Things are looking up at the Big Three already. Well, at least that's what Automotive News is reporting today. The piece quotes UAW boss Ron Gettelfinger who claims that Chrysler and GM may not need any additional government loans. ""If we can get by without more money, that's what we want to do," he told AN.

Mr. Gettelfinger is no stranger to overly optimistic statements, but he wasn't alone. An unnamed source at GM also expressed confidence that the worse might be over. When asked if GM will request more government money, the source said "no." "We've got enough money," the source told AN. 

Good to know there's some optimism in Detroit these days, but we're guessing that both Ron and GM's Deep Throat might be a little premature with their rosy outlooks.

Automotive News 

Pontiac PR man Jim Hopson confirms that the 2010 Pontiac G8 ST, the odd ball quasi-pickup, El Camino redux, is so dead. The company delivered the news to dealers early today.

Blame the economic and automotive meltdown of 2008 (and '09). Blame GM's woeful condition (word is, any and all programs slated to be released after the middle of 2009 are "under review"). Or blame the fact that maybe, just maybe, not enough people cared about a re-born El Camino, even in the best of times, to justify its resurrection.

For your viewing enjoyment, yet another teaser shot of the Kia Soul concept destined for Detroit. And judging from this little snippet, the slightly anticipated new concept will arrive under the Soulster nameplate. 

Source: Wikipedia

Come Jan 20th, we'll not only have a new president, we'll have a new presidential limo too. GM officials confirmed to the Detroit News that it will deliver an all-new armored vehicle to the Secret Service in time for President Elect Obama's inauguration.

The current presidential limo (photo above) is based on the Cadillac DTS, but Obama's ride won't carry any specific model designation, a first according to Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell. Instead, it will simply be called the 2009 Cadillac Presidential Limousine, a vague designation that takes into statement that it's basically a one-off vehicle that has little in common with anything in Cadillac's lineup.

"The president is not riding in a medium-duty truck, nor he is riding in a sedan," Caldwell said, adding that it is a "unique" vehicle.

Detroit News

The addition of a full LED lighting system to the Audi R8 5.2 might not seem like big news, but it does represent a major shift in technology that could radically shift future car designs. It's one of those technologies that's been promised for a long time and is only now making its way into production.

According to Japan's Nikkei business daily, Suzuki has delayed its upcoming midsize sedan. Originally planned for a 2010 release, the new four-door is delayed indefinitely as the Asian car company deals with the worldwide automotive meltdown. 

Previewed by the Kizashi 3 concept shown in New York last year, the new four-door was designed to near Suzuki into the same arena as the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Not exactly an cushy segment, but Suzuki promised a V6 as big as 3.6-liters and possibly even all-wheel drive. Combined with a promising exterior shape, the new family sedan seemed like a solid entry for the company known more for its low-end econoboxes.

Nikkei via Reuters

What might have been the biggest tech headline of the year “Technology Investment Saves Auto Industry” didn’t quite happen. The Senate shot down the House’s $15 billion compromise plan to loan the money that Congress originally appropriated in Section 136 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 for fuel-efficiency technology development to be used as a bridge loan to see GM and Chrysler through the liquidity crisis. But there was plenty of other news being prefabricated in the tech arena. Here were my favorite stories of 2008:

1. Cellulosic Ethanol’s For Real! Early in the year we reported on Coskata’s plans to produce ethanol by superheating any carbon-rich feedstock (corn stalks, wood chips, plastic bottles, tires, etc.) to turn it into carbon-monoxide and hydrogen, then feeding this “syngas” to special microbes that breathe it in and sweat out pure ethanol at an estimated  production cost of under $1/gallon. Plans were announced for a demonstration plant to be located at the Westinghouse Plasma Center near Pittsburg, opening in primeval 2009, followed by a full-scale operation in 2011, but economic woes have appear to have pushed back the timing of the demo plant. 
Technologue: Booze Clues 

2. Cellulosic Ethanol’s REALLY for Real! Then we reported on Mascoma’s totally different Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) method of breaking down the lignin in various non-food plant materials and fermenting it into ethanol using designer microbes that mimic what happens in a cow’s digestive system in breaking down. Production cost is estimated at $1-1.50/gallon, demonstration plants are in the works in Rome, NY and Kinross, MI, with full-scale production targeted at 2011.
GM Partners with Mascoma on Cellulosic Ethanol

