Back on April 1st, an article appeared on NewsTimes.com claiming that Saturn had found a suitor.  While many initially dismissed it as an April Fool’s joke, Saturn of Danbury owner (and early Saturn insider) Todd Ingersoll was telling anybody who would listen that a deal was in the works that would assure Saturn’s long-term future. While Ingersoll didn’t come forward with the specifics of the deal or the name of the interested party (or parties), it seemed like an honest attempt at reassuring consumers that Saturn wasn’t a dead brand walking.

Weeks have come and gone, however, and nothing seems to have come of it. Meanwhile, the Pontiac and Hummer branches have been lopped off the future GM family tree, and Saab and Saturn have degenerated to sell or scrap status. While GM’s overall attitude toward a potential sale of the Saab brand seems fairly positive, the future of Saturn doesn’t look so rosy. Earlier estimates predicted the Saturn network would stay around until 2011 or 2012 — plenty of time to court new ownership — but GM is now saying that it’s on the chopping block for the end of this year.

So what is the key to Saturn’s future? It all comes down to Chrysler.

Continue reading Lord Byron — French Bread, Italian Spices and Tupperware

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Photography by Andrew Didorosi

They say that sincerity is the new irony. So let’s be sincere. Prior to two weeks ago, I had never driven a car with the raw horsepower of the Switzer Performance P800 Nissan GT-R. We’re talking about seven hundred and seven ponies at all four wheels, on 93-octane gasoline, dyno-proven and road-tested. It’s terribly fashionable in this business to pretend that we’ve seen it all before, but you deserve to know the truth. Prior to driving this car, the most powerful car I’d driven was the six-hundred-horsepower 2008 Dodge Viper. On a weekly basis, I rarely drive anything faster than my poky little Audi S5 or Porsche 993. My Neon race car puts about one hundred and forty horsepower to the front wheels, although that’s enough to put you in the wall at a pretty high speed. Ask me how I know.

So while it would be very hip and print-journo of me to act like I get up every morning and drive random mega-horsepower cars, the truth of the matter is that it ain’t so. For that reason, I was very, very excited to drive the Switzer P800, particularly as it would be on a road course which I know reasonably well. This wasn’t the typical “press junket” kind of trip. I drove four hundred and fifty miles at my own expense, skipped work, and endured some really lousy weather to make it happen.

I wasn’t the only person busting tail to make sure our readers had a chance to experience the car. A notorious pro racer/road-rally bon vivant rented the track for the entire day and consented to let us share his playdate on the condition that we would maintain strict confidence about his secret new project. Tym Switzer, owner of the tuning shop which bears his name, arranged for the GT-R’s arrival and agreed that we, the Press As A Whole, would print the truth about the car’s performance, no matter what. Jo Borras, Switzer’s newly arrived PR mensch, coordinated the entire effort from the leather captain’s chair of his refrigerator-white VW Routan “press office”. The crew from Jalopnik agreed to share photographs with me in exchange for my services as camera-car operator and winter-weather stunt driver. Last but not least, the GT-R’s owner, J.R., agreed in the most nonchalant way possible to let me drive his pride and joy at one hundred and thirty miles per hour. In the snow.

Continue reading Avoidable Contact #26: Eight hundred horsepower and one little question.

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We’re a pretty diverse group here at Speed:Sport:Life, no matter whether you’re talking about race, religion, politics, or sanctioning-body affiliation. In fact, if you were to tally up all of our votes, we probably canceled each other out. If we’d all agreed to stay home, we could have saved a few hours of line-trudging boredom back in November.

But while we’ve refused to “pick a side”, President Obama has just come down firmly on the side of the car-haters. According to the New York Times, our new leader has ordered the EPA to “aggressively review” the application by California to set its own “emissions” standards. In this case, “emissions” means CO2 emissions, which are directly linked to fuel consumption.

The plain English? California’s going to require 35mpg fleet average by 2016. But they won’t be alone. There are thirteen other states — hereby dubbed the “Trotsky Thirteen” in honor of Lenin’s old pal — which would like to follow California’s lead. Together, they account for about half of the American automotive market. One phrase that’s being thrown around is “the involuntary hybridization of America’s automotive fleet”, and that isn’t too far off the mark. A mandatory average of 35mpg will strip American consumers of the freedom to choose vehicles as diverse as the Nissan GT-R and the Ford Flex. Depending on the violence of the penalties applied to nonconformists, this could force Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Jaguar, and several other manufacturers out of the United States. It is also likely to kill enthusiast vehicles such as the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Mustang, Nissan 370Z, Subaru WRX and STi, and even the Honda S2000 (which doesn’t come close to 35mpg).

Obama’s immediate action on this is supposedly designed to “give the automakers time to tool-up for 2011″. Hello? Has anybody involved with this decision bothered to read the news? Who has the money or ability to retool for this mandate right now? Even Honda and Toyota will be in a pickle; they’ll have to force mandatory hybrid powertrains on their bread-and-butter Accord and Camry consumers, raising the average transaction price on Accords and Camrys into the $30,000 range, right in the middle of the worst economy since Jimmy Carter.

