the event's participant staging area was free.

The Santa Monica Police Department and California Highway Patrol closed the southbound lanes of Pacific Coast Highway for almost 1/2-hour to get event participants from the beachside parking lot onto I-10, the Santa Monica Freeway, so "racers" could make their way about 50 miles south for the first stop in their eight-day adventure, Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels.

DANICA PATRICK MAKES TIME MAG'S "WORLD'S 100 MOST-INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE"

Danica Patrick's pit crew helps her on her way to victory at Twin Ring Motegi, Japan in 2008; it was the first-ever IndyCar victory by a woman

Here's some good automotive news for a change: The Danica Patrick IndyCar racing juggernaut keeps rolling along. And just in time for the biggest auto race of the year.

Time magazine, relying on an Internet poll to determine its third annual list of the top 100 most influential people in the world, named race car driver, advertising icon, Midwest fashion plate and the generally hot Patrick to position #93.

The only woman to ever win an IndyCar race (at Motegi, Japan, 2008) outpaced NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Queen of All Media Oprah Winfrey, FOX's Bill O'Reilly (maybe racing can save the world) and Prince (who, physically, is about the same size as Patrick).

Patrick received 523,545 votes. The magazine noted this is Patrick's first appearance in their Top 100 list.
 

This past week, Patrick unveiled a new black/orange paint scheme on her #7 Honda/Dallara IndyCar racer, just in time for the upcoming Indy 500

In the PR statement she didn't write, Patrick's people said: "I'm humbled and honored to be on the list with so many other amazing people. I'm grateful to have wonderful people around me that keep me grounded and in the moment. I know I don't say it often enough, but thank you for helping me achieve my goals and dreams while allowing me to be myself in the fast-paced lifestyle I lead."

Why do sponsors always think these drivers have to sound so damn homogenized? I wish the PR people would get out of the way and let ... racers be racers. Racers don't say things like, "the fast-paced lifestyle I lead." They say, "Get out of my way or I'll put you in the wall and kick your freakin' ass." And then they do.

And with the Indy 500 coming up May 24th (which will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the circuit itself, the world's first purpose-built race track; the race's 100th birthday comes in 2011), attention on the sport and its drivers is reaching, well, if not exactly a fever-pitch, we can say that for the first time in over a decade, an American racing series besides NASCAR is getting some attention in the nation's general interest media.

(On KCRW radio's "Left, Right and Center" broadcast Friday, co-host Robert Scheer opined that the Republican Party has become a solidly Southeast-based group with little membership outside that part of the country. "Aha! Just like NASCAR!" I thought).
 Patrick in the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition

OBAMA - "ICH BIN EIN CHRYSLER!"

Chrysler's 1988 to 1990 TC Maserati (now owned by Fiat) was an example of Chrysler management often feeling that doing anything was better than nothing in any attempt to help the corporation; they were wrong about that, too, unfortunately

And so it begins: Making bankruptcy sound like a fun thing to do on a slow spring afternoon, Barack Obama today "congratulated" Chrysler on the "opportunity" of Chapter 11 and if I were GM, I wouldn't be getting too friendly with this guy and his staff at the next White House cocktail party. I mean, look at what happens to companies he likes.

Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday in New York under Section 363(b) of Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code -- and officials hope Chrysler will stay in bankruptcy for just 30- to-60 days.

The company's merger with Italian giant Fiat has also been approved by the White House, and former Chrysler owner Daimler is giving-up their 20% stake in the Highland Park, MI, car-maker. Fiat will shut-down their Euro car-making operations for as long as two months over the summer to prepare for the Chrysler deal; the first Fiat-Chrysler made-in-USA cars might not appear for at least two years.

In a 15-minute speech announcing these moves this morning at the White House, President Barack Obama praised those who have made shared sacrifice to try and save the iconic American company, including Chrysler management, the UAW, creditors which agreed to accept as little as 33% on the dollar for their securitized Chrysler debt holdings, new Chrysler partner Fiat and old partner Daimler.
Obama speaks before the 2008 US elections in Berlin in front of an estimated 300,000; the speech was reminiscent of JFK's famous June, 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") speech. Today, Obama told us that, like it or not, we are all Chrysler, with important stakes in the company, from our shared national and institutional memories of it to the US middle-class which the company helped in great part to create

He also blasted in plain and no uncertain terms "hedge funds," "speculators" and other investors and creditors who refused to support the government's efforts to have them cut the amount of Chrysler debt they hold.

"I stand with the Chrysler employees and their families, dealers and communities. I do not stand with those who won't help out when everyone else is supporting," Obama said.

Chrysler will idle most of its plants during its time in bankruptcy.

The shutdown begins Monday and will stretch through the 30 to 60 days it is expected to take to restructure in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company said in a statement today.

Chrysler has 12 assembly plants, including eight in the United States. It also owns and operates five North American engine plants, six stamping plants and seven transmission and parts plants.

Chrysler has 26,000 UAW workers and 10,000 represented by the Canadian Auto Workers.

Obama said Fiat is planning to bring "billions" in technology and car-making ability to the US quickly, and that the Canadian government and the Canadian Auto Workers have also approved the deal (Chrysler has extensive facilities in Canada).

Apparently, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli was among those who didn't wholly support the White House's plan.

"We would have preferred not to use this 'surgical bankruptcy,' Nardelli was quoted as saying by CNBC, "An inordinate amount of time went into creating this plan. This is a bittersweet moment for me."
Incumbent Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli introduces some Chrysler EV concepts at a 2008 press conference; the dream cars weren't enough to catch public - or investor - interest, and Nardelli will leave his Chrysler post, at the latest, when the company emerges from bankruptcy

GM, CHRYSLER BLACKMAILING DEALERS WITH ADMINISTRATION APPROVAL

As the song says, "Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389" ... Tri-Power seen in a 1964 Pontiac GTO engine bay; GM killed Pontiac on Monday morning after 86 years as an important part of the corporation; GM now wants to off some 2,600 Pontiac dealers by the end of 2010 and is threatening not to pay them any compensation, thanks to Bankruptcy Court

Why are GM and Chrysler being allowed by the Administration to very publicly blackmail their dealers through their very-probable bankruptcy filings?

While GM and Chrysler have apparently reached the "acceptance" stage as far as their now-probable bankruptcies, they are also explicitly threatening their dealers by stating they'll use the bankruptcy court's unique "nuclear option" to clear their dealer rolls without compensating their franchisees, something which can only be approved by a bankruptcy judge, effectively allowing the car-makers to ignore the powerful franchise laws which have protected car dealers for almost a century.