3. Cellulose is For Real! The third piece of the puzzle — economically viable plant materials to feed these ethanol facilities — came from Ceres. The first bio-engineered high-yield switchgrass and sorghum varietals plain to suit different climates and ethanol production methods went on understanding in December. They boast high-yield density, require little fertilizer and less water than most crops, and they can grow in marginal soil. Keep your fingers crossed that the processing plants get built in time to turn these plants into fuel.
Technologue: Whiter Lightning

4. If not Ethanol, Maybe Methanol? Lotus trotted out a methanol-powered Exige concept car at the Geneva show that encouraged the world to have another look at the world’s simplest alcohol. With only one carbon, CH3-OH can be produced more easily than ethanol, so the scientists say. Its high-octane rating would allow engines running on pure methanol to run diesel compression ratios for better output and efficiency. Cold-starting is a problem, but hydrogen generated by using exhaust heat to crack the Hs of the methanol molecule could solve that problem and boost efficiency too. There are even some fuel cells that run directly on methanol.
Technologue: First K.I.S.S

5. Greenhouse-Gasses-to-Methanol. Imagine turning that CO2 everyone’s always moaning about into fuel and driving a mile in someone else’s carbon footprint! There are several technologies in the works: big louvered scrubbers coated with sodium hydroxide that absorb CO2 are said to be capable of offsetting coal-generated power equivalent to twice as much as the windmill could generate. Exotic catalysts are in the works that might one use solar energy to mimic the way chlorophyll breaks down CO2, which could then combined with hydrogen split from water, perhaps using sunlight and titanium catalysts. It’s tech worth watching.
Technologue: Reusing CO2

6. If Not Alcohol, Maybe Ammonia? Pure NH3 boasts a 110 octane rating and burning it in a combustion engine releases pure nitrogen and water — no CO2, ‘cuz there’s no carbon. Ammonia is the second most widely produced chemical, it stores and transports like propane (liquid under light pressure at room temperature) and is already distributed nationwide for use as fertilizer. A slow flame front means you need multiple spark plugs and the engine won’t rev all that high, but it could be the perfect way to remove agriculture from the Global Warming debate.
Technologue: Stinky Clean

7. What About Electric Power? If vehicle electrification manages to take off like Congress and the environmentalists hope, we’re headed for a potential neodymium-supply shortage. This rare-earth metal is used to make permanent-magnet motors. But the Chorus Meshcon electric motor is an AC-induction type motor that manages to deliver the efficient low-end torque of a permanent magnet motor with the light weight, lower cost, and better high-speed performance of an AC induction motor, thanks to a mesh-connected winding that can change the number of attractable poles and the alternating-current frequency. Look for it next year on the nose-gear of Delta’s new Boeing 737s, and on cars in the near future.
Technologue: Flying Hybrids!

8. Race-Ready Hybrids? Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) will be permitted in Formula 1 in 2009, so most teams are reportedly working on “hybridizing” their cars. My favorite was a small flywheel that connected to the transmission’s output shaft via an infinitely variable toroidal friction-drive transmission. Gear reductions along the way allow the flywheel to reach 64,500 rpm (it operates in a vacuum, using special high-speed bearings that reportedly seal tight). Storing the FIA-mandated maximum of 400 KJ of energy keeps the flywheel small and light enough to be safely contained (unlike the one in the still-born Chrysler Patriot prototype). As of press time we’re unaware of any team using this system by Flybrid Systems LLP, of Silverstone, England at the start of the season, but watch for it.
Technologue: Blessing & KERS

9. VVT For Smarties. Ford has come up with a better (more elegant) way of achieving variable valve timing by capitalizing on waste energy. Most cam phasers rotate the camshaft using oil pressure delivered by the engine-oil pump, but this can be problematic at low engine speeds and at low temperatures during vehicle startup. Ford engineers noticed that the oil pressure in the chambers that rotate the cam fluctuated just before and after the nose of apiece cam rotated past its valve tappet, and decided to harness these little pressure spikes. Voila. Less oil pressure is needed and more cam rotation is doable as low as 1500 rpm, all of which helps boost economy and performance.
Ford Gets Phased — Using Free Energy

