And we enter the week of the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which means diddly-squat will be happening this week in automotive news. Enjoy your day off, everyone, we’ll be here, desperately combing for anything to talk about.

For 11/24, due to reasons beyond my control (read: college), the actual podcast will be going up tomorrow. However, as for right now, we have the text of what you’ll be hearing me say later on tomorrow, anyway! It’s situated right below the jump.

11/25 is the first victim to fall prey to the ravages of the Thanksgiving vacation, as we talk about rumors surrounding a new range-topping VW Scirocco and the mass exodus from the upcoming 2009 North American International Auto Show. It’s only 2:36 people, you can’t even boil an egg in that amount of time.

 

 SSL Radio 11/25/08 [2:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey, welcome to your SSL Radio podcast for November 24th, 2008. No fancy intros, we’re just gonna jump straight into the news this week. We’ve got the long-awaited reveal of the Porsche Panamera…body, President-Elect Obama makes his will known, and we take some time to find humor at the expense of others in our current deep economic crisis.

We’ve been having spy photographs of the Porsche Panamera shoved in our faces for the last fourty years or so, and seeing as the market is just right for a six-figure super-sedan at the moment, the timing for Porsche’s new Panamera sedan couldn’t be better. Now, one of the most important things about the Panamera is how it handles, and in our grand tradition of solid journalism, we can’t say a damn thing about how it handles, because no one’s driven it outside of Porsche. We also can’t talk about power, because we don’t know how much it will have. All that we can really talk about is the way it looks, which, from most angles, is pretty good. The front of the car features all the best bits of current Porsche design, and the side view is sleek and sporty without seeming like a ridiculous sliver hovering down the road. However, once you get to the back of the car, it all starts to go wrong. Why, oh why did Porsche decide to copy from the Boxster instead of the 911? The inflated rear arches of the Boxster look good, if they’re on a small, two-seater convertible. On the Panamera, they look bloated, and the connection between the roof line and the underside doesn’t help, making it look like someone pinched it in the middle and the excess car just piled onto the outside. I’m sure it’ll be fast, but if I was going to drop six figures on a hyperluxury four-door, I’d head on down to the Aston Martin dealer and put my cash down on a Rapide.

We’ve been covering the automotive bailout bill pretty closely, and we’ve got something of a mini-update for you this evening. Over the weekend, President-Elect Obama and his surrogates, mostly campaign strategist and manager David Axelrod have been making the rounds, making it clear that Obama does support a bailout, but only if the automakers can demonstrate that they have a viable plan for going forward that prevents Congress from just wasting taxpayers’ dollars. The current deadline for that plan is December 2nd, so don’t worry if GM, Ford or Chrysler will make it until then (well, maybe not Chrysler).

Speaking of Chrysler, we’re going to end on something of an amusing note. Who out there remembers when gas prices were edging on $5.00 a gallon, lo those many weeks ago? It was only July and August when people were wondering if they’d need to make a stop at the sperm bank just to fill up and get to work, and now, thanks to a global economic recession, the price of a barrel of oil, and therefore gasoline, is less than half of what it once was! At the time, Chrysler was still in deep trouble, and in an effort to drum up sales, offered a free three year program that gave you locked-in gas or diesel prices, with gas famously capped at $2.99 a gallon. Well, premium 93 octane has now dipped well below $2.30 a gallon all over the nation, and in even the most ridiculously taxed states, gas prices probably aren’t much higher than $2.20 for regular. Unfortunately for those who got in on this deal, they’re now in proud possession of a gas card that entitles you to pay more than market value for what you’re putting in their tank. I think that this is what the Germans mean when they talk about Schadenfreude, no? If so, this is a laboratory-pure grade sample.

And that will do it for this day’s episode of SSL Radio. I will talk to you all again, tomorrow.