Given that, why does the Obama Administration seem so intent on supporting the two companies into bankruptcy, without protection for the dealers?
President Obama might want to ask Secretary of State Clinton for some diplomatic tips on the proper way to handle the very public battle between Detroit and their dealers

Here's how we see it:

Just a few weeks ago, the Administration said the feds might guarantee factory new-car warranties if GM or Chrysler file bankruptcy; that was a nice gesture on the part of the White House (though little more has been heard about it as crunch-time is upon us).

The Administration could make a similar promise to dealers in danger of losing their life-time investments, these businesses which they have planned to be part of their families for generations to come.

President Obama could still encourage the bankruptcies for GM and Chrysler, but should also order bankruptcy judges to not let the companies avoid their responsibilities to their franchised dealers.

As we've written here before, thousands of towns and cities across the nation will be devastated by the loss of these dealerships and the tax dollars which come from them and make-up significant parts of local budgets, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dealership employees who will lose their jobs and the effect of that on their communities.

Chrysler EcoVoyager concept from 2008; Fiat's Cinquecento, their latest 500 model, the Italian company's version of the Mini which they want to build and sell in the US - with Chrysler's help

A deal announced Tuesday by the Treasury Department which will have Chrysler's biggest creditors accept cash instead of equity is a critical hurdle and could help Chrysler merge with Italian automaker Fiat.

On that possible "merger," Fiat vice chairman John Elkann said Tuesday that the viability of an alliance between Fiat and Chrysler won't be known until Thursday, the U.S. government's deadline for Chrysler to wrap up a deal, Italian news agencies reported.

Until then, sit tight.

 

PONTIAC, HUMMER, SAAB, SATURN OFFICIALLY DEAD; GM WORKERS, DEALERS, PLANTS SLASHED

Holden, GM's Australian division, makes this HSV W427 Super-Sedan with the Corvette LS7 drivetrain for domestic consumption; GM's ex-Exec VP Bob Lutz probably thought it'd have made a helluva Pontiac!

Offering tens of billions in crucial debt-for-equity swaps, announcing the official death of the Pontiac division and winding-up a one-hour news conference today by calling for new management to reflect his company's evolving corporate structure, General Motors CEO Frederick "Fritz" Henderson, 51, also said that there is a "greater chance" for a GM bankruptcy than just a few weeks ago.

"We need to win, not merely survive," said Henderson, "doing it (restructuring) once and doing it now."

Hummer, Saab and Saturn will all build their last models this year, Henderson said.

But the biggest product news, though coming as no surprise, was still something of a shock to hear as it was made official after weeks of rumor: Pontiac, next to Chevrolet the most successful entry-level, racing and high-performance division in GM, which created the GTO and the Firebird Trans-Am (and some unfortunates, including the Aztek SUV), will be phased-out entirely by the end of 2010.
A high-performance aftermarket version of the Opel GT, Euro cousin to the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. The Opel will probably continue in production; Sky and Solstice were officially laid to rest today in Detroit

In addition, Henderson said the number of GM dealers in the US will be slashed from its current total of near 6,246 to 3,605 by 2010's end.

Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick are now the company's "four core brands" worldwide and the total number of GM-made nameplates (separate models) sold in the US will be at 34 by the end of 2010, 13 fewer still than called for in GM's February 17, 2009, viability statement.

But ultimately, GM's success, whether in or out of bankruptcy court, will come down to the proposed, hard-to-understand and certainly boring debt-for-equity bond exchange. Bondholders would get about 10% of the company for the $27 billion in debt they hold.

Without those agreements in place, Henderson said, bankruptcy would be the only possible answer to the company's problems. And that bankruptcy filing could come before the June 1st deadline which Washington has set for accepting or rejecting this latest "viability report."

"We have to pull forward on many of those February (report) proposals," Henderson told reporters several times in Detroit's Renaissance Center, GM's headquarters, and those attending and asking questions by phone and via the Web.
Pontiac's "new" GTO, circa 2004, came from Australia's Holden and used a Corvette V8 drivetrain; the car, like its G8 Oz cousin, was a sales disaster in the US, never capturing the public imagination - especially with its gas guzzler-like mileage

"We want to do this only once," Henderson, formerly GM's Chief Financial Officer, said of the restructuring. He replaced Rick Wagoner in the CEO position when Wagoner's resignation was forced on March 31 by the White House.

Henderson, born in Detroit with a classic GM finance section bean-counter background with some solid international experience and a near-Canadian, strong Upper Midwest accent, did get somewhat emotional (or as emotional as an ex-CFO can get) when taking about Pontiac, a division with an almost 90-year history in the company.

"We needed to basically discontinue the work we were doing (to try and save Pontiac) and announce today we are going to discontinue the Pontiac brand by no later than 2010. This is a brand which has a considerable heritage in our company, an this is an intensely personal decision in many ways," he told reporters.

In something of a small surprise, and not a good one for enthusiasts, Henderson said the Pontiac G8, a powerful Corvette-engined sedan built by GM's Holden division in Australia and sold at US Pontiac dealers since last year, would be discontinued entirely, both in the US and Australia. There had been some talk of G8 possibly being sold as stand-alone Pontiac performance model at other GM dealerships to keep the division's name alive, if not much else; but no car-maker can afford even that small amount of vanity or nostalgia these days, even the mighty GM.

Also, Henderson said the Pontiac Solstice coupe is being killed along with its twin, the Saturn Sky (though an Opel version will still be built in Europe), and that the company is in talks with Toyota about the factory they share, New United Motors Manufacturing Incorporated (NUMMI), in Fremont, CA, where the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix share parts and an assembly line.
This 2006 Hummer H3 was the "smallest" civilian version yet of the originally made-for-the-military truck

INDYCAR's DANICA PATRICK EXHIBITS TRUE ASSETS ON SHAPE MAGAZINE COVER

Patrick, flanked by Helio Castroneves (l) and Dan Wheldon after her win at Twin Ring Motegi last year, in her natural habitat - cute, but workmanlike; that's decidedly changed on June's Shape Magazine cover

"It's my first real girl cover!" Danica Patrick excitedly told a reporter from the Versus cable channel about her cover photo on the June, 2009 Shape magazine, before the start of today's Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 race at Kansas Speedway, a high-speed 1 ½-mile oval track.

Patrick started the race in third position and finished fifth.

Patrick secured her place in history by being the first woman ever to win a major open-wheel racing series event, the Honda 300, held April, 2008, at Twin Ring Motegi, Japan.