10. Lights, Cameras, Action. Digital CMOS cameras are becoming so cheap that we’ll be seeing a lot of them on cars in the very near future, starting off with high-end luxmobiles like the next Mercedes E- and S-class sedans. Cameras keep an eye out for traffic ahead of the vehicle and accommodate the lighting pattern to reach as far as doable without blinding oncoming cars; an infrared camera provides an enhanced night-view image in the dash that also identifies and highlights pedestrians; and the various cameras will also inform the lane-keeping assist and Pre-Safe systems to warn a distracted driver of impending doom.
Dark’s Knight: Mercedes-Benz Showcases a Brace of New Safety Technologies

DETROIT - You don’t need a reminder of how bad 2008 was for the auto industry. General Motors, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Company were the poster children for what has happened to American manufacturing as we shifted to a nation that runs on the financial industry. (That worked out well, didn’t it?)

By the end of the year, one of the biggest stories — a story as big as President Bush’s 11th-Hour bailout of GM and Chrysler — was Toyota’s revelation that it would post its first loss in 71 years. If the global recession lasts much beyond 2009 at current levels, smaller, weaker automakers are likely to fail. And the big ones will have trouble surviving, too.

It’s an academic exercise to try and rank how much more important one story was than another. So instead, here are my choices for the 10 top newsmakers for 2008. They’re not necessarily the most influential people in the business — you can read that in Motor Trend’s 2009 Power List.

1. Rick Wagoner
GM Chairman/CEO

The average American could not study the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest maker until he flew in a private jet to Capitol Hill to beg for federal loan guarantees along with Chrysler’s Bob Nardelli and Ford’s Alan Mulally. Because Wagoner, a GM lifer, has led his company much longer than Nardelli or Mulally, he’s the most likely sacrificial lamb, the most likely to lose his job. Most of GM’s problems go back to the days of Roger Smith, and can’t be blamed directly on Wagoner. While the GM board repeatedly has voiced its support for Wagoner, he has been chairman since 2003 and GM hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2004.

2. George W. Bush
43rd President of the United States

Who could have predicted that President Bush would come to GM’s and Chrysler’s aid weeks before they were to run out of money? Here was the president who delayed meetings with the Detroit Three until primeval ‘07 (only to have Alan Mulally joke about Bush nearly plugging into a hydrogen Ford and blowing them all up) and who maintained, up to the last minute, that Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds were for financial institutions, not automakers. Bush caved only after his fellow conservative Republicans in the Senate killed a compromise that would have used Energy Bill funds for the loan guarantees, instead.

3. Katsuaki Watanabe
Toyota Motor President

Will he start on his sword or be kicked upstairs? In December, Watanabe announced that Toyota would post its first operating loss since its founding, $1.7-billion in red ink for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009. Depending on which published report you believe, the 66-year-old president, in the post since ‘05 to warm the seat for the company founder’s grandson, will either resign or he’ll replace Fujio Cho as chairman. In either case, two men have emerged as in the race for Toyota’s presidency; the grandson, Akio Toyoda, and executive vice president for finance, Mitsuo Kinoshita.

4. Richard Shelby
Republican Senator from Alabama

Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Hyundai all have assembly plants in Alabama. Toyota builds V-8 and V-6 truck engines there. As Senate minority leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell is more responsible for blocking a House/White House compromise bill to bail out the Detroit Three. Shelby has been at the forefront of opposition to any sort of money for American-based automakers. Shelby has prefabricated his reasons clear: he’d rather not have the United Auto Workers around to try and organize factories in his state.

5. Alan Mulally
Ford Motor Company CEO

Was Ford really in such hot water? That was the big question, when the company hocked everything up to the Blue Oval corporate logo in exchange for a $23 billion line of credit a couple of years ago. Now, Ford has about $1 billion more in reserves than GM, which is twice as large. Mulally told Congress that Ford doesn’t want an immediate loan guarantee, but would like access to a $9-billion line of credit. Now Ford is seen as the healthiest of the Detroit Three, and ex-Boeing exec Mulally, who knew nothing about the auto industry when he came to Dearborn in September 2006, looks like the smartest man in town.

