FORD'S NON-PRODUCTION FR9 "CHEATER" NASCAR ENGINE ALMOST READY

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Remember the days when NASCAR banned the 1963 GM "mystery motor," or the non-production Gen II Chrysler Hemi, or the SOHC 427?

Back then, when "stock" actually meant something, Grandpa France tried to make the manufacturers race things based upon what they sold to the general public.

Of course "Big Bill" France's narrow view of what was a "stock car" almost single-handedly delayed the development and adoption of supercharging, turbocharging, fuel injection, multi-valve engines and overhead cams in American production cars for over a generation.

And NASCAR killed the aero development of American cars in 1970 when they saddled limited production Superbirds, Talledegas and Charger Daytonas with a puny 305 cubic inch limit, while unaerodynamic "mainstream" models got a full 430 cubic inches. France did it in part to preserve the production appearance of "stock cars."

Those days are as gone as nickel hamburgers, $0.35/gal gasoline, and affordable new muscle cars.

Fast forward three decades and a "NASCAR" [sic] is a hideous, hated aesthetic abortion known as the [Funny]Car of Tomorrow. It's a clumsy, truckish, common-template mess that's more freakish and less "stock" than any Superbird or Talledega (and much less attractive to what's left of NASCAR's fan base, as well).

Almost all of these common-template Funnycars-of-tomorrow are powered with purpose-built, non-production pushrod racing engines. These not-for-sale engines are more "exotic" (if an antediluvian single-cam-in-block/two-overhead-valves-per-cylinder lump can be termed "exotic") than any of the engines NASCAR banned in the 1960s. These "cheater" engines are wholly unavailable to the general public and make a mockery of the philosophy behind "stock car" racing. They were approved for the sake of the "show" and in the hopes that the "new" NASCAR fan wouldn't care about brands, brand rivalrys, or technology transfers, or "win on Sunday, sell on Monday."

Up to this point, Ford had been the only brand racing with even loosely production-based engines (Ford's old NASCAR engine traces its design, dimensions, and basic architecture back to the 1970s "Cleveland" small-block V8 (which was based in part on the older "Challenger"/Fairlane/Windsor small-block), albeit vastly improved through decades of development by Yates, Roush and others)

Now NASCAR's total abandonment of anything "stock" has forced Ford to build their own NASCAR-spec, never-to-be-production "cheater" engine: The FR9.

According to Ford Racing Boss Brian Wolfe, FoMoCo is using up its stock of obsolete production-style NASCAR parts before introducing the "cheater" FR9 engine mid-season.

Skeptics may believe that Wolfe is extending the FR9 development time because it's not competitive yet, but Truth With Speedzzter has no indication this is true. Perhaps it really is just more FoMoCo belt tightening. To be sure, if the FR9 gives Ford even a scintilla of an advantage over the other "cheater" engines, NASCAR will whack it down.

While the FR9 was forced by NASCAR's abandonment of production engines and its years of non-stock "cheater" gifts to Dodge, Toyota and Chevrolet, it will be a sad day when the last production-based engine grids in a Sprint Cup race. It will also mark another step in the irrelevance of NASCAR racing to any modern or historic production car.

(Truth With Speedzzter wonders when NASCAR will discard the OEMs altogether and force the the SuperTeams to race NASCAR-designed, NASCAR-branded, common-template, common-engine "NASCARS.")

Of course NASCAR's apparent anti-Ford bias means that the FR9 isn't legal below the Sprint Cup. So Ford's junior-division racers in the Nationwide Series and the Craftsman . . . oops . . . Camping World Truck Series will have to battle Toyota's "cheater" engine with old production-style engines.

Truth With Speedzzter also wants to correct its earlier comments about Roush-Fenway's short track program. Before 2009, Carl Edwards and other Roush drivers have won on the short tracks. However, the GM record in the so-called "modern era" is certainly better than Ford's, which is all that Truth With Speedzzter was really trying to say.

SEMA AND AUTOEXTREMIST ON "'OBAMACA$H' FOR CLUNKERS"

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David Freiburger's buds over at Bangshift.com posted the Specialty Equipment Market Associations latest press release on the resurrection of the idiotic, tax-money-wasting "Cash for Clunkers" scam.