She's appeared in what seems like innumerable ads and on TV shows, magazine covers and websites, but like most race car drivers used in advertising, she's almost always wearing her head-to-toe and very baggy Nomex fire-proof driving suit.

On the Shape cover, she's traded fire safety for heat-generation, in a tight and taut gold bikini.

The advertising theory is that racers are recognized much more quickly by their fans if they're shown in those suits, which many agree aren't exactly the sexiest uniforms ever developed for any profession.

The marketing theorists and professors may be right, but we're all in favor of trying something new when it comes drivers like Danica - and even Indy 500 winner and TV's "Dancing With the Stars" champion Helio Castroneves is probably as recognizable now in a tuxedo - or out of it - as in any red and white racing suit with "Penske" or "Honda" stenciled on the front.

There were three women in the Kansas race Sunday, including the 27-year old Patrick, who hails from Roscoe, IL and lives in Phoenix, AZ, Milka Duno (also 27, from Caracas, Venezuela and living in Miami, FL) and American Sarah Fisher (29, born in Commercial Point, Ohio and lives in Indianapolis).
IndyCar driver Danica Patrick graces the cover of June's Shape magazine

It was easily one of the most female driver-intense IndyCar events in years. Patrick is getting all the sport's attention these days, the rock star goddess of IndyCar, seeming to always have something up her sleeve for the fans and the media, whether it's her win in Japan, a surprise fourth-place finish on a street course at last week's Long Beach Grand Prix in Southern California, or her third-place start and fifth-place finish at Kansas earlier today (her fastest lap of the day was 210.600 miles per hour, just .375 mph off the day's fastest overall lap, turned-in by fourth-place finisher Ryan Briscoe; Scott Dixon won the race with Castroneves second and Tony Kanaan third).

OUR AUTO SHOWS ON www.TalkRadioOne.com THIS WEEKEND!

Just-announced-today 2010 Corvette Grand Sport - Join Steve on www.TalkRadioOne.com Saturday at 5pm Pacific when he questions Corvette Marketing Manager Harlan Charles about the car -- and call-in with your own questions, too! 213-341-4353

Saturday at 5pm Pacific on Steve Parker's THE CAR NUT SHOW - Join TR1 auto expert and Huffington Post auto blogger Steve Parker on the death of Pontiac (scheduled for Monday; they schedule these things in advance now) and quick reports on two new cars Steve drove and actually liked: Nissan's Rogue AWD mini-SUV based on the Sentra SE-R platform (another Parker fave), and the really cool Mazda6, unlike anything you may have driven before. Steve's guest: Harlan Charles, GM's big-shot Chevrolet Corvette Marketing Manager, and they'll talk about the just-announced-today 2010 Corvette Grand Sport, latest in a long line of high-end Grand Sport 'Vettes.

Sunday at 5pm Pacific on Steve Parker's WORLD RACING ROUNDUP - Auto journalist Steve Parker covers the world racing scene this weekend and previews what's coming up next week, from F1 to IndyCar to NASCAR, World Rally and as much else as we can squeeze into a one-hour WebRadio show - always needing your phone calls, too! Steve's guest: Nate Ryan, motorsports writer for USA TODAY, and they'll talk everything from Sarah Fisher trying to get into this year's Indy 500 (it's the 100th anniversary of the track) to the all-new Brawn-Mercedes Grand Prix F1 team which is setting records no one thought possible for a new - or even an old - team; and your calls!

Both shows are on www.TalkRadioOne.com LIVE beginning at 5pm Pacific Saturday and Sunday. Free podcasts of the shows are available on the site less than one hour after the live shows are complete; it's easy to find podcasts of all of Steve's previous shows, too.

REPORT BREAKING NOW - PONTIAC DIES ON MONDAY

An enthusiastic GM Exec VP Bob Lutz, now retired, introduces the Australian-built "new" Pontiac GTO to the media in 2004; the car's sales were dismal as gas prices were on their way up and V8 engines were on their way out

Pontiac is a General Motors division which, from the 1960s through the '90s, knew exactly what it was: "We build excitement" was their tagline, and most Americans believed that, and many of them bought Pontiacs.

Inside Line reports that, according to a source at General Motors, the company will announce next Monday its new "faster, deeper" reorganization plan, which will likely include a death sentence for the Pontiac brand.

Tom Wilkinson, news relations PR man for General Motors (and who has posted comments on this Huff Post blog), told Inside Line when contacted: "There's nothing I can share with you at this time. Keep your eyes on our media site. Officially, nothing has changed with Pontiac's niche-brand status, until you hear differently."

The one-time "Excitement" division and creator of legends such as the first musclecar, the GTO, and Firebird was relegated to "niche" or "specialty" brand status by General Motors in its first viability plan in December of last year.
The GTO musclecar reached its most outrageous iteration with the 1969 Judge, Pontiac's answer to the admittedly cartoonish-and-proud-of-it Plymouth Road Runner; Jim Wangers, Pontiac's marketing chief at the division's ad agency in the '60s, who is called by some the "Godfather of the GTO" and was responsible for marketing the Judge, told me, "We built about 20,000 Judge models, and today there are well over 50,000 of them left - just go to any auction to find them!"

The company toyed with competing proposals to either turn the brand into GM's version of Scion or to make Pontiac a very focused purveyor of performance cars based around the critically well-received G8 planned to possibly to be sold in other, formerly competing, GM division showrooms. For the past year, the survival of Pontiac as a stand-alone GM division was not expected to continue.

Ultimately, Pontiac was chosen as the "easiest" to kill since it was cut from GM's self-defined herd of four "core brands," Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick. Most Pontiac franchises have already been combined with Buick and GMC.
Pontiac's last high-performance Hurrah - the 2009 G8, imported from GM's Holden division in Australia with its Corvette drivetrain and aimed at upper-middle-class male musclecar freaks. Great car, wrong time, no mpg. Pontiac had the same problem with their "new" GTO in 2004; it, too, was another Holden import, but high-fuel prices and too little visual and DNA family attachment to the original GTO doomed it from the beginning. Both cars were part of former GM Exec VP Bob Lutz's (failed) plan to revitalize Pontiac

If true, then on Monday Pontiac will join Saab, Saturn and Hummer as brands that will not survive GM's current troubles -- at least not as a component of General Motors.

LONG BEACH - THE GOOD, BAD, UGLY AND SOMEWHAT QUICK; BUT NO FANS!

