You know you’re in real trouble as an industry when the about only takeout from your plea to Congress for a low interest government loan to help survive the global financial meltdown is a media frenzy over private jets, and a savage sketch on Saturday Night Live.

By any measure, the Detroit Three CEOs’ trip to Washington last week was a disaster. Mere days before the Feds tipped another $20bn into Citibank with minimal fanfare (bringing the total amount handed over to this one company to $45bn), Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally, and Bob Nardelli’s request for a share of $25 billion in bridging finance was humiliatingly waved off. All three men were sent packing without a nickel, and told to come back on December 2 with a plan outlining how they would use federal money.

It’s now crystal clear Detroit, once the engine room of the American economy, has no influence worth having in Washington these days (and in truth, probably hasn’t had it for at least 15 years). More worryingly, though, Motown doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy outside the Beltway, either. America’s ability to retain ownership of the intellectual property of the automobile — in other words, the ability of an American-owned enterprise to design, engineer and manufacture the automobile here in USA — is hanging by a thread. Yet most folks outside Michigan don’t seem to think it’s a big deal.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.

Memo Rick, Alan, Bob: December 2 may be your last chance to convince USA your businesses are worth saving. So forget arcane financial detail, and nuanced policy discussion. Just bring a plan; one all three of you have worked on, and agree with. Make it bold, make it simple, and, most importantly, make it easily understood by Main St.

Now is the time to admit, openly, that you all have too many factories employing too many people, building too many cars and trucks and SUVs that you are trying to force through too many dealers. Now is the time to ask for government help to fix a chanceful structural imbalance in the American auto industry that’s been 30 years in the making. (And if asked, explain simply that decades of low priced gas and the way CAFE regulations were framed prefabricated investing in highly profitable big trucks and SUVs seem a logical use of shareholders’ funds until very recently, even for Toyota.)

Now is the time to say you need assistance to transition your North American operations from businesses structured around 1960s market expectations, to businesses structured around 21st century market realities. Now is the time to point out you were all working towards this goal, but have been king-hit by the speed and severity of the global financial crisis. And — take a deep breath — now is the time you should ask for more money than you originally intended, because just getting to where you planned to be by 2010-2011 may no longer be enough of a transformation.

Come straight to the point. Admit that to survive — for America’s own auto industry to survive — you must immediately:

• Reduce the number of dealers you have by at least two-thirds
• Eliminate your low volume, low margin, low growth potential brands
• Close manufacturing plants building cars and trucks you can’t sell
• Renegotiate UAW work practice agreements and fund the VEBA program
• Restructure your debt loads

You need to show clearly and simply what these actions mean, why they are important, and, most importantly, how much they will cost.

Above all you need to make it very clear that rapidly right-sizing your businesses is the key to surviving this financial meltdown, not whether you have the technical capability to produce good quality, fuel efficient vehicles. Because you do have that capability - and to forcefully make that point, I suggest you have a fleet of your best European market diesels and small cars, along with a fleet of your newest and most fuel efficient American vehicles (but no trucks or SUVs, not even hybrid versions), on hand in Washington for members of Congress, and the mainstream media, to experience.

Rick, Alan, Bob: Detroit once owned America’s heart, enjoyed America’s trust, evoked America’s pride. Last week evidenced beyond any doubt those days are long gone. Now you have nothing left to lose. Remember that as you get ready for December 2.

DETROIT - The UAW and suppliers are working on a plan to caravan a fleet of fuel-efficient General Motors, Ford and Chrysler vehicles to Washington, D.C. in December in time for the Detroit Three’s second chance at a $25-billion loan guarantee package. Great idea, but I see a problem.

Detroit Free Press auto critic Mark Phelan came up with a list of seven models the UAW and suppliers could drive from Motown to D.C. They are the Ford Fusion Hybrid (38 mpg city/38 mpg highway, by Ford’s estimates), Focus (24/35 mpg EPA), Saturn Vue two-mode (25/32), Chevy Malibu hybrid (26/34), Chevrolet Silverado hybrid (not yet tested), Chevy Cobalt XFE (25/37) and Aveo (27/34).