SEMA PRESS STATEMENT RE: CASH FOR CLUNKERS

WASHINGTON, DC (March 30, 2009) – The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) applauds efforts to help consumers, automakers and dealerships with a program to stimulate new car sales. We support the concept of government–issued vouchers toward the purchase of fuel-efficient new vehicles [SEMA, it would appear is a bit more "free" with all that money the ObamaFeds are borrowing from the Chinese] and allowing consumers to deduct the car interest payments on their taxes. [NOW "TRUTH WITH SPEEDZZTER" SUPPORTS THAT SECOND ONE]


However, SEMA continues to oppose tying these vouchers to vehicle scrappage programs, known as “cash for clunkers.” The programs accelerate the demise of older vehicles, which are then typically crushed into blocks of sheet metal. Scrappage programs focus on a car's age rather than how much it is driven or its actual emissions. SEMA has consistently warned against wasting taxpayer dollars on a program that may produce an artificial spike in sales, but does not reduce emissions or increase fuel efficiency.

Automakers and dealers need to sell cars in order to survive, but potential buyers have hit the brakes in these tough economic times. Scrappage programs actually would deny vouchers to the majority of people who may want to buy a new car but don’t have an eligible older car to trade. Instead, these programs will be misused by those who own two or three older cars and seek to take advantage of the taxpayer give-away. Many of these cars aren’t frequently driven, if at all, so destroying them will not clean the nation’s air or make us less dependent on foreign oil.


While supporters tout a similar German program as evidence of success, the European Federation for Transport and the Environment, (the pan-European federation of environmental groups), has urged Germany and other countries to abandon scrappage subsidies because they do more environmental harm than good by artificially accelerating the car life cycle.

Scrappage programs hurt thousands of independent repair shops, auto restorers, customizers and their customers across the country. This industry provides thousands of American jobs and generates millions of dollars in local, state and federal tax revenues. We encourage the President to help the entire auto industry with programs that focus the incentive where it counts – on the purchase of new vehicles and not destroying older cars.

Well said! "'ObamaCa$h' for Clunkers" would be an expensive boondoggle.

Scads of unscrupulous, hand-out-seeking freeloaders would revive all those rusty old Camaros on blocks in their yards and dead Monte Carlos propping up the porches of their doublewides to "scam" the program. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of seldom-driven, restorable milestone vehicles would be destroyed. Prices for buildable "classic" cars would skyrocket. Even more money borrowed from China would be "off-shored" to the Japanese invaders and other Asian automakers. Much of our American automotive heritage would be lost. Millions of regular "blue collar" auto enthusiasts and collectors would be "priced out" of many automotive hobbies.

Autoextremest Peter M. DeLorenzo has an "April Fools" take on the obvious lunacy of the "ObamaCa$h" for Clunkers" plan:

In a major change in policy, the Obama Administration has already revised its just-announced Cash for Clunkers Plan. Called the Cash for Anything Plan, it encourages Americans to turn in - well - anything, in exchange for cold, hard cash. Got an old blender lying around? That'll get you 25 bucks. How about an old washer or dryer? Fifty bucks. An old pair of slippers? Two bucks. One of Fido's chewed-up bones? Fifty cents. You name it - the U.S. Government's buying it. . . .

That makes about as much sense as "Cash for Clunkers."

OBAMA, THE U.A.W. AND GM: TWO FLEETS TO THE WIND

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With all the talk of the impending, Obama-backed “part-out” of General Motors (perhaps the new smaller GM will be truthfully known as “Government Motors”), some contrarians are betting that Obama and the Car Czar Central Committee are just bluffing.

The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. is apparently one of the “no bankruptcy” contrarians.

Why?

Even a "prepackaged" filing runs too much risk of a judge imposing more "sacrifice" on the UAW than the administration is prepared to tolerate.

GM bondholders understand this: They've been intransigent precisely because they calculate the UAW is too important to Democratic electoral politics for Mr. Obama to risk losing control of the reorganization process to a bankruptcy judge.

