Cars! Cars! Cars!

TL Hurts Acura

Everyone knows it's ugly. Everyone. Every. Single. Person. Knows. It's. Ugly. Check out this made-up overheard on the street:

Cars! Cars! Cars! representative: Hi, do you know...
Dude on street: The TL is ugly.
CCC: Really? What else?
Dude: And it will hurt sales.
CCC: Is this a secret?
Dude: No, everyone knows it.

See? There you have it. So far this year, TL sales are off about 35% and this updated beast ain't a-gonna help. We'll check in with TL sales in six months to see how it's doing, but it'll be worse.

Referenced articles
NY Times: Pace. Space. But Oh, That Face.

Brilliant!

We are so trying this out when Summer rolls around. What is it?

Jalopnik reports: Couple Busted in Car While "Testing 58 Erection Pills".

How brilliant is that? Yes, Claire, we are doing an experiment on some new medicine to help the, er, uh, elderly. That's right, Alison. You will not need to take any of the medicine yourself. Just relax and help us spot any side effects.

We got so excited over the idea of this that we only just realized it's so very tangently car-related. But we already wrote it and can't help thinking that this could work. Oh, it could!

CAFE? No CAFE?

Man, this fuel economy crap is confusing the hell out of us. And U.S "President" Bush is going to veto it anyway, so what's point? Here are the latest articles:

The Detroit News reports House OKs 35 mpg rule.

AutoWeek reports Big CAFE hike stalls--for now--in Senate.

AutoWeek reports Lutz says 35-mpg CAFE will scuttle GM product plans.

OK, it passed the House, stalled in the Senate and despite the "Automakers, in a historic about-face, support the higher CAFE standards." (from the "Senate" article above), GM VP Bob Lutz says that new standard will mess up GM's future gas guzzlin' machines.

Clearly the Unions are at fault here. Damned unions.

It's pretty insane that we'll have to wait until 2020 to get vehicles with decent mileage. By then the sweet Honda Clarity FCX will be rockin' out everywhere and it won't matter, but the point is that we should be far ahead in terms of fuel efficiency. It's a shame that horsepower and top speed are more important than lowering pollution and lessening our dependence on foreign oil. You'd think some egg-head engineer would get a kick out of the challenge of combining power with fuel efficiency...

Imagine, them walking down the street and bumping into each other: "You got your fuel efficiency in my high horsepower engine!" "No, you got your high horsepower engine in my fuel efficiency!" Hilarity ensues and we all fly up to Heaven to be with Jaysus.

Can you imagine if these two were the egghead engineers? It'd be like: "We have a crotch explosion in sector two! Of the sexiest kind!" Also, Alison.

Taking Your Ghosn And Going Ghome

The Detroit News reports: P'I'm not talking to anybody'. We didn't this was going to go anywhere. If there is ever a merger it will be Detroit on Detroit, not an outside company. We're aware that the DaimlerChrysler merger of equals sorta shoots down that idea but, hey, that happened before we started spouting our lies truths.

"We're not going to try anything because we don't think the time is right," [Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos] Ghosn said after a speech to the Detroit Economic Club. "I'm not talking to anybody."

It's smart to just chill because pressing every manufacturer just makes you look desperate. Can you imagine trying to woo someone (or someone else) who was never, ever going to respond? How pathetic! Uh, anyway:

He said that Nissan is studying how to add capacity to its North American manufacturing operations. "With all the products we're bringing to the U.S. market, we know our (sales) forecast is much bigger than our capacity," he said.

One option, Ghosn said, was possibly using factories slated for closure by GM and Ford. Both companies are downsizing their U.S. assembly plants to match their shrinking market shares.

"If there was some capacity available that can be used as a 'win-win' situation," he said, "we'll do it."

Win-win? How in the world is Detroit going to see Nissan taking away their market share and then taking over their manufacturing plants as a win? "Oh, look, the dude who kicked our arse and took our lunch money is coming back to take our lunch box, too.

