Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut

WHAT BAILOUT BILL FAILURE MEANS TO CAR BUYERS, CARMAKERS AND DEALERS

The worst news from yesterday's rejection of the bailout will be for, as usual, those least able to afford it.

In a huge blow to consumers, part of the bailout bill defeated Monday would have allowed the Treasury Department to buy securities backed by automotive loans, similar to some (new) government entity buying-up securities backed by so-called subprime mortgages and holding them until some value returns and finance houses want to own them once again.

But now that both sides in Washington are against allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite home mortgages to try and help keep people in their homes, it seems people late with their car payments will get the same kind of help - none.

But Detroit is about to be doing just fine.

As explained in this blog just days ago, the Detroit Three and some of their suppliers will soon start dividing up $25 billion in bailout funds which were part of a bill passed last December.

Also, the Federal Reserve is now able to make other "special loans" to automakers so they can provide inventory financing to their dealers, so dealers can continue to buy cars and trucks for their showrooms.

But if the public can't afford what's in those showrooms anyway, who really benefits?

Reminds me of the Doonesbury series in the '80s when the more money an executive lost while running a  tech company, the bigger a star they became on Wall Street. And right now, we've got three men running the Detroit Three who have no experience in actually planning, designing,  building or selling cars ... (Above, Honda's FCX Clarity posed in front of American Honda's headquarters in Gardena, CA; is this what Detroit needs to produce with their $25 billion bailout?, Lee Iacocca and Carroll Shelby are two cowboys who represented the US auto industry from the 1960s through to the '90s; who working in Detroit today can generate even 1/10th of the excitement they could?).

If someone is late paying their mortgage, it's almost a given they're late on their car payments, too. People pay their mortgage first, and their car notes next so they can get to and from school and work.

And cars and trucks gets repo'd a lot faster than houses get foreclosed; a few weeks versus as long as a year. Some new and used car dealers have electronics in their vehicles which will shut off the engine when a payment is late, but that's grist for a future posting.

New car dealers treat their used car lots like jewelry stores; they often make more profit on a used car than by selling a new one, especially their "certified used cars." Customers with good credit can finance a used car there just like a new one, and some dealers are even involved in leasing their used cars as well as new.

Click below for more on why this bailout bill wasn't going to help those late on their mortgage or their car payment.

JOE GIBBS - GREAT AMERICAN CHEATER?

Several years ago, when NASCAR was still rearing its head for most American sports fans (even the average racing fan wasn’t too familiar), Ned Jarrett was in the broadcast booth, the former racer waxing rhapsodic about some driver or other, when this pearl left his lips on a network television broadcast, back when a “broadcast network” still meant something: “That driver’s a good Christian boy and I’m sure he’s gonna do real well in this sport…”.

Funny, but for the life of me, I just don’t remember ever hearing Vin Scully say, “That Sandy Koufax fellow, you know, he’s a real good Jew and, why, you might even call him “the chosen pitcher” …”.

We’ll deal with a comment I heard from one of the announcers during today’s race, the Nationwide Series’ “Kansas Lottery 300” at Kansas Speedway (can’t get anymore Christian than supporting the state lottery now, can you?).

NASCAR has a Black announcer. That’s big news in and of itself, and who it is might prove a bit of a surprise.

Brad Daugherty, NASCAR announcer and race team owner (!), was one of the greatest b-ballers ever at   the University of North Carolina, taken as the first pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1986 NBA Draft. After a too-short but exemplary career, Daugherty left the NBA at age 28 due to recurrent back injuries. (Car-owner and NASCAR analyst and host Brad Daugherty, right, celebrates with Marcos Ambrose after Ambrose won the Zippo 200 Nationwide Series race at Watkins Glen, NY, earlier this season).

His jersey was retired by the Cavaliers in 1997. It’s number? #43, picked by Daugherty as a tribute to his “favorite sportsman,” NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Told you the news might be something of a surprise.

Today, Daugherty was working the analyst’s chair for ESPN2 for that Lottery 300. I’ve heard him many times and enjoy his take on things, but today he said something as dumb as Ned Jarrett did on that long-ago broadcast.

Back story: Joe Gibbs Racing, one of NASCAR’s top teams, is owned by the legendary NFL coach and Super Bowl champion. Gibbs’ son runs it  day-to-day, but Coach is usually at the races, too. Gibbs, who shuns alcohol, cigarettes and chastises those who curse in his presence, was the first major team owner to sign with Toyota when they entered the Busch Series (now Nationwide Series) and the top-line Sprint Cup Series over the past two seasons. The signing surprised many who felt Gibbs would never leave Chevrolet for a “foreign” carmaker.

