Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut

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.