Dario Franchitti dedicated his victory to his wife, Ashley Judd, whose 41st birthday they celebrated together at Long Beach - kind of a boring proposition in Long Beach, especially if Parker's Lighthouse is full, unless you do win

 

It was a weekend of record-hot temperatures, so they threw a hell of a car race this past Sunday in Long Beach, CA.

After a dozen years, two angry, disparate and heading-downhill-into-obscurity-fast open-wheel racing series, the Indy Racing League and Champ Car (aka CART) had been combined this past year into IndyCar, one American open-wheel series featuring the country’s most familiar drivers, sponsors and teams.

Long Beach, 2009, would be IndyCar’s first big showcase (and we won’t go into the other series which ran at Long Beach, the American LeMans Series, IndyLites and etc; there’s time to cover those in the future).

Raymond Chandler's most famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe, frequently has a portion of his adventures in a place called "Bay City", modeled on depression-era Santa Monica, just about 20 miles north of Long Beach.

Given its description by Marlowe as "a wide-open town", where gambling and other crimes thrive due to a massively corrupt and ineffective police force, Long Beach could serve as the modern model for Chandler’s Bay City (no e-mails from cops, please; Chandler wrote over years ago, and the LB PD doesn't have the best reputation in So Cal).

Through the race, the world sees the results of the notoriety and money the race has brought to Long Beach; the city’s high-rise condos, semi-trendy yet expensive restaurants, cruise ships, the Queen Mary (and adjoining Russian submarine) and an aquarium, convention center and performing arts center which all sit smack in the middle of the race circuit, along with disguised oil wells which after 100 years still pump money into the general fund and the mid-high office towers and hotels along Ocean Boulevard just off the race track.

One block from the track area, though, Long Beach remains one of So Cal’s toughest towns, kind of a big-league, tougher Torrance, which local reader might appreciate.

Danica Patrick, with help from team principal Michael Andretti, who was calling the strategic shots, ran one of her best races ever, finishing fourth after a terrible qualifying effort of 21st; here she's on her way to winning her first race, the first major open-wheel win by any woman, almost a year to the day before Long Beach, 2009, at Twin Ring Motgei, Japan

Long Beach has been known as “Iowa by the Sea” and the “Land of the Nearly Dead and Newly Wed” for its Midwest transplants and heavily-skewed young/old population. And for all the good the race has done a small part of the downtown area, the city still has one of the largest and most-unused airports in Southern California, Disney pulled out of a planned “major ocean attraction” with the city years ago and hasn’t come back, the huge, attractive dome which housed Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, the gigantic balsa-wood aircraft built as a concept to ferry WWII troops, whose only powered flight was in Long Beach Harbor, is now a cruise chip terminal and the So Cal airplane itself is in some private museum in the northwest and the boondoggle of the Queen Mary is forced to reinvent nearly every year in desperate bids to bring-in tourists.

If not for the race, some might call Bay City, uh, Long Beach, something of a loser. (Before So Cal readers get too angry, Long Beach neighborhoods like Bixby Knolls, Naples and Belmont Shore are among the finest anywhere – but Long Beach is more the size of an average county, not a mere large city, so for some, the “less desirable”  neighborhoods stretch long and far).

Penske driver Helio Castroneves beat an IRS federal rap Friday night in a Miami courtroom, flew to Long Beach, qualified eighth, then beat Penske teammate Will Power out of the sorted-out car Power drive to the pole; Power got back at his boss and his co-driver in the Penske tradition, by not giving in, and finishing second in his poorly set-up car and - most important - beating Castroneves (www.SteveParker.com photo)

Thanks to the small race crowds this year, we were able to park –- legal and free and on city streets -- barely four blocks from the track, but the thought of coming back to a broken-into car was with us much of the day (though things turned out fine; a heavy police presence around the track area, to put it mildly, certainly helped keep crime down – one weekend a year).

And not just the LB cops were on-the-job. This may or may not have been ranked a “national security event” by the Department of Department of Homeland Security, like the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and the Masters (check out those two "kids" walking every hole with Tiger) but we spotted too many buff young men and women with windbreakers (even in 100 degree heat, got to hide those guns and cuffs, and look nonthreatening and college-age while doing it), backpacks and earpieces to think the local cops were the only ones in town.

You can't have a Long Beach Grand Prix story without running a crowd-watches-race-with-Queen-Mary-in-the-background-photo, so here it is; I think it's a law, actually

A very weird-looking Chevy Suburban, parked in an off-limits corner well out of the public eye, had TV send and receive antennas on its top. Never saw anything like it (and we’ve seen a lot; probably too much in this lifetime alone), and another 5-seconds of investigation revealed Washington, DC license plates. Oh. I felt better already. If Tony Soprano – or Tony George -- showed up, they’d take him out in a second!

When the race began in 1975, the old, sleazy Pike Amusement Park filled most of the flatland area where the track is today, bars and tattoo shops catering to sailors were the major local industries (Long Beach, like San Diego and San Francisco, was a major US Navy base) and a Grand Prix employee spent part of every year using black tarp to cover up the marquee of the Mitchell Bros. porno theater on Ocean Boulevard, lest the city’s guests find offense (the original track configuration used Ocean as a main straight and pit area; cars flew up Pine Avenue to get to Ocean, going airborne with drivers willing them every way they could to hit the ground and just…turn…right, then they crashed them back down Linden Avenue to the flats, destroying suspensions on every lap – Great fun to watch, and hear! Today, the track is entirely on the flat landfill holding the convention center, aquarium and the Hyatt Hotel).

After the opening “test” race of F5000 in 1975 (still one of the best races, if not the best, in Long Beach racing history), followed by a decade-or-so of Formula 1 (which American fans never got used to – or liked very much), Long Beach switched to the CART circuit and the good times started rolling. Dramatic rivalries between various Unsers and Andrettis dominated for years, drivers like Nigel Mansell, Bobby Rahal and Alex Zanardi (personal favorite) became almost as famous as did Penske and Ganassi as owners.

Stan Barrett in his #98 Curb/Agajanian/3G race car acquitted himself well in his second IndyCar event. Barrett, who had a long and successful NASCAR career, while never reaching the "top," decided with his partners that this might be a good time to try IndyCar, with some costs for the sport going down. He's started and finished both races this season, starting 21st and finishing 17th at Long Beach (www.SteveParker.com photo)

 

Although in a CART race, you’re rarely able to chat-up George Harrison or Rod and Alana Stewart in the pits – maybe Jim Nabors or Burt Reynolds, on a good day. The EuroTrash always looked more than little lost in Long Beach; Monaco, it ain’t, no matter what anyone says.

Then Tony George screwed it all up for everyone.