This season, Gibbs’ Toyotas have been powerhouses in both series. Their success in Nationwide racing has been such that other teams told NASCAR the Toyota engines must be producing more horsepower than competing Fords, Chevies and Dodges.

A few weeks ago, NASCAR impounded both of Gibbs’ Nationwide Camrys and put them on horsepower-measuring dynamometers.

Click below for more on Joe Gibbs, Brad Daugherty, and another NASCAR problem.

PAUL NEWMAN, 83, RACE CAR DRIVER

Paul Newman was the real thing.

He died yesterday at age 83 in his Connecticut home (close to his home race track, Lime Rock Raceway).

Newman was said to have been suffering from lung cancer, for many years a heavy smoker. Still, 83, smoking or not, is not bad at all.

Here I’ll share a few memories, and offer a few anecdotes some readers might appreciate knowing.

Many of today’s obituaries are referring to him as a “racing enthusiast,” but he was not some wealthy dilettante who spent weekends slumming with gear-heads and wrenches; he was a skilled, professional and world-class race car driver as well as one of the most successful team owners in the sport’s history.

I first met him in the mid-1970s at Riverside Raceway in Southern California, once one of the greatest road racing tracks in the world, and today a down-at-the-heels shopping mall.

He was easy to spot: Those blue eyes, like little laser dots in the semi-darkness of the garage; and not very tall, but, naturally, “movie star thin.” He even let me ask a couple of questions. I never saw him voluntarily start a conversation with a stranger or fan, but neither did he shy away from anyone who approached him.

I’d speak with him a few more times over the years, mostly just trading pleasantries.

His movie bosses were never happy with his on-track activities; it’s not easy to get insurance on a production with a star who spends his weekends racing. Often he’d enter events with a pseudonym or as “PL Newman.” Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward rarely was there when he was racing, but she’d be seen when his team was racing and he was safely “behind the wall” in the pits.

As his racing skills developed he often said that he was still acting and directing to afford the costs of his racing. (Newman and wife Joanne Woodward in 1968; they lived full-time in Connecticut).

Click below for more on Paul Newman and his remarkable motor racing career.

DETROIT GETS ITS BAILOUT; DAIMLER SELLING 20% CHRYSLER STAKE; BIGGEST CHEVY DEALER GROUP CLOSES

(The world's biggest Chevrolet dealer group is closing, never to enjoy the 2010 Camaro convertible, seen here in concept form at a regular Saturday morning Southern California gathering of car nuts).

Three big events today involving the world of cars, politics and finance, both in the US and abroad.

First, Automotive News reports, “Automakers and suppliers soon should be able to seek $25 billion in low-interest federal loans to retool plants to build fuel-efficient vehicles and components. The House of Representatives today voted 370 to 58 to approve a broad spending bill that includes $7.5 billion to start the loan program.The Senate is expected to agree to the budget bill this week, and President Bush is expected to sign it. The bill's main purpose is to keep government running in the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.”

There was little doubt Detroit would be getting the $25 billion bailout, though they had started the public process by asking for twice as much. A bill signed last December cleared the way for the bailout, but none of the Detroit Three, at least publicly, thought they’d have to ask for the money this soon.

Suppliers are now mentioned in the same breath as the car-makers. Ford, GM and Chrysler have become,  as have most car-makers worldwide, giant assembly operations. In modern car-building, suppliers are located nearby factory assembly facilities. To cut down on large parts inventories, the factory and suppliers engage in “just in time” manufacturing (called “kanban” in Japan, where the technique was developed); when a part leaves the supplier and arrives at a  factory delivery dock, it will become a part of a new car or truck within a matter of hours. Suppliers are as crucial as the car-makers themselves. How they might take advantage of the billions soon pouring into Michigan remains to be seen. (Today's car factories are really giant assembly plants; without suppliers, there are no parts to build a new car or truck).

Apparently, this announcement does answer one big question about the money: Loans or loan guarantees? Detroit will apparently borrow the money directly from the US government (as in, “us”) and that will allow them to repay the debt at the lowest possible interest rates (which is just one more reason it’s always nice to “have a friend” in the government; they’re the ones who actually print the money).

How low might those interest rates be? As low as 1 or 2 per cent.

Click below for more on today's three automotive stories which will affect us all.

DETROIT EXPECTS $25 BILLION - WHO BAILS OUT AMERICANS' MISSING CAR PAYMENTS?

So, where's my bailout? For that matter, where's yours, too?

Anyone having trouble paying their mortgage is almost certainly late on their car or truck loans, too.