The GM bailout has become a political operation run out of the White House. It will stay that way.

Jenkins also succinctly identifies the real problem “the UAW captivity”

That captivity, imposed by the 1935 Wagner Act, is the sole relevant factor distinguishing the Detroit Three from the world's other auto makers. The result is downright weird: "Our" auto companies operate in a world that's less "American," in a sense, than the Japanese and German companies that come here and enjoy a free labor market.

And as Truth With Speedzzter readers already know, the “captivity” is reinforced by the byzantine regime of Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE). Jenkins explains:

The Wagner world was given a second lease on life by a peculiar feature of Congress's 1975 fuel economy law. Known as the "two fleets" rule, it effectively forces Detroit to make its cheap small cars in high-wage domestic UAW factories, even if it means losing money on every car. The rule has no fuel-economy function. Its only purpose is to shield the UAW monopoly inside each Detroit auto maker from global labor competition.

* * *

The UAW's Mr. Gettelfinger had testified, coyly, during Congressional hearings that failing to renew two fleets might cost 17,000 auto workers jobs building small cars. He didn't say that two fleets is in fact the fulcrum by which, for the past 30 years, the UAW has been able to defeat globalization.

Then Senator Obama, of course, voted in lock-step with Ron Gettlefinger in support of the “two fleets” CAFE standard.

The “two fleets” rule has also led to other bizarre market disruptions since 1975, such as the expatriation of assembly operations for V8-powered cars (which leaves Ford’s Mustang and GM's Corvette variants as the sole-surviving U.S. assembled RWD V8 automobiles). Even if GM and Chrysler wanted to build "pony cars" in the U.S.A., the "two fleets" calculus would prevent it.

A bankruptcy judge can’t do anything about the inane “two fleets” standard. But he can attack the very thing that “two fleets” was meant to shelter.

If GM ends up in a “prepackaged” bankruptcy, the U.A.W.’s “captivity” could be slammed (or at least painfully trimmed) by a bankruptcy judge. The “let’em fail” chorus has repeatedly reminded us over the past six months that the airlines have shed unions in bankruptcy. Even though Ford has renegotiated with its “captors” (and even extended them a seat at the big table), the Glass House Gang is certainly worried that the new, post-bankruptcy “Mini General” will receive a more competitive labor deal from the bankruptcy court.

Jenkins and GM’s bondholders are betting that Obama – who certainly doesn’t want to repeat Jimmy Carter’s one-and-done tenure in office – will ultimately do the U.A.W.’s bidding and keep GM out of bankruptcy court.

Of course, one wild-card in this scenario is the union-backed “card check” legislation, a/k/a the Employee Freedom of Choice Act. Obama and the Big-Labor-sycophantic Democrats see this as the “magic bullet” for almost instant unionization of the Japanese invader assembly plants in “Right to Work” states.

Truth With Speedzzter suspects that Obama wants to keep GM on life-support long enough so that the horrible, anti-secret ballot “card check” law can be passed and the U.A.W. will have an opportunity for an expansive new revenue stream.

If the U.A.W. gets this arm-twisting gift from the Obamacrats, the U.A.W. could possibly have a stronger argument against the bankruptcy court’s rejection of GM’s “pattern” contract. Right now, the court would be looking at GM’s “scab” competition as setting the market price for assembly labor. GM’s platinum-plated labor agreement clearly exceeds the prevailing market price. Thus, the court could easily reject it. In Ron Gettelfinger’s probable dream world, "card check" unionization of the Japanese invader plants could slash Tokyo’s cost advantage on U.S. assembled vehicles and would result in a quick windfall for organized labor. It would also drive up the prevailing market price for assembly labor and protect the U.A.W.'s other contracts.

Whether all of this would actually work is conjecture.

But no one should forget that Obama could not have won election (and cannot win re-election) without the strong support of organized labor. And notwithstanding his breezy rhetoric, its unlikely that he won’t continue to “dance with the ones who brung him.”