"GREEN CARS" - JUST THE LATEST AUTOMOTIVE MARKETING SCAM (REMEMBER "SUVs?")

Fisker's Karma sports sedan uses extended-range gas/electric hybrid technology, which is a fancy way of saying it uses a gasoline engine to keep the car's batteries charged, like GM plans to do with their Volt. It appears that, right now, $80K, the price of a Karma, might be what we have to pay to get a high-mileage hybrid with any sense of style outside of the car's computer software.

This past week, one of my editors at the Huffington Post asked me to explore, for a video project he was working on, the relative "greenness" of the Toyota Prius gas/electric hybrid versus the BMW Mini Cooper.

Then it occurred to me: What's a green car, anyway? The Prius is the "star of our green show" these days, and while the Mini may be green enough for most folks, and damn cute, too, it's also full of style, fun and performance. Owning a Prius, though, isn't exactly like having a Formula 1 car in your driveway.

We're all hung up on "green" when it comes to our cars, and car-makers tell us we have plenty of green vehicles to choose from. Well, at least greener than they used to be.

Renault-Nissan and Mitsubishi both made major EV announcements last week (I posted a piece on it), so it's going to be more difficult for high-mileage gasoline engine-makers like Mini, hybrid-makers like Toyota and clean-diesel car-makers like Mercedes to make strong "green" claims once EVs start hitting showrooms in a big way. Which looks it may be a lot sooner than any of us thought.
The racing year 1964 went down as particularly memorable. Paddy Hopkirk and his co-driver Henry Liddon powered to a Monte Carlo Rally victory in a Mini Cooper S, to the astonishment of the rest of the field and the racing fraternity. This initial Mini victory was repeated in the following year and in 1967, but it's the first victory that sticks in the mind. The Grimaldi clan of Prince Ranier, Princess Grace and the rest greet the winning car. The win established the Mini as both racing and styling legend; there are few designs which remain absolutely contemporary year in and out without major changes, and Mini is one of them.

The "greenness" decision between Prius and Mini, and any other cars one might want to compare, ultimately is still more about opinion than hard fact, and that's because people are emotional about cars.

It's possible that if someone crunched all the objective numbers from the 2009 Mini Cooper and Prius (and all the numbers we'll use are from the base versions of the cars) some computer somewhere might have the balls to say which is greener.

But because those specifications supplied by BMW and Toyota are "interpreted" by various government agencies which provide more of a subjective result, then the rightly-derided "automotive enthusiast press" has their go at it and finally even those "results" and "conclusions" are evaluated by an emotional public ("Well, sure the Prius MUST be greener! It's a hybrid, after all!"), you can see the difficulty in coming up with a good, hard answer to: "What's the greenest car?"
This and other 2010 Prius plug-in hybrid concepts have been running around the US getting millions of real-world miles of driving experience. Of course, only this one has been used so heavily in promoting the new car.

OUR WEEKEND LIVE AUTOMOTIVE AND RACING RADIO SHOWS!

Honda's Asimo robot is electric, an EV of a sort, if you will ... Honda competitors Mitsubishi and Renault-Nissan made their own big EV announcements the past few days.

This weekend's WebRadio shows, Saturday and Sunday live at 5pm Pacific time, on www.TalkRadioOne.com:

Saturday, April 11, 2009
THE CAR NUT SHOW
General-interest automotive talk and opinion

We cover the major EV announcements this past week by both Mitsubishi (the i MiEV) and Renault-Nissan, take a look at the latest version of one of the original Asian SUVs sold in the US, the 2009 Nissan Pathfinder SE 4x4 ($39K, 16 mpg fuel economy average) and tell you more about Nat King Cole and his hit, Route 66, than anyone has a right to know.
Mitsubishi last week announced world production and sales plans for their i MiEV plug-in EV.

Sunday, April 12, 2009
WORLD RACING ROUNDUP
The name says it all ...

Joey "The Kid" Logano beats Kyle Busch (again) in NASCAR's Nationwide Series, both racing Toyota Camrys, the newest team in Formula 1, with the two oldest drivers in the sport, Brawn-Mercedes Grand Prix, continues their shocking and winning ways and we preview next weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach which will feature the Toyota Celebrity Race (using Scion tC models), the American LeMans Series endurance cars, drifting competitions and the IndyCar open-wheel racers. Plus your phone calls!
If Roger Penske team driver Helio Castroneves beats his current IRS rap (a jury in Miami could decide his fate this week) he may enter the Long Beach race; in any event, we'll be there live blogging and on-the-air next weekend.

Reminder - Next week is the 35th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (CA), the world's second-heaviest attended and viewed motorsports event (behind only the Indy 500) and we'll be there on-the-scene covering the events live all weekend on our Huff Post and other blogs and live WebRadio shows on www.TalkRadioOne.com Saturday and Sunday, April 18 and 19, beginning at 5pm Pacific time both days. Special guests, your phone calls and comments and plenty of surprises ... so join us LIVE!

Free podcasts of our shows are posted on www.TalkRadioOne.com usually less than one hour after the live shows conclude.

CRUCIAL DECISION - MITSUBISHI COMMITS TO WORLD DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTION OF "i MiEV PURE ELECTRIC CAR"

Fuel prices in Palm Desert, CA in May, 2008; most in government and the auto industry say only high gas prices and taxes will force industry-wide EV development.

From a Mitsubishi Motors press release dated April 9, 2009:

"New York - Mitsubishi Motors is accelerating its drive toward greater environmental responsibility and reinforcing its Drive@Earth global sustainability initiative by announcing today its commitment to develop the pure electric, four-passenger Mitsubishi i MiEV for global markets.

Ending months of heightening speculation, Mitsubishi Motors North America President and CEO Shinichi Kurihara confirmed the i MiEV (Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle) is being developed for sale in world markets, including the United States.

"Electric vehicles are one branch of the automotive landscape and we are dedicated to providing these technology-sourced solutions as an important path for the world's clean-air options," explained Kurihara, who stood alongside a Left Hand Drive i MiEV during his address to journalists at the New York International Auto Show. "We believe the i MiEV delivers on the promise of sustainability, suitable range, performance, and innovative packaging and styling."
Mitsu's production i MiEV models will grow out of the company's EV concepts, long a part of their corporate R&D culture and commitment to future vehicles; Mitsubishi has lengthy and unique corporate experience in the automotive, airplane, aerospace and energy generation fields at all levels, from concept to R&D to production of technologies.