Volume!

Autoblog reports: GM posts a smaller Q3 loss than expected. Maybe GM'll make up the difference in volume. And maybe that'll work.

GM reported a net loss of $115 million, or $0.20 per share, for the third quarter of 2006, compared with a loss of $1.7 billion, or $2.94 per share, for the year-ago quarter. The net loss for this year's third quarter included $644 million, or $1.13 per share, in charges for special items, including goodwill impairment at GMAC and an increase to the charge associated with Delphi's reorganization.

Goodwill is our favorite term. We don't totally understand it, but we think we can convince Claire to give us a go based on goodwill.

Anyway, GM still makes the Monte Carlo, so screw them.

That's a snap of the 2007 Chevy Monte Carlo. No matter what Chevy does to make the front look prettier, it's still a weak-ass beast.

Bush To "Meet" With Detroit(ish)

The Detroit News reports: Bush sets mid-Nov. meeting with Big 3. We see no reason to believe this since Mr. Bush has blown off Detroit over and over again. But we imagine it'll go like this:

President Bush: So, I see you guys have had some problems. You still having them?
GM: Yep.
Ford: Boy howdy!
Chrysler: Jesus, we even lost cars. I mean, literally. We don't know where the hell they are. Have you seen them? We're so fucked.

Anyway, you'd think Mr. Bush would meet with Detroit(ish) dudes before mid-term elections so that Detroit(ish) leaders could say, "Vote Republican, they will save our sorry arses."

That's a snap of a bunny. We're thinking we'll get Claire a bunny.

Love

The NY Times (registration required) reports: Online Advice: Snarky or Authoritative or Both. Sure the byline reads Ray Wert, but that's obviously false. There is no such name as Wert. It's not even a word. No, it was Claire. Trying to win our hearts back. Thank you, sweetheart.

Safer Accidents?

Now this is some kind of cool! Researchers are working on cars that can alter their shape when an impact is unavoidable.

he car will use hood-mounted cameras and radar to spot a vehicle on course for a side-on collision. Once it realises an impact is imminent it will activate a shape-shifting metal in the door. This reinforces the bond between door and frame, which is normally a weak spot, and distributes the force of the blow more safely.

Our goal is to have a robot turn into Claire Danes. Tell us that wouldn't be wicked!

Gone But Not Forgotten

Well, actually, it'll be forgotten by everyone, but the VW Phaeton was a hell of a car. In fact, we liked it best among all big, big, big luxury cars. It just kicked ass (in a luxurious way). We posted before (and readers mocked us) that the Phaeton was such a good car that VW could have (and should be) spun off the car into its own division selling only the Phaeton. The only reason this car died was the nameplate, not the car itself. Dan Neil goes on about the car: The Detroit News reports: Consumer snobbery sinks the VW Phaeton. And we agree with every word he writes. Well, most of the words.... We didn't read the whole thing because we just spent the last 20 minutes pretending we were driving Claire to a movie opening.

Numbers Are Confusing

We admit we felt pretty dumb (it's a typically feeling, really) when we read that The Detroit News reported: GM's 1st quarter: From red to black. Could we have been so wrong about GM that they could take their impressive losses and turn them, so quickly, into profits? We felt some relief when we read:

General Motors Corp. revised its first-quarter results Monday from a preliminary loss of $323 million to a $445 million profit after changing the way it will record its obligations as part of a health care agreement struck with its workers last year.

Oh, man! We want to change the way we count our wives! "No, no, no, honey!" we'll say. Claire doesn't count as a wife unless you literally count her. Besides, there's room in the bed for all of us, sugarplum. ... And I agree the addition of the dirty hippie chick put us all in the red, so she's been discontinued." Anyway, apparently not everyone is so chipper about GM as Autoblog reported: Moody's may downgrade GM debt again. How many times can GM's debt get downgraded before it has to borrow money from Tony Soprano?