HOW TO SCAM THE "'OBAMACASH'-FOR-CLUNKERS" PROGRAM

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Rep. Betty Sutton [Another tax-money-wasting, "appliance motorist" bonehead in Congress] of Ohio (D) introduced a bill in Congress called Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save bill (CARS Act) that revives the so-called "Cash for Clunkers" plan. This bill would offer consumers up to $5,000 to trade in a vehicle that's at least 8 years old in exchange for a new one built in the United States that gets at least 27 mpg if it's a car or 24 mpg if it's a truck or SUV. The total payout would be based on the new vehicle's mileage rating.

General Motors, Ford [Say it isn't so!] and Chrysler are all supporting the bill, as is the United Auto Workers union. Vehicles built in either Canada or Mexico would need to get at least 30 mpg and would be eligible for up to $4,000. The CARS plan would apply to all automakers equally, but only for vehicles assembled in North America [READ: Huge taxpayer-funded windfall for the predatory Japanese invaders . . . with more profits shipped back to "Sweet Home Tokyo!" Hmm? Borrowing money from the Chinese to hand over to the Japanese . . . "I love it when a "plan" comes together." ]. . . . Mass transit vouchers [Oh what stinky, sweaty, crowded, time-wasting fun.] would also be included in the legislation as an option for trading in an older vehicle.

RICHARD TRUETT, engineering reporter for the Automotive News, writes the following in an opinion article entitled "Can a scrappage incentive block the scam artists?"

I can see a cottage industry springing up that would work like this: I'm in the market for a new car, but my old one doesn't qualify for the scrappage credit. Or the car is worth more for me to sell it outright.

So I find a dilapidated old bomber on Craigslist, eBay Motors, or in the local classifieds that I would buy for less than the scrappage credit. And then use that for the trade and the $5,000 government credit. You can bet old gas-guzzlers would shoot up in value and be hoarded by those looking to make a quick buck.

It only makes sense. If I could buy a 1988 Chevrolet Caprice that barely runs for $200 and quickly flip it to someone looking to use it for a scrappage trade worth as much as $5,000, I could sell it for a hefty profit.

Undoubtedly regardless of how such a brain-dead, money-wasting "Cash for Clunkers" plan is crafted, smart people (i.e. not government bureaucrats) will be able to figure out how to "scam" it for fun and profit.

Of course a lot of significant future collectibles will be cubed out of shear greed. And the ones that are left will immediately soar in price.

(What's more, as used car supplies inflate in price and dwindle in supply, dealers will also jack up the price of new vehicles. Thus the ObamaCash "voucher" might prove somewhat illusory in the long run)

Along this "unintended consequences" line is a "Freakonomics" analysis of "Cash For Clunkers,"("No Cash for Clunkers"
By Steven D. Levitt) which reasoned:

[U]nless the price the government pays for the clunkers is very high, the majority of vehicles that are turned in will not have been driven much, if at all. Indeed, I suspect one of the most visible responses to this program will be a new market for mechanics fixing up cars that don’t run at all just enough so that they can be driven to the government’s lot to collect the cash.

A double "scam" would be to score the "beater" trade-in as outlined above (hopefully it's a rusted-out Japanese invader "appliance motoring" heap), sell it to Uncle Sam for the full "voucher" windfall, and put the "ObamaCash" "on the hood" of a "payment guaranteed" muscle car, then road-trip on unemployment while the government (READ: your grandchildren) and GM picks up the tab . . . .

That's the new definition of "responsiblity" in the Age of Obama.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS -- NOT SO DEAD?

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Even as the Specialty Equipment Market Association and its SEMA Action Network proclaims the moronic, government-funded collector-car-crushing "Cash for Clunkers" plan is dead, it's apparently arising from its legislative grave.

(Of course, it is the Easter season . . . .)

WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - A top U.S. congressional Democratic on Tuesday hailed a White House-backed bid to provide consumers a voucher toward buying new fuel-efficient vehicles in exchange for a poorer performing older model.

House of Representatives Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said the proposal could help the ailing U.S. auto industry as well as reduce air pollution.


Hoyer is apparently jealous of Senator Richard Shelby's unofficial title as the most automotively-stupid federal legislator.