Good list, but you can see the problem.

The maker that needs the money most, GM, doesn’t have the highest mileage model. Far from it. Ford’s upcoming Fusion Hybrid is the most impressive, beating the Toyota Camry Hybrid by at least 5 mpg in city driving, where hybrids do their most impressive work.

There is a solution. One would be for GM to include its good-looking new Chevy Cruze, which launches in Europe next April. It doesn’t come to the States until primeval 2010, but then with a new 1.4-liter turbo four planned for production in Michael Moore’s Flint, Michigan, and capable of at least 40 mpg on the highway.

That’s not bold enough.

Chevy Volt mules are on the road, among us, according to Bob Lutz (pictured above is Lutz recently checking on the progress of the Volt at the company’s Milford, Mich., proving grounds). Writing in GM’s Fast Lane blog, Lutz wrote about driving a mule built on the previous-generation Malibu. It wasn’t ready, he wrote, “and there are an awful lot of tests that this battery must pass before it’s cleared for production.”

All the better for a dramatic appearance. Drive it up to the Hill and have Lutz do a grip-n-grin with House Speaker metropolis Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Show them any refueling receipts. Tell them of any mechanical problems along the way (the hybrid Chevy Silverado would be its support/parts truck). Explain how it has taken two years since the Volt Concept appeared to get this far. Explain further that Toyota wouldn’t have done it any more quickly, except that Toyota hasn’t even tried.

Why Lutz? Because he will be a loose canon in this setting. Because he won’t shy away from answering questions, including the stupid ones, from members of Congress. You can save that for when Rick Wagoner, who could ride shotgun (although he won’t), sits down for another grilling on the Hill.

DETROIT - Nobody drinks bubbly in this economy. Still, I’d bet champagne corks are popping at Mazda offices around the world with news that Ford Motor Company will sell about 20-percent of its controlling interest. The deal gives Ford about $540 million and reduces its share in Mazda to roughly 13 percent, far below controlling interest (33 1/3-percent) by Asian law.

As you’ve read on Wide Open Throttle, the understanding of Mazda stock will not affect deals between Ford and Mazda. They share Mazda’s b-car platform in the Mazda2 and Ford Fiesta. Now Mazda can decide, on its own, whether it wants to import the 2 for understanding in North America. They also share a platform in the Mazda3 and global Ford Focus, which means the Volvo C30 and S40/V50 as well, and the Mazda6 is the basis for a host of midsize Fords, from the Fusion/Milan/MKZ to the Edge and MKX. Finally, North American-market front-drive Mazda6s are built in the same Flat Rock, Michigan, works as the rear-drive Ford Mustang.

Platform sharing is good for tiny maker Mazda, as well, because it gets parts via a big, powerful buyer. Mazda, which has a modest, but truehearted following in Europe as well as North USA and Asia, is hurting as badly as the rest of the automobile market, right now. Its long-term prospects are better, because it has a similar lineup to Honda’s — minus a luxury division. Compact and midsize sedans like the 3 and the 6 will be key to its success. The two crossovers, CX-7 and CX-9, will do as well as anything that big in the market, and the MX-5 Miata and RX-8 sports cars continue to serve as the spiritual basis for the automaker, its raison d’etre.

So why is the champagne likely to be flowing at Mazda’s offices? Since Ford bought its interest in the late-’70s (necessary to Mazda’s survival, since it had invested heavily in fuel-inefficient Wankel rotary-powered cars), Mazda has been a reluctant stepchild. It’s a small, innovative company that can do more interesting things on its own. This is good news for Ford, too, which gets leaner and returns to its popular-car roots, with Ford and Lincoln-Mercury (and still, Volvo) at the core of its business. Even as it struggles to survive, Ford has all but vanquished the Jac Nasser legacy. Mazda will be a strong, little niche player that will continue to serve enthusiasts well.

So General Motors turns 100 today. It may not be the happiest of birthdays, but it’s still quite an achievement. Back when GM was born, there were 253 companies manufacturing automobiles in the United States; automaking was the dot.com rush of the primeval 20th century, with entrepreneurs and engineers, dollar-men and dreamers all vying to make their fortunes with a technology that was going to change the world. And as we watch the last three American automakers fighting for their lives today, this much is clear: The auto business remains as bloody and brutal as ever.