The award-winning Mitsubishi i MiEV is expected to be the world's first practical electric vehicle offered by a major automobile manufacturer when fleet sales begin this July in Japan.

State of Oregon and Portland General Electric Join Partnership

Kurihara was pleased to also announce that the State of Oregon and Portland General Electric (PGE) (NYSE:POR) are joining Mitsubishi in the i MiEV partnership program. "State of Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski is a progressive thinker who is providing a roadmap of the future," commented Kurihara. "The State of Oregon and Portland General Electric will become valuable partners in helping validate the future of all electric vehicles." (Blogger's note: Ron Tonkin, the #81 car dealer group in the US and based in Portland, recently signed-on with Fisker for exclusive rights to sell that company's sporty, luxurious and expensive extended-range gas/electric hybrids in Oregon).

Details of the programs are being finalized, but the findings from these real-world, independent tests will play an important role in further advancing the car's development for the U.S. market.
The company has remained dedicated to the i MiEV's "quick-charge socket" system to allow simple and fast recharging of the EV at home or away.

SPIED! PORSCHE PANAMERAS TAKE OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FREEWAY!

This is what a bunch of Porsche Panamera sedans look like when coming at you in your side mirror.

Just over a month ago, Porsche released the production facts and figures and pricing for their new Panamera four-door sedan. And today, we nearly ran over a group of them being driven - by engineers or journalists? - in the Southern California desert.

You can have your Stuttgart, Detroit, Tokyo, Paris and Shanghai - the Southern California freeways are still the best car show in the world.

Whether it's Jerry Seinfeld piloting a highly-illegal and frighteningly-fast gray-market Porsche 959 on the San Diego Freeway at 3am, just an off-ramp or two from Hermosa Beach's Vasek Polak, Southern California's premier Porsche performance and race car dealer, Jay Leno driving alone and aiming his completely open-to-the-elements Stutz Bearcat at a Santa Monica Freeway on-ramp on a cold, wet evening following an event at the Petersen Automotive Museum or Bruce Springsteen casually making a right turn into traffic against a red light from LaCienega to Sunset in his black Carrera, running into the famous, the newest and the best is par for the course on the South Left Coast, and not unexpected or shocking at all. And I personally witnessed all the auto/celeb sightings just recounted.

 

Driving past the single-line group of 2010 Panamera Porsche sedans, the generic Porsche front-end styling gave away the cars' identities.

Prices for the 2010 Panamera model, which will go on-sale in the US in October this year, will start at $89,000. The four-door is a front engine/rear driver (as the universe intended cars to be) with all-wheel drive a high-end option.

Engine choices will include the entry-level Volkswagen-made 3.6-liter six-cylinder with 300 horsepower, an 'S' model making 400 hp from a 4.8-liter V8, and the Turbo variant with an estimated 500 horses. The all-wheel-drive 4S will base at $93,800 and the Turbo will ring-in at $132,600, which is slightly more than a Cayenne Turbo.
Someone say Chrysler Crossfire? A group of Porsche's 2010 Panamera sedan models were captured by the author and his iPhone on the I-10 freeway outside Palm Springs, CA

Speaking of the Cayenne, the covey of Panameras we spotted in legal road-going action this morning looked like Cayennes which had been left too long on top of a hot Bunsen burner. Melted; way out of any sensible stylistic proportion, with, yes, truly big butts. Porsche has apparently chosen to use the term "sedan" to better compete with other big bruisers including the current Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Maserati Quattroporte and the classic (1976 through 1989) Aston-Martin Lagonda.

ALL-NEW BRAWN-MERCEDES MAKES IT TWO F1 THRILLERS IN A ROW

Brawn GP's Jenson Button on his way to his second consecutive pole-to-checkered victory last week in Malaysia.

This week’s Tornante (my weekly automotive column for the Santa Monica Daily Press; www.SMDP.com) was slated to be oh-so-serious and ever-so-insightful, all about the Obama Administration’s sacking of General Motors’ CEO Rick Wagoner and the future of GM and Chrysler, both probably headed for bankruptcy, as Ford hangs on to solvency by a thread.

 

But I needed a break. So I made the Command Decision to let Wagoner, Obama, Ford and Chrysler go their merry ways, at least this week, anyway, and focus on the auto industry’s funny pages – motor racing.

We also did this recently in previewing the upcoming Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (from which I’ll be live blogging for SMDP, Huffington Post, SteveParker.com, Whipnotic.com, et al, and doing my TalkRadioOne.com weekend radio shows live, too) and, quite unexpectedly, we’re focusing on the auto industry’s fun factor again this week.

 

So what’s such big racing news?

 

It comes from the world’s most sophisticated and expensive racing series, Formula 1. The winner of the F1 season is called the World Driving Champion, and very few argue with that title. 

 

Popular, colorful former F1 and CART champ Nigel Mansell, after winning a race, popularized the saying, "All credit to the boys (behind the scenes)" - In this case, the boys being, l to r, Rubens Barrichello, Ross Brawn and Jenson Button, sharing the podium following the team's one-two start and one-two finish in Oz' F1 season-opener, March 29.

 

Dynasties rule in F1; teams like Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW and Mercedes-Benz traditionally dominate the sport for years and even decades on end, while drivers like Schumacher, Fangio, Lauda, Andretti, Hunt, Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton and more become brands as strong and famous as long-time F1 sponsors including John Player, Parmalat, TAG Heuer, Olympus, Canon and Nikon cameras and scores of others.

 

Upstarts are neither expected nor appreciated in F1. Convention rules.

 

Which makes the past two weeks of F1 history all the more strange and wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brawn-Mercedes doesn't have many sponsors - yet. One of the few is Richard Branson who brings with him his Virgin Airlines.

 

WILL DETROIT BUDGET CUTS DOOM THE U.S. IN WORLD'S FUTURE EV MARKET?

This magnificent Audi R8 sports coupe has been outfitted with a V12 TDI clean diesel engine as a rolling technology test bed to allow the company to judge whether to offer the new powerplant throughout their line-up.

Forget for a moment the lost sales, the lost jobs, the lost taxes from car sales which states and cities rely on for their annual budgets - the perfect financial storm decimating the US auto industry could also result in the nation's largest manufacturing industry falling even farther behind overseas competitors when it comes to developing much-needed cars and trucks of the future.

As GM and Chrysler wait in line at US Bankruptcy Court and Ford tries mightily to sell Volvo to at least continue to appear solvent, other car makers worldwide are moving full-speed ahead with their electric vehicle R&D programs.