It used to be said that a house was the largest expenditure in any person's lifetime; but if someone buys five or more new cars over 40 or 50 years, depending on where they live, those purchases could easily cost more, in total, than their home.

The auto industry is a very powerful and significant part of the US economy and has been for many years; just last week, GM "celebrated" its 100th anniversary by displaying a "near-production version" of their Volt plug-in gas/electric hybrid, slated for sale in 2011.

Import and domestic dealers, in total, have annual sales of about $480 billion from new cars and trucks alone, not counting used vehicle sales, whose totals are even higher. Annual car and truck sales in the US, new and used, amount to a near-trillion dollar business.

People in and out of the auto industry are asking that if millions of home mortgages can be purchased by the government, and which might be re-written to help the borrower, what about the tens of millions of outstanding car and truck loan contracts, many of which are going bad? (Above, Can Chevrolet's Volt save Detroit?; Artwork from Porsche of their four-door Panamera gas/electric hybrid concept - Click to enlarge any photo).

And while it can take several months, even a year, to foreclose on and repossess a house and property, missing or being late just three payments on a car loan will, in many cases, result in a repossession.

A vehicle repo often results in a person or family losing their only way to get to and from a job; that is, if they're still employed.

Click below for more on why $25 billion of taxpayer's money may be just the beginning of the costs necessary to save what's left of the US' domestic auto industry.

BEST TIME IN ANY CAR FOR $12.99; iPHONE's DYNOLICIOUS APP!

Car-lovers rejoice! One of the apps developed for the iPhone by a third-party company comes from Dynolicious … an apt company name because their app is a deliciously simple piece of software that turns any iPhone, classic or 3G, into a miniature and easy-to-use version of the sophisticated and expensive testing equipment used by enthusiast magazines, testing laboratories and the car-makers themselves. (iPhone with acceleration results shown). Remember to click to enlarge photos.

Sure, all their big-bucks fancy-shmancy test gear costs a lot more and is probably more accurate than an iPhone outfitted with Dynolicious, but there’s a huge saving grace apart from making all this info available to anyone with an iPhone: It costs $12.99.

And Dynolicious will run, with all its features, on iPhones (classic or 3G) or iPod Touch models running 2.0 firmware. You may now leave this screen to visit Dynolicious.com and then the iTunes Store to get the latest iPhone and iPod Touch software so you can download Dynolicious … Is it easy? Well, I did it myself … and without help from my wife! In our house, that means it’s easy. Simple, even.

Okay, are you back? Good.

Our home is in a desert with plenty of truly empty, flat and long roads. The area reminds me of Orange County, CA, 30 years ago, when the place was still filled with orange and lemon groves and fields growing strawberries, sugar beets and every other kind of agriculture far as the eye could see. They grow sand out our way, and the occasional Joshua Tree, cactus and Wal-Mart. All seem to thrive, though we shop at Costco (don’t cotton much to Wal-Mart’s anti-unionism, their world’s largest fleet of diesel-spewing trucks and a few other things).

Click below for much more on how the iPhone and iPod Touch can provide a passel of performance reports for any vehicle.

MORE DEATH IN NHRA; STEVE ENGEL, 49

(Steve Engel's Pro Mod Corvette at Gainesville, FL, earlier this year).

There’s been another death in National Hot Rod Association drag racing, the third in just over a year. It’s received scant media coverage, though, and we think one reason for that is because racer Steve Engel, 49, did not compete in one of NHRA’s “professional” classes, but was what’s known generically as a “sportsman” racer, an amateur, his racing a hobby, not livelihood.

While there are perhaps 100 racers in those four professional classes, there are many thousands of sportsman racers across the US and abroad.

Pro Modified racer Engel died at 5 pm on Sunday, September 14, in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Engel had been involved in a serious racing accident during the recent 54th annual Mac Tools US Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, which ran from August 27 through September 1.

Funny Car driver Eric Medlen was 33 when he was killed in March of 2007 while testing his car at a Florida track; he drove for John Force, whose team is the most successful in the history of the sport. Scott Kalitta, 46 when he died, one of the few drivers victorious in both of NHRA’s fastest and most-dangerous classes, Top Fuel and Funny Car, was killed at Englishtown, NJ, on June 22 of this year, when his Funny Car exploded and went out of control towards the end of the ¼-mile track.

And John Force, the winningest driver in NHRA history and the sport’s best-known public face, was seriously injured when he crashed at the 2007 O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals in Ennis, TX. His injuries kept him out of his Funny Car for several weeks, and many in the sport hoped that following Medlen’s death and now his own serious accident, Force, 59, would finally retire from racing and spend his time overseeing his large race team. After making a substantial physical recovery, though, Force got back into his under-5 second, 330-mile per hour Ford Mustang replica Funny Car.