This insanity will drive up the deficit. It will inflate the price of used replacement parts that millions of hot rodders, tuners, grassroots racers, and restorers rely upon.

It will also lead to the scrappage of restorable and collectable vehicles and rare milestone vehicles.

It will crush the aftermarket and dry up supplies of "emissions exempt" core vehicles that are necessary for seldom-driven restoration and high-performance projects.

As SEMA SAN correctly observes:

“SEMA continues to believe that a Cash for Clunkers program would, for no proven gain, hurt thousands of independent repair shops, auto restorers, customizers and their customers across the country that depend on the used car market,” said SEMA Vice President of Government Affairs Steve McDonald. “Instead, we are working with the House and Senate and all stakeholders on sound economic solutions to the current recession that will help drive product sales for the entire auto industry, including the vast automotive aftermarket and its specialty equipment segment.”

Much like Justice Scalia opined in Lamb's Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist. ((91-2024), 508 U.S. 384 (1993)) about the infamous "Lemon" test, "Cash For Clunkers" is "Like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried . . . frightening the little children" and gearheads of all stripes.

Let's kill "Cash for Clunkers" dead, dead, dead this time around. Call or write your Senators and representative today.

GM “ON THE FRITZ,” MOTORING TO THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE, AND OTHER “OBAMINATIONS”

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Just what General Motors needed . . .

(at least in the minds of Barack “can’t-change-a-flat-tire” Obama and his equally clueless Central Committee of Car Czars)

. . . is apparently another career “bean counter” at the helm.

Frederick “Fritz” Henderson “comes out of GM's financial side - the same path to the top taken by Wagoner and his predecessor, Jack Smith. Henderson joined GM as a senior analyst in the treasurer's office in New York in 1984.”

His main job qualification: He’s not Rick Wagoner.

Nor is he “Maximum” Bob Lutz or some other skeptical, rebellious, grease-under-the-fingernails-gearhead (undoubtedly to the relief of “appliance motorist” politicians, power-mad bureaucrats, and career tree huggers in the Obama camp).

Actually, Fritz gets management credit for some profitable mini-cars built by GM do Brasil.

Perhaps that would make him sort of a “third-world” car guy. . . .

Fritz, of course, mouths some of the obligatory “right” words about the importance of product.

“Our job is not only to build vehicles people want to buy, but to communicate that people want to buy our vehicles.”

Wow. Spoken like a true green-eye-shade M.B.A. That will really rally America to GM’s defense against the predatory Japanese invaders and scare the U.A.W. into market-based concessions . . . .

Not that much of this matters anyhow.

Obama and the Car Czar Central Committee are calling the shots. And those shots increasing appear to be aimed toward a summer-time bankruptcy filing.

But Obama and the Car Czar Central Committee now want to take some of the sting out of the increasingly probable bankruptcies by claiming that the Obama Administration will guarantee the warranties on new cars. Obama announced that:

“If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired just like always. Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been because starting today the United States government will stand behind your warranty.”

(Not as catchy as Lee Iacocca’s old “if you can find a better warranty, buy it” sales pitch. On the other hand, Iacocca never could create a new government-backed entitlement by reading a few lines off of a TelePrompter(tm))

Of course, if GM or Chrysler are liquidated in Chapter 7, does this mean that the federal government is going into the auto parts business?

And if so, will the availability of replacement parts be filtered through the Obama Administrations’ radical environmental goals. (“We’re sorry, ObamaPartsPlus doesn’t carry any parts for Dodge Vipers or SRT-8s. Would you like a nice electric hybrid micro-car instead?”)

All of this as Rush Limbaugh correctly wonders:

Does anybody know whether Barack Obama knows how to change a tire? Does anybody know whether Barack Obama knows how to use a tire gauge? Does he know anything about this? Do any of the people on his auto task force have the slightest idea about the mechanics of an automobile, the designing of an automobile, the manufacturing of an automobile, and of course the marketing and sale? Now we're in the warranty business, too, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if you know this or not but starting today the United States government will stand behind your warranty on a newly purchased General Motors car. Now, that's going to be cool, isn't it? You take your car in for a problem and you're going to have to argue with the government representative you're dealing with as to whether or not it's really a problem and whether you caused it. You think dealing with the DMV is a struggle now, wait 'til this kicks into gear.