And nearly all industry analysts say that, long-term, an all-EV fleet should be the ultimate goal coming out of the current plethora of various technologies, many still in development, some available now, from clean diesels to gas/electric hybrids to bio-fuels like ethanol and everything else in-between.
Mitsubishi's plug-in EV, the i-MiEV.

Whether fueled by electricity from new, vastly-upgraded national power grids or using fuel cell and other systems which make their own electricity, future EVs will have a place in almost every garage as oil-fired internal combustion engine fleets are replaced throughout the rest of this century. And experts agree it will take about 100 years for the world fleet to swap most all the oil-burners for real EVs.

Industry journal Automotive News reports, "Shares of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. jumped to a three-month high on Friday after a news report said the automaker would double its annual electric car production capacity target in the business year to March 2012.

"Shares of the Japanese carmaker rose as much as 7.3 percent in early trading after the Nikkei business daily said Mitsubishi Motors would lift its target for output of the i-MiEV electric car to an annual 20,000 units and more than double output of lithium ion batteries.

"A lithium ion battery joint venture between Mitsubishi Motors, GS Yuasa Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp. will invest roughly 3 billion yen ($30 million) to more than double capacity at a plant in Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, to 5,000 units a year by autumn 2010, the paper also said."
Lithium-ion battery pack for the i-MiEV; at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan displayed smaller, lighter and less-expensive versions of then-current l-ion batteries, and Renault-Nissan is making a strong commitment to these battery systems and overall EV technology.

THIS WEEKEND'S LIVE AUTO AND RACING SHOWS ON TalkRadioOne.com!

Our WebRadio automotive shows happen LIVE every Saturday and Sunday on www.TalkRadioOne.com at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern. And you're an important part of the shows, too! The call-in number for both shows is: 213-341-4353.

This weekend, Steve Parker's CAR NUT SHOW, Saturday at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, welcomes Warren Brown, longtime automotive writer for the Washington Post. Brown penned a column earlier this week entitled, "America's auto industry will rise again" and Steve will delve into Warren's views on the future of the industry, and how it got to where it's at today - plus a closer look at the Tata Nano, India's all-new $2,000 four-door sedan. We'll also go over all the latest in important world auto news, review a new vehicle or two ... and take your phone calls LIVE.
Tata's $2,000 Nano sedan went on-sale last week throughout India. Will it be sold in the US or Europe?

Steve Parker's WORLD RACING ROUND-UP, this and every Sunday at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, chats-up ex-Champ Car racer and current motorsports media mogul (his description) Kurt Hansen on everything from the all-new Miller Motorsports Park outside Salt Lake City, a new "motorsports country club" where racing enthusiasts make their dreams come true, to how the world economy and credit crisi is impacting every level of the entire motorsports industry. Plus race results from around the world and your phone calls at 213-341-4353.
An Indycar gets serviced during a pit stop at the Long Beach Grand Prix - the 35th iteration of that race happens this month.

Free podcasts of the shows are available within an hour of their live conclusions. Podcasts of previous CAR NUT and WORLD RACING ROUND-UP shows and all the other programming are there for the clicking at www.TalkRadioOne.com.

You're invited to tune-in, listen ... and participate!

WORLD CAR MAKERS -- WITH WAGONER GONE, WHAT NOW?

A bunch of 2010 Camaros, now in production in Oshawa, Ontario, ready for dealerships - Is anyone buying, or are the cars just another poorly-timed GM boondoggle?

President Obama's schedule for this past Monday:

1) Fire the CEO of General Motors

2) Fly to London

Can anyone imagine George W. Bush sacking the head of GM?

The Detroit News reports that, "March vehicle sales were still bad, but automakers expressed some cautious optimism Wednesday after the monthly tally showed a smaller year-over-year decline than most had been expecting and an improvement over February's dismal numbers.

"US car and truck sales totaled 857,735 units last month -- a 24 percent improvement over February's total, but 36.8 percent less than the 1,356,926 vehicles sold in March of 2008.

"Analysts had been expecting March to be much worse. Just a day earlier, some were predicting an annualized selling rate of 8.9 million units, but it came in at 9.9 million."
Rick Wagoner and Bob Lutz are today both gone from GM.

March sales saw GM dropping 48.8% over March, 2008, Toyota down 37.1%, Ford losing 43.3% and Chrysler running 45.5% behind the same month last year.

Three winners emerged in March US sales: Hyundai was up 0.5%, Kia 1% and Subaru gained 1.6%. Smart was up 42%, sounding impressive, but Smarts were just becoming available a year ago.

So: What now for Detroit?

It would have been so much easier for Mr. Obama and his auto task force chiefs Tim Geithner and Steve Rattner to throw-out Bob Nardelli of Chrysler; he's not well-known and his company, now privately-owned, has been in trouble for so many years that his being forced-out seems a foregone conclusion anyway.

But the head of GM? Rick Wagoner, who took home $26 million in 2007? Fire him?

Talk about your ultimate symbolism; as the Democratic governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm said, Wagoner was the "sacrificial lamb."

But that's not always a bad thing.
A Smart EV concept.

F1 SHOCKER! ALL-NEW BRAWN GP TEAM STARTS 1 - 2 AND FINISHES THE SAME WAY

F1's first race of the season gets underway in Australia

Two of the three oldest drivers in Formula 1 racing started one - two and finished the same way in the season-opener of the world's most prestigious and expensive racing series at the Grand Prix of Melbourne (Australia).

Drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello are members of a team which didn't even exist a month ago, Brawn GP.

The two drivers are relatively old for the sport, but age also brings experience and skill, and both drivers and their team ran a smart, determined and aggressive race.

Italian Jarno Trulli took third place for Toyota, the world's largest car maker.
Jenson Button started first and finished first in the F1 season-opener in Oz

Reigning World Driving Champion Lewis Hamilton of the UK started 18th on the 20-car grid and finished fourth, by passing other cars and attrition, winning points for himself and the McLaren Mercedes team as he began defending his title.

The race saw the safety car, the F1 equivalent of the yellow flag in American racing, deployed twice.

After the race's start, Button never looked back in the 58 lap event, establishing a huge lead in the first lap.

The UK's Ross Brawn, one of the top engineers and strategists in F1, who had a strong hand in creating the glory days of F1 teams including Benetton and Ferrari, just a month ago put together a leveraged buy-out of the former Honda F1 team.

Honda, an on-again, off-again force in the sport since the 1960's, and the first Japanese company to enter the world of F1, and made an American driver, Richie Ginther, the team's star (see the movie "Grand Prix" starring Toshiro Mifuni as Mr. Honda and James Garner as Ginther).