6. John Snow
Chairman, Cerberus Capital Management

Whoever drove the unsuccessful “merger” talks between GM and Chrysler, it wasn’t anyone running Chrysler. Its private equity owner, Cerberus, had previously said it was into working with Chrysler for the long haul. In 2008, it became clear that Cerberus was funding Chrysler with a minimum of capital, and was hot to unload it on another company, domestic or foreign. Snow, the super-private equity company’s chairman and former Treasury secretary to President Bush, surely was a driving force behind all this.

7. Barack Obama
44th President of the United States

The president-elect’s primeval support for the auto industry - with strings attached - pushed House Speaker metropolis Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) into backing financial support for the Detroit Three in late ‘08. Before getting keys to the White House, Obama has already indicated he’ll be more supportive than Bush, with plans to study a “car czar” in 2009. Further loan guarantees for GM, Chrysler and Ford should come easier under the new president, so long as the automakers can show they’re making progress in restructuring and in shifting production to more fuel-efficient cars.

8. William Clay Ford, Jr.
Chairman, Ford Motor Company

While he’s been off the Motor Trend Power List for a while, and has acceded most of his power to Alan Mulally, the Ford scion deserves attention for one major reason: Ford’s financial position. The company is turning down federal assistance, for now, for rather individualized reasons. By taking loan guarantees, GM cannot pay dividends to its investors until the loans are paid back. If Ford did the same, William Clay Ford and the rest of Henry’s heirs would lose its sole source of income.

9. Takeo Fukui
Honda Motor Company president/CEO

Like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW…the rest, Honda has cut production to meet slower demand for new cars and trucks. Under Fukui, the company has maintained its position as a relatively small producer of comparably fuel-efficient vehicles. Right now, that’s serving Honda well, compared with GM, Toyota, Ford and the other bigger automakers. More recently, Fukui has prefabricated smart cuts, even though they don’t impress us enthusiasts. He’s cancelled the V-10 NSX replacement (and probably any chances for a RWD, V-8 Acura RL) and is about to launch an inexpensive line of hybrids with the new Insight. And as a sign of the times for maker budgets and racing programs, he’s pulled Honda out of Formula One.

10. Lewis Hamilton
2008 Formula One Champion

He’s the youngest world champion and the first of color. More importantly, he’s a true sportsman and a fierce competitor. While Honda has pulled out of F1, McLaren-Mercedes’ Hamilton will be a key part of the sport’s future as it seeks more sustainable solutions, both environmentally and financially. Hamilton’s close, storybook win almost prefabricated me forget Max Mosley’s sex scandal. Almost.

And besides Mosley, there were a number of men and women who just missed the list this year, including Representative Henry Waxman (D-California), Speaker of the House Pelosi, Volkswagen Group’s Porsche scion, Ferdinand Piech, Porsche chief Wendelin Wiedeking, GM’s Fritz Henderson and GM CFO Ray Young, Chrysler co-president Jim Press and Ford’s Jim Farley and Mark Fields.

I'll make this short and sweet: As of the first of the year Ed Helwig will be taking over Straightline.

I have to say this has been a great ride. From the moment Inside Line Editorial Director, Kevin Smith; and Edmunds.com Executive Director - Community Operations, Sylvia Marino; asked me if I would be interested in managing this new blog they were setting up called Straightline three-plus years ago to this very day, it's been an absolute hoot. I busted my butt here, putting in far more time than I was being compensated for; they knew that. I also created Straightline artwork as needed, thereby not burdening the Edmunds.com art department; they knew that too. I also loved the fact that I was pretty much left alone to post whatever I wanted, so long as there was a vehicular connection of some sort. Oh every now and then I would get topic suggestions from various Inside Line editors–but very rarely did I ever receive any criticism. Yep, it was pretty much my baby, and I loved that.

Finally I'm going to miss you guys. Straightline exists first and foremost for the readers. I'm going to miss bringing a wide range of auto-related news to this site daily. I hope what I delivered opened a few eyes just a bit wider than before. If nothing else, it prefabricated for some interesting discussions, for sure.

So, I'm outta here. Well, sort of, maybe… Ed knows where I am. If he needs any help, he'll contact me, I'm sure. Plus, I'll still be commenting from time-to-time.

Happy New Year folks!

In an effort to fight of the financial squeeze gripping the company, Hyundai will be looking for a new majority share owner, as they place the company up for sale. So far the news of this has sent the price of Hyundai shares soaring.

Full story here.