By the way, is any of this remotely constitutional?

And some "progressives" will undoubtedly wonder whether "warranty insurance" isn't as much of a "fundamental human right" as they claim "health insurance" is.

SPEEDZZTER’S “WELFARE CADILLAC” FILE:

Now that Ford Motor Company and GM have joined Hyundai in offering a job-loss guarantee on qualifying new vehicles, Truth With Speedzzter expects the quality of vehicles at unemployment offices nationwide to dramatically improve.

Given that GM’s plan is known as “Total Confidence,” Truth With Speedzzter wonders how enterprising customers will “scam” these guaranteed payment plans.

Obviously, a bit of “job loss” “benefit” planning for some is now to rush down to your local GM or Ford dealer and buy the most expensive new vehicle they can qualify to finance so that they can motor in style to pick up their unemployment checks and, someday, to job interviews.

Does Rick Wagoner qualify for these programs?

Can you snag a Shelby GT500 or a Corvette ZR1 just before you get “downsized?”

As the humorist Will Rogers once observed, "We're the only nation to drive to the poorhouse in a Cadillac." Indeed.

FORD STINKS UP THE SHORT TRACKS

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Bristol and Martinsville are probably not two favorite words in Ford Racing Boss Brian Wolfe's vocabulary these days.

To the dwindling number of Americans who "cling to guns and religion" and the rotting corpse of NASCAR after the corporations looted it and Brian France did his dead-level best to gift-wrap it for Toyota, Bristol and Martinsville represent the sort of action-packed short tracks that are the backbone of American oval racing. Thus, their importance is far out of proportion to their diminutive sizes.

In fact, Bristol and Martinsville are a welcome respite from the bland, "cookie-cutter" 1.5 mile ovals that predominate the homogenized, shrink-wrapped, sleep-inducing SPRINT CUP FUNNYCAR-OF-TOMORROW schedule.

And after a big debut for the Roush-Fenway Fords in 2009, Brian Wolfe was undoubtedly optimistic that Ford Racing's new parsimonious strategy might actually pan out.

Then the traitorous Joe Gibbs "Toyota Camry" common-template FunnyCar-of-tomorrow, aimed by the almost universally-loathed "Rowdy" Kyle Busch, took over for a triad of forgettable races (probably much to the satisfaction of the hapless Brian France and the sushi-eaters in NASCAR's luxury corporate boxes)

It should be noted that Rowdy's Tokyo Reign did little if anything to improve attendance at NASCAR's weekly WWE-On-Wheels "shows."

And at Bristol and Martinsville, Ford's NASCAR efforts crashed and burned bigger than a Pinto rammed by an 80,000-pound semi.

[No] Boogity, [No] Boogity, [No] Boogity.

Perhaps the only way Ford could have done worse (other than just wimping out as they did in November 1970) would be to put Toyota's crash-prone Michael Waltrip in a Fusion-FunnyCar-of-Tomorrow . . . .

In fact, at Martinsville, Ford was so uncompetitive that it placed only a pair of cars in the top twenty. And added to the misery was the shuttering of the Yates Racing #28 team (which was one of only two Fords in the top twenty at Bristol), the Wood Brothers part-time schedule, and an ever-growing field of Toyotas.

The best Ford at Bristol was Carl Edwards -- languishing back in fifteenth place.

It's a good thing that NASCAR fatigue and the France family's detonation of the essence of stock car racing has greatly reduced the audience for this fiasco.

Ford's short-track futility is not unexpected.

For five decades, Ford has done an abysmally poor job of supporting the grassroots of weekly short track racing across America. And the Achilles heel of Roush racing has always been the "short track program." NASCAR's testing ban and the "cheater" engines that NASCAR gave Chevrolet, Dodge and Toyota only make this worse.

Add on Ford's lack of car count, and you have a perfect formula for giving away the non-superspeedway portion of the Sprint Cup schedule.