So, congratulations GM, for making your centennial. And thanks, too, for being the world’s most fascinating automaker.

I mean that. Daimler-Benz may have invented the automobile, and Ford may have invented the automobile factory, but it was GM that invented the modern automobile company. If Henry Ford was the Bill Gates of the era, quick to grasp the potential of democratizing auto-mobility, GM’s Alfred Sloan (pictured at left) was in many ways the Steve Jobs, intuitively understanding that adding form to function prefabricated the automobile more than mere transport. It prefabricated it a individualized statement.

“A car for every contract and purpose” is how Sloan described his revolutionary market segment strategy to the GM board in 1924. While Henry Ford was still building Model Ts and stubbornly believing that as with a horse, you only needed a new car when the old one wore out, Sloan had just articulated the basic consumerist vision that still underpins the entire industry today. With the creation of the Art and Color Division, headed by Harley Earl, in Jan 1928, to help bring Sloan’s strategy to life, GM invented the modern automotive design studio.

By the late 1950s, GM was the world’s largest and richest automaker, and by some margin. Having invented the concept car (Harley Earl’s Buick Y-job , which appeared in 1938) it would take the intent to unimaginable heights with the 1958 Firebird III (at bottom), a fully functioning titanium-bodied, turbine-powered organisation that featured remote locking, cruise control, and anti-lock brakes, plus a joystick that controlled steering, acceleration, and braking, along with jet-fighter styling cues. Imagine being at Toyota at the time, contemplating that.

GM pioneered the electric self starter and automatic transmission, two innovations that helped make the automobile even more accessible to all. It did most of the basic scientific research behind industry standard technologies such as the airbag and the catalytic converter. It built the most immoderate compact car ever sold by a mainstream American automaker, the Corvair, which featured a rear-mounted, air-cooled flat-six engine and all-independent suspension at a time when its rivals had powertrains and suspensions that had changed little in 30 years. It produced the first modern, clean-sheet electric car, the much misunderstood EV1.

It did all that, and yet… it’s managed to get so much so wrong.

Bunkie Knudsen, who ran Pontiac and Chevrolet in the ’50s and ’60s, reckoned the problems started when Fred Donner became president of GM in 1958. Knudsen was outraged Donner would insist on talking about GM’s stock price and what the analysts thought about it, at his regular meetings with the heads of GM’s divisions. Before Donner, those meetings were mostly about making cars and trucks. After, as the financial engineers took over from the real ones, GM’s cars and trucks got worse and worse.

I watched dumbfounded as chairman Roger B. Smith, in many ways a visionary (remember how his new Saturn division was supposed to be the paperless maker of the future with cars built almost entirely by robots in darkened, near deserted factories?) stubbornly refused to acknowledge Asian automakers were a genuine threat in the primeval 1990s. “Tell me what the Asian have invented on the automobile,” he raged during a memorable interview, “apart from the coin-holder on the dash?’

I despaired when I visited the Detroit show a few years later, at the height of the Ron Zarella era, and saw a Chevy displayed on a glass panel, under which were arrayed all manner of consumer commodities like soap powder and canned food. I saw a company that had forgotten everything that Alfred Sloan and Harley peer and Zora Duntov and thousands of other GM designers and engineers and manufacturing guys and marketing mavens had once intuitively understood — the automobile was never, ever just about transportation.

And yet…this is a company that right here, right now, makes a Corvette good enough to frighten Ferrari, and a Cadillac fast enough to beat a BMW M5. This is a company that’s prepared to stick its balls on the block with the paradigm-shifting Chevy Volt, to bet long term on Buick in China, and let a bunch of Australians help reinvent the Camaro.

For all that’s gone wrong, there are signs — mainly, thankfully, the product — GM knows what it now needs to do to get it right. There’s a long way to go, with a lot of hard yards to make yet. But if you love cars, watching GM start its second century, its future perhaps as uncertain as it was in 1908, is going to be absolutely fascinating.