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In a conversation with The WSJ [sub]’s Paul Ingrassia, former Car Czar Steve “Chooch” Rattner did some “back-of-the-envelope calculation” to show why he believes the US taxpayers will see their $50b “investment” in GM recouped when The General goes public sometime in the next year.

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Anyone who follows the auto industry with any regularity will know that comparing Toyota and Chrysler by any measure is laughable. For mainstream media types, who flit from frenzy to frenzy, all the negative press about Toyota might have left some believing that it’s the worst-off automaker in America.

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When Ford announced that it would be building an “all-new” Police Interceptor model, speculation was rampant. At the time, we noted: GM went to Australia for their police-duty RWD platform, might Ford do the same with a Falcon-based interceptor?

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Do I love the internet. I thought I’d seen every old VW oddity, but doing a google image search for “VW pickup” brings up this gem

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The passenger car-based mini pickup niche is as old as as the Crosley Roadside, if not older yet. It’s also a highly ephemeral one, that seems to repeatedly draw car makers to it like moths to the flame. And the results are about the same: here today; gone tomorrow.  If we exclude the quite compact

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TTAC Contributor Ingvar writes: The family household beater has a limp. It’s a 1993 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, four door, with the 4.3. It’s original country of purchase was Germany, at least it says so on the dealer engraved license frame

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The House Oversight Committee has obtained a 2006 memo from the “All Toyota Labor Union” (ATU) which alleges quality declines due to “a fall in the number of experienced staff in favor of contract workers, longer working hours and an aggressive pursuit of cost cuts” according to Automotive News [sub]. The letter was originally addressed

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Sales recently began in India for Ford’s “all new” Figo. The launch of the Figo, a five-door sedan/hatchback, was a supposed to be a big deal.

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As our Brazilian friend Stingray pointed out in today’s Curbside Classic thread, the FWD trucklet isn’t dead… it’s on vacation in South America. And new models are arriving all the time.

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In a recent Fastlane livechat, GM’s North American boss Mark Reuss revealed that: Chevrolet re vamp in ads is well under way with Susan Docherty–you will like it a lot–shows the car, and uses “excellence for everyone”….you will really like it. When asked if he was saying that “Excellence For Everyone” would be the new Chevrolet tagline,

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In a study for the Danish Petroleum Industry Association, consulting firm Ea Energy Analyses concludes that electric vehicles (EVs) will not significantly improve the EU’s carbon footprint over the next 15 years. According to Globe-net.com’s write-up of the report: The study demonstrates that while electric cars have the lowest ‘tail-pipe’ emissions, they cannot attain the same

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In typical Carlos Ghosn style, the father of the Nissan EV throws down the gauntlet. gm-volt.com quotes him from a talk with reporters: “Frankly, I mean so far there is no competition. Let’s be serious

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BMW and Daimler don’t really like each other. As Herr Baron Schmitt put it, “Daimler engineers view their colleagues as boorish Bavarian upstarts.

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When the automotive historians look back at GM they will point to many factors as to why they fell. Some might point to the Unions, some may point to their lack of reliable products, others may even point to their shoddy dealer service. But one factor which undeniably led to GM’s is lack of brand

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Here’s the starting point for all Curbside Classics. Initially, over a hundred full length articles are listed by make (after the jump).

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On September 19, 2008, William Hippsley, 74, was behind the wheel in the parking lot of a shopping center in Brigg, South Humberside, UK. Outside, his wife Brenda, 69, helped him park his car

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Do I love the internet. I thought I’d seen every old VW oddity, but doing a google image search for “VW pickup” brings up this gem. I knew that in the early days the VW factory built a number of specialized vehicles to transport bodies and things around the grounds

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Who doesn’t like a proper wacky duel? Like the one where James May raced a Ferrari against a camel, or when the guys from TopGear did a “train vs Aston Martin” from London to Cannes

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Who doesn’t like a proper wacky duel?

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Who doesn’t like a proper wacky duel? Like the one where James May raced a Ferrari against a camel, or when the guys from TopGear did a “train vs Aston Martin” from London to Cannes?

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As an American citizen, it is tough on my part to pay tax dollars to an entity that can turn around and use those tax dollars to get my fellow American citizens to not do business with me. The government owns 60% of General Motors, and these American tax dollars are funding business activity for

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All right, I have a thing about short cars. I haven’t spoken to a therapist about it yet.

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In 1989, Toyota launched a new luxury brand that would go on to largely replace Cadillac as a vernacular term for excellence in luxury. Known as Lexus, this brand has spent the last 20 years making headway in the US market without ever publicly associating itself with its parent brand. Could this strategy have contained

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The first videos of the Honda CR-Z lapping Suzuka have surfaced, and they’re about as exciting C-Span after a handful of Valium. And this is apparently a tuned version. Between this and the recent pre-launch equivocation by the CR-Z’s chief engineer, our expectations for Honda’s Insight Coupe couldn’t get much lower [via Autoblog].

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The Shreveport Times reports that GM will restart production of the HUMMER H3 and H3T starting April 12, for a batch build of 849 units.

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View more news videos at: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/video. Draw your own conclusions

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Despite the fact that I’m not superstitious or religious, I’ve learned to gracefully accept that certain things seem to happen as if a bigger hand were at work; as though some things were preordained. One year ago exactly, I stumbled on this old Cadillac (actually a ‘72, it turns out), and it inspired my first

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In celebration of our first anniversary and one hundred feature length Curbside Classics, I’ve put together a portal for all of them here (after the jump). There are probably at least that many or more shorter-length CCs and Outtakes. They can be found here: Curbside Classic Capsules and here: CC Outtakes.

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GM’s recent reinstatement of 661 culled dealers has put pressure back on Chrysler to come to arrangement with the dealers it shed during last year’s bankruptcy and bailout. Rep. Chris VanHollen, the sixth ranking Democrat in the House or Representatives, tells Automotive News [sub] that with GM buckling to dealer pressure, the time has come

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Edmunds AutoObserver Michelle Krebs, commenting on the termination and replacement of Cadillac’s leadership, concluded, “If GM is going to change and is going to succeed, it must change people.” Paraphrasing Eistein, she added that “Doing the same thing over and over again with the same people in the same positions and expecting a different result

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For the first time, monthly car sales in India exceeded 150,000 units according to February numbers released by SIAM, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers [via The Economic Times of India]. Those figures represent a 33% improvement over Feb. 2009.

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Reuters (which has been all over the Volvo-Geely deal) reports that Zhejiang Geely Holding has money “in the bank account,” to purchase Ford’s Volvo brand, citing Swedish press reports. And yet, despite having reportedly given Ford guarantees about the financing of Volvo’s business plan, and scheduled a formal deal signing for last month, a deal

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The U.S. has its hypermiling

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Further in the Toyota caper, there are new reports of sudden acceleration – in Toyota sales. Toyota buyers seem to have a big case of the bashing fatigue. And they are coming back in droves

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Further in the Toyota caper, there are new reports of sudden acceleration – in Toyota sales. Toyota buyers seem to have a big case of the bashing fatigue. And they are coming back in droves.

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No, its not a recall.

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Chinese bought 46 percent more cars this February than in February 2009. This according to official data by the China Association of Auto Manufactures (CAAM), as reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua. The avid TTAC reader is not surprised

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Chinese bought 46 percent more cars this February than in February 2009. This according to official data by the China Association of Auto Manufactures (CAAM), as reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua.

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A federally funded ticketing blitz in the state of Virginia landed a total of 6996 traffic tickets this weekend. The blitz, dubbed “Operation Air, Land & Speed” coincided with frantic efforts by state officials to close a$2.2 billion budget deficit

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