Thus, Ford Racing fans were left with little more than rooting for arch-enemy Chevrolet to knock off the boring NAS-TOYOTA juggernaut.

But at least President Obama hasn't called for Brian Wolfe to be canned, so he's a bit better off than Rick Wagoner (who probably was in no mood to celebrate Hendrick Chevrolet's twenty-fifth anniversary victory at Martinsville).

Now if we could only get Obama to sack Brian France . . . .


(Truth With Speedzzter would like to give a shout out to the "TV TROPES" website for linking to this blog in its "Serious Business" trope page:

A blogger known only as "Speedzzter" went NUTS after Kyle Busch gave Toyota their first NASCAR Sprint Cup win. His rant must be read to be believed.

Of course, the greed-soaked sell-out of NASCAR's traditions to Toyota IS SERIOUS BUSINESS (and Truth With Speedzzter does not take such traitorous, Anti-American actions lightly).)

OBAMA AND THE KNOWNOTHINGS SACK WAGONER

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After Rick Wagoner's tone-deaf jet trip to Washington D.C. last November, it became clear that GM's CEO would probably be thrown overboard at some point in the "Beg 2" financial crisis.

In fact, Truth With Speedzzter then opined:

Wagoner is the last of the traditional "Detroit insider" CEOs. The popular canard that it will take brilliant folks who have not grown up in inside the auto industry to save it is a career-flattening steamroller for company men like Wagoner.

He may not have made the mess and he may have been fighting for restructuring long before anyone in Congress ever even heard of the concept, but he's most likely to take the fall for generations of GM managers that are long gone.

It maybe totally unfair and divorced from the actual facts, but Wagoner might just be one of the sacrificial lambs in the titanic struggle to save GM.

That day came just a handful of days before GM's Congressionally-mandated restructuring plan was due. And the call to the bullpen apparently came from the highest levels of the Government.

CNBC's Phil LeBeau said

In one full swoop, the White House has made it clear it will re-make America's largest auto maker from the top down.

This goes way beyond dumping the CEO of a company gasping for air.

This is the start of the Treasury Department actively changing who and how GM operates.

Nothing suggests that Rick Wagoner was unable or unwilling to carry out the whims of Obama's Central Committee of Car Czars. Moreover, no one could reasonably question Wagoner's commitment to a company he'd spent over three decades of his life serving in various capacities.

So why did Rick get the "death penalty?" Was it that he failed to impress Obama's automotive know-nothings? Was he too strong for Obama's committee of fly-weights, environmental activists, and non-vehicle owners to manage? Was Wagoner's apparent inability to work a deal with the U.A.W. his downfall?

No. It was old-fashioned scapegoat symbolism, plain and simple. It was a trophy for the wall of GM's legion of critics. It was badge-engineered to buy Obama and his clueless band of Car Czars more time and a larger blank check.

Obama served up Wagoner's head to attempt to squelch vapid "experts," such as the near-brain-dead Alabama Senator Richard Shelby and a host of chauffeured politicians and appliance motorists who pretend to know how to "fix" GM.


Obama's sacking of Wagoner was rooted in cynical realpolitik, not justice or fairness.

It was meant to soften the criticism of inevitably borrowing more money from the Chinese and our grandchildren to give Obama's loyal supporters in the U.A.W. a softer landing in the GM collapse.

(Of course, dumping Wagoner will do nothing to win over the hard-core "Tokyo Roses" in the "Let 'em die/Let Toyota take over America" camp. But it might give Obama a little more "cover" among free-spending moderates, big labor, and disgruntled environmentalists)

To be fair, Rick Wagoner will not be remembered in the Pantheon of great Detroit automobile executives. He was little more than a journeyman corporate bureaucrat who was faced with a mess even some of the legends couldn't have unwound. He was a product of GM's system of homogenisation, notwithstanding the fact that he actually sometimes listened to Maximum Bob Lutz and John Heinricy. And it cannot be ignored that GM's collapse happened on Wagoner's watch.

But Rick Wagoner probably deserved a lot better than being shown the door by a group of hyperpartisan opportunists who are even less capable at their jobs than Wagoner was at his.