Death was a near-constant in motor racing in the years leading up to WWII, and even in the post-war years of the 1950s through the ‘90s, racers knew that their sport could very well lead to serious injury and even death.

In recent years, though, in motorsports ranging from Formula One to NASCAR to IndyCar and most other major racing series around the world, injuries and deaths have become the exception, not the rule. This is thanks to drivers in better physical shape than those in past years, but especially to new technologies and rules which dictate making race cars and driver protective equipment as safe as possible. Drivers today often walk away from wrecks which a decade ago probably would have left them critically injured or dead.

(Steve Engel, 49, leaves a wife and two sons; drag racing was his hobby and not a source of income).

Click below for more on the spate of recent deaths in NHRA drag racing and how other series have lowered injury and death rates.

LATEST ON DETROIT'S $50 BILLION LOAN

As this is written, no decision had been reached, at least publicly, about the Detroit Three’s request for a $50 billion loan or loan guarantee from, well, from us. US Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) was at both recent political conventions, as were the heads of the Detroit Three, aggressively pushing this plan.

Remember US Sen. Everett Dirksen’s line about cash? “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.” Yes, this is real money. (Barack Obama has stated his support for a $50 billion loan package for Detroit's car-makers; Below, John McCain has said he'll support an amount closer to $25 billion).

As just one example: Detroit has to get very busy, very quickly, in developing their own versions of the new  “clean diesels.” Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and other European car-makers are bringing them to the US; their emissions so clean they’ve been approved by the California Air Resources Board, with the toughest standards in the country. Audi and VW will use the “TDI” designation for their new clean diesels; Mercedes calls their versions “BlueTec.”

Asian manufacturers are hopping on the bandwagon; the 2009 Nissan Maxima is available with a diesel engine option.

But clean diesels are just one example of where Detroit must play catch-up.

For more on the Detroit Three's real challenges, and whether or not they deserve any help at all from the public sector, click below.

BIG TRUCKS GAINING TRACTION ... AGAIN!

(Chevy's new 2010 Camaro is making headlines; but their Silverado truck is the country's best-selling vehicle; below right, Ford's GT race-car-for-the-street sold-out at $150,000 a copy, but their F-series truck has dropped from America's best-seller to #4 on the sales charts; below left, Dodge's Challenger, like the Chevy Camaro, is another answer to a question no one has asked)

The auto industry's US sales numbers for August are in, and Americans are again buying full-size pickups and SUVs. They are actually a "bright spot" in car and truck sales.

Chevrolet’s Silverado full-size pickup was the nation's best-selling vehicle (of all cars and trucks) in August. Ford's F-Series truck was the fourth most-popular vehicle sold and Chrysler nearly doubled sales of its aging Dodge Ram pickup from July.

Chevrolet Silverado, Avalanche and GMC Sierra pickups had their strongest total sales month since last August, with more than 80,000 vehicles sold. Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban and GMC Yukon full-size utilities had their best performance of the year.

Total Dodge Ram light-duty truck sales have doubled in the last 60 days, (June sales 9,172 units vs. August sales 18,774 units). Although sales were down 7 percent when compared with August 2007, sales increased 16 percent when compared with July 2008 sales. The 2009 model year Dodge Ram (which will be a re-badged Nissan Titan available with a Chrysler Hemi engine) will begin arriving in Dodge dealerships in September.

Sales of Ford’s SUVs were down 53% to 10,852 from 23,087; trucks and vans were down 38.5% to 54,565 units; cars dropped 8.9% to 52,677. Total Ford light-duty truck sales were down 32.3% to 98,344 units.

While overall combined car/truck sales remained well down overall, August was, in general, the first month since March, 2008, that big truck sales have been on an upward trend.

Light trucks (which covers everything from minivans to pickups and the biggest SUVs, including Hummer, which GM now has on the auction block) had held a majority of the US market, over 50%, from August 2001 until March of this year. Trucks of all types accounted for 49.7% of total new-vehicle sales, their biggest share since 49.9% last March.

Shouldn’t our “national headline” be something much different than “truck sales are up?” Touting sales of gas-guzzler trucks while Detroit is still providing little in the way of gas/electric hybrids, clean diesels, plug-in hybrids and even cars which run on CNG, compressed natural gas, is bad news for our country from almost every angle.

Click below for more on the big trucks which are enjoying something of a bump in sales.