Honda left F1 during the recent off-season, saying the huge budget which F1 demands (estimated at over $400 million annually for competitive teams) could not be justified during the worldwide recession.

In fact, apart from Richard Branson's Virgin Air, there were almost no sponsor logos on the Brawn GP cars. We predict that will change before the series' next race.
Sir Richard Branson appeared to have a good time at the F1 season-opener

OUR LIVE WebRadio SHOWS THIS WEEKEND!

Ferrari is building the race car engines for the 2009/2010 A1GP series; teams represent their home nations

F Please join us this weekend for our live WebRadio shows on www.TalkRadioOne.com.

Saturday, it's The Car Nut Show, a live, general-interest automotive call-in show focusing on new technologies and the latest cars and trucks coming down the road, as well as the current trials and tribulations of Detroit, Tokyo, Stuttgart and etc...
Honda's all-new Insight is preparing the company for a hybrid war with Toyota

What's up with the all-new, under-$20,000 Honda Insight gas/electric hybrid? Toyota is taking up the challenge, and will do battle with Honda by introducing an all-new hybrid priced lower than the popular Prius. To straighten it all out for us, our Saturday guest is Richard Truett, engineering editor of industry journal Automotive News. So the talk will be all "green;" the automotive kind and that other, more familiar, kind, too.

Each Sunday brings World Racing Roundup (which is pretty self-explanatory). Most all the major series have started their new seasons, from IndyCar to NHRA drag racing, ALMS endurance cars, World Rally, Formula One, NASCAR and all the rest.

A hot new racing series is A1 Grand Prix (www.A1GP.com), and we take you to London for a cup'a tea and a nice chat with Ann Bradshaw, one of the top executives of A1GP.

Both shows are LIVE Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific/9pm Eastern. Everyone worldwide is welcome to ring us at 213-341-4353. Free podcasts are available anytime at www.TalkRadioOne.com.

And thanks for tuning-in.

 

TATA'S $2,000 NANO SEDAN COMES WITH HEAVY BAGGAGE

(This 1954 Mercedes-Benz "gullwing" 300SL was owned by the late Don Ricardo of Pasadena, CA, one of the world's premier car collectors, and was the only Mercedes to ever receive factory-sponsorship for drag racing and land speed record runs; it came with fitted luggage)

Some super-expensive cars, including Ferrari, Rolls-Royce and Bentley are available with custom fitted luggage, done-up in the same color and material which graces the car interior.

The Tata Nano, the world's most inexpensive production car, publicly launched this week in New Delhi, India, also comes with its own baggage, but not the kind which many car-buyers would want.

Tata is one of the biggest manufacturing concerns in India, and its size allows the company to sell Nano, at least initially, for either a small profit or a loss. Depending on the Indian Rupee's exchange value, 100,000 Rupees makes the car a good buy as it hits showrooms throughout the subcontinent. Right now, the retail 100,000 Rupee cost equals about USD $2,000.

Nano has been a positive for Tata worldwide, but more of a negative within India.
(Protesters in West Bengal, where Nano was slated for production, burn a Nano effigy on the day of its public introduction in New Delhi)

But good press can equal bad press, too, and positive media coverage about the car has been offset by Tata's political and social problems in its home country.

Reuters India reports that, "Tata Motors on Thursday unveiled its 'People's Car', the 4-door Nano, which will be the world's cheapest car with a dealer price of 100,000 rupees.

Following are some details on the car, which was presented at the Auto Expo in New Delhi.

* Length: 10.17 feet

* Height: 5.25 feet

* Width: 4.9 feet

* Engine: Nano has a throbbing (my little joke) 33-horsepower engine and is rear-wheel drive. The 2-cylinder, 623 cc, multi-point fuel-injection petrol engine is rear mounted. Tata said it was the first time a 2-cylinder gasoline engine was being used in a car with single balancer shaft.
(Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata's board of directors, introduced the Nano at a media event in 2008)

* Safety: Tata said the Nano has an all sheet-metal body, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat-belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body. Tires are tubeless.

• Environment: Tata said tailpipe emission performance exceeded current regulatory requirements, and the Nano had a lower overall pollution level than two-wheelers made in India. It said high fuel efficiency (20 km/litre) ensured low carbon dioxide emissions." (end of Reuters report)

AIG V. DETROIT - AND RENEGOTIATING CONTRACTS

(A 2010 Mustang Cobra - wrong car, wrong times)

Here's just one example of how bad things are for the Detroit Three: GM announced Wednesday that they have more than 14,000 orders for the new 2010 Chevrolet Camaro. That's a nice, round number for an eagerly-awaited car which has just gone into production.

But at the SEMA automotive aftermarket trade show in Las Vegas during the first week of November, 2008, GM officials told me then the company had 8,000 orders for the new car. This means Chevy has received only 6,000 orders for the new Camaro in the past five months. Not a good number.

Now that we've seen AIG CEO Edward Liddy "in action," so to speak, it's appropriate for an update to our most recent post about the differences in how Washington has treated Detroit and Wall Street. Edward Liddy was formerly the CEO of Allstate - so I guess we're all in "good hands" (he wrote sarcastically).

Many Americans have a "let them die" mentality when it comes to the Detroit Three, and you really can't fault them, at least when they're talking about these companies' products.
(New 2010 Camaros readied for shipment to dealers)

Someone, though, has to stick up for those companies, and it might as well be me - at least for now. Those of you who follow this blog know that my support of Detroit is very complex, and mostly based on my fervent desire to not add another three to four million Americans to our nation's vast assembly of the unemployed; nor the many more millions worldwide whose jobs can easily disappear, overnight.

Wednesday, Liddy told the congressional committee AIG "retention bonus" contracts are inviolate, permanent and unbreakable.

A congressperson told Liddy, "Contracts are changed every day in America."

Liddy responded with, "Yes, a contract can always be changed as long as all the parties involved agree to it."

But in this case, we can bet that one of the parties involved - i.e., those who got some of the more than $160 million in recent AIG bonuses - will probably not agree to any change. It's a pretty safe bet.

Heck, would you? A few mil can get you that house on the golf course in Palm Springs or Bal Harbour.

And Liddy's explanation of the differences between "retention bonus" and "incentive bonus" held little, if any, water with us.

If a company wants someone to stick around, then what is the difference between the two? In fact, we found out today, many of the folks who got these retention bonuses have already left AIG for greener (and probably more virgin) financial pastures.
(AIG CEO Edward Liddy testifies at a congressional hearing, with a little inspirational help from Code Pink)