President Carter, some of you will recall, also hated cars and used the full power of the government to regulate, humiliate, and assault the auto industry. President Obama has promised to be different, to bring “hope” and “change” to America. It won’t come from crippling our already strained economy and auto industry in the name of “preventing climate change”. Talk to your representative today. Let him or her know that you don’t support this mandate. Make no mistake: in the world envisioned by Obama and his brain trust, there’s no room for anything faster or more exciting than a Prius. If you disagree, let the man know, and let him know pronto.

Yes, we’re back for another week of SSL Radio. Supposedly, the automakers are heading back to Congress this week to beg for their lives, but we’ll have to wait and see if anything actually comes out of it. Aside from that, there’s not that much going on, so we’ll have to see what we can dig up to send your way in glorious podcast format.

On 12/1, we start off by reviewing the stuff that we missed over the vacation (it wasn’t that much), and the news from Monday (which was even less).

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.

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Continue reading Speed:Sport:Life Radio: Turkey Week Edition

Yes, it’s time for the LA Auto Show! I’ll be there, bringing you coverage of all the cars that we actually give a crap about. Also, as this is the first week of our new daily podcasting schedule, the format of this post might change a bit from day to day as we figure out what the Hell we’re doing. And please remember to, as always, Share and Enjoy™.

First, the podcast for 11/18, wherein we kill time before the LA show opens by talking about the VW Touareg V6 TDI, go over Ford’s sale of part of their stake in Mazda, find one great deal on two awful cars, and rediscover just what makes Bernie Ecclestone so damn evil.

For 11/19, we wonder why ABC News is wasting our time complaining about the fact that corporate CEOs are acting like coporate CEOs, and cover the few interesting debuts from the LA Auto Show that we haven’t done previously, which only leaves the Nissan Cube and 370Z and the 2010 Ford Mustang.

11/20 has come and gone, and brought with it news of Porsche finally committing that final sin, and economic crises and the stupid Congressional pissing matches that cause them.

And finally, the podcast for 11/21 contains news of the pricing for the 2010 Ford Fusion refresh, the debut of the US-spec Smart Fortwo Brabus, and final proof of why we’re so awesome.

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Hello, and welcome to the first of our new daily editions of SSL Radio. We figured it’d be a good idea to make this first edition a special one, and so we present to you an extra-long podcast, all about the current crisis the US automotive industry (GM, mostly) finds itself in. We break down the current debate over the potential new bailout for Detroit, discuss how the Big Three are doing at the moment and if they’re likely to live to see a bailout, and finally, I do Chris Matthews from MSNBC a solid and present my own answer to the question that he and many others have been asking for the last few days: What the Hell happened to the Big Three? If you have any questions, comments or hate mail about this podcast or the new format, my email address is kasey@speedsportlife.com. And as always, Share and Enjoy™.

I apologize for my voice, the fact that half of southern California is on fire and the other half is coated in ash (just in time for the LA Auto Show) has played havoc with my voice today. This week, we have cool leftovers from SEMA, a confusing new Ferrari, some nice diesel news, and all the coverage you could want for the slow collapse of the American automotive industry.

On another note, we will be attempting to move the podcast to a nightly schedule instead of a weekly schedule. Now, that might sound like more work for me, but it should really allow us to get more content to you, the listeners, and more on time, as less news per day means we can cover more esoteric stuff and not have to pound out four or five pages of text for a single podcast. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes this week, so wish us luck.

Imagine I said something devastatingly witty here, something that caused women to desire me and men to envy my rhetorical skills, at least until I put up a real summary of this episode. Until then, Share and Enjoy™.

Edit: Alright, it’s amazing what actually sleeping will do for one’s disposition. Anyway, here’s what you can expect from this week’s podcast (no promises, though). Audi drops the basic stats for the upcoming TT-S, a bit of rumblings and rumors from Ford, Rolls-Royce muses about a cleaner, greener Phantom, and the British are planning to break the sound barrier yet again. We’re unfortunately forced to talk about the GM-Chrysler merger rumors, the auto industry continues its death spiral, the FIA compounds its mistake, and we get to add a new marque to the “featured on” list in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke.

We’re taking our progress back towards being on schedule one day at a time here at SSL Radio, literally. And on this day, we come bringing news! General Motors announces the pricing for the Cadillac CTS-V and the Chevrolet Camaro, and shows just how great of a bargain they both are, Mini debuts an exciting new green car, Mitsubishi debuts an exciting new scarlet red car, GM and Chrysler consider combining their problems into one enormous morass of fail, Emanuele Pirro retires from racing, Formula 1 prepares to become even more boring, and the most precious little engine you’ll ever see in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. We have the video below the jump, and as always, Share and Enjoy™.

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Continue reading Speed:Sport:Life Radio: Boys and Their Toys Edition