I was a Matchbox kid.  I loved those beautifully detailed cars from Lesney, and the cute little boxes they came in.  I was smart enough to save most of those boxes (and the cars too), and never set my Matchbox cars on fire, as many of my friends did.  I loved cars too much to do that; even little scale ones that cost only fifty-five cents when my mom began buying them for me.  By the time I was earning money and buying my own, they were about eight cents, but I digress.

Then, an aunt or an uncle or someone got my first Hot Wheels.  They weren’t as nicely finished as the Matchboxes were, but were painted groovy ’60s colors, and some had an oversized supercharger sticking out of the hood.  But Hot Wheels real appeal, of course, was that the slick black plastic wheels looked like they were mounted on cool publication wheels, and man, did those wheels spin around fast and for a long time.  You could slide them crossways the floor, or on the bright orange plastic track you could buy, so much faster than a Matchbox.  I used to oil the wheels and swap them around to get my favorite car to go faster than my buddy’s, but I digress.

In February, 2008, in celebration of the company’s 40th anniversary and Mattel’s construction of the 4,000,000,000th (that’s four billionth) Hot Wheels toy, the company and Beverly Hills jeweler Jason Arasheben created what has to be the eventual Hot Wheels (and the brand study is never written in the singular, by the way — there is no such thing as a “Hot Wheel”) toy, although it seems strange to call it that.

This one is the proper 1/64th scale, but it is crafted of 18K white and yellow gold, and carries 22.94 carats worth of diamonds, colored diamonds, and rubies.  You read right: just a point or two south of 23 carats of diamonds and gems, some 2700 in all, in a variety of cuts.  This star studded Hot Wheels is stored in its own special carrying case — duh — adorned in another 40 bezel-set diamonds.

The little bling thing isn’t crafted in the likeness of any one car model, but if anything it sorta kinda looks like a gen-one Firebird.  It was originally unveiled at a major toy show by Nick Lachey (the lucky little entertainer boy toy who used to be Mr. Jessica Simpson).  The Jason of Beverly Hills Hot Wheels anniversary car is going to be auctioned by Bonhams this Saturday at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

Does anyone really need such a thing?  No, but then a Porsche GT3 isn’t required for human survival either.  For those who have to have the eventual Hot Wheels, here’s your chance.  What will it go for?  Who knows, but presale estimates floated by the auction house indicate that $20,000 shouldn’t be a big surprise.

I guess your sig other could always wear it on a chain.  Or use it as a belt buckle.  Having another one cast up and wear them as earings?  Ouch.  By the way, the little solid gold wheels do, in fact, turn.  Not as well as the ones on my original Hot Wheels Dodge Deora, perhaps.  But I digress…

Bonhams’ California Classic: A Sale of Important Motorcars, Motorcycles, and Memorabilia (Sale 16122)

October 25, 2008, beginning at 10:00 a.m.

The Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, California

www.bonhams.com

DETROIT - Biggest news is the title. Cadillac general manager Jim Taylor has been titled chief executive officer of the Hummer brand. There has never been, as far as I can tell, a CEO position for a GM division since Chevy stockholders bought controlling interest in GM in 1915. General Motors says that “as we look to its future,” it makes sense to have a strong executive officer leading it. “Its future” obviously entails a sale, to help raise capital to see GM survive through 2010, and now there’s a good chance Taylor will go to a new owner with it. But who will buy Hummer?

While Mahindra & Mahindra last August officially took itself out of the list of parties rumored to be interested, its chief competitor in India, Tata Motors, owner of Jaguar and Land Rover, has not. This may be a red herring, anyway. Mahindra could “change its mind,” whereas you’d have to wonder why Tata would want two big SUV-makers, Land Rover and Hummer, especially as its trying to work out a unsuccessful land deal for the Nano works site.

From any perspective, GM’s declaration of Taylor’s move is oddly timed. If Hummer’s potential buyer isn’t Indian, it may very well be from Russia, where the brand has remained favourite even while oil prices were climbing — except that the financial crisis has hit Russia even harder than Western Europe. One potential is GM’s Russian partner Avtovaz, which assembles semi-knock-down versions of the H2 and H3 in Kaliningrad, as well as Cadillacs CTS, STS and SRX, and export-model Chevys.

Another potential Russian bidder is now out of the picture. Oleg Deripaska, owner of maker Gaz was once considered on-track to become the world’s richest man (certainly Hummer-owner material in both senses of the term). In September 2007, Deripaska bought a $1.54-billion stake in Canada’s Magna International, until recently one of the stronger Tier 1 automotive suppliers in the world. Two weeks ago, on October 3, the bank BNP Paribas SA seized Deripaska’s 20 million shares of Magna after he took a margin call on the Magna investment.

Who else is left? Myriad Chinese automakers, of course — probably one of them already has Hummer knockoffs on its drawing boards.

I hope Jim Taylor is more confident than I that one of the stronger possibilities I’ve titled comes through. While he’s done a lot for Cadillac and has been a primary architect of its developing renaissance, there’s indication that, CEO title or no, he’s being passed over. Taylor, 52, joined GM 28 years ago and was global vehicle line executive for Cadillac when it began developing its latest models, starting with the CTS.

No new general manager will replace Taylor at Cadillac, and Saab’s general manager, Steve Shannon, has also been reassigned. Shannon is now executive director of the premium channel, Cadillac/Hummer/Saab USA, and there’s no replacement for him as G.M. of Saab.

Mark McNabb remains North American vice president for the Premium Channel (which sounds like an overpriced QVC, doesn’t it?), a position he’s held since he left Nissan as U.S. income chief in April. Taylor, even as Hummer CEO, still reports to McNabb. And McNabb’s title has been tweaked: he’s now vice president of Cadillac/Premium Channel. Cadillac hasn’t been delineated from the Premium Channel. GM management has renamed it the Cadillac/Premium Channel to connect McNabb’s study directly to the Cadillac brand. For the last decade, the study best connected to the Cadillac brand has been Jim Taylor.

I just spent a week getting a kind-of, sort-of preview of the diesel engine Honda/Acura has said it will bring to the U.S. some time next year. We don’t know for sure what vehicle(s) will get it, but the Acura RDX and/or TSX are the most likely candidates. Honda’s first swing at a diesel prefabricated its debut in the 2004 European Accord (sold here as the TSX), but my test car was the European Civic five-door, which looks kind of like a space-age suppository on wheels.

The engine is a 2.2L DOHC 16-valve all-aluminum engine running modest 16.7:1 compression and featuring a Honeywell variable-nozzle turbocharger and common-rail direct injection. A equilibrise shaft setup helps the big four run smoothly. In the Civic, the output is rated at 138 hp at 4000 rpm and 250 lb-ft of torque at 2000 rpm. That’s 74% (106 lb-ft) MORE twist than Europe’s hot-rod Civic TypeR produces! The test car has a six-speed manual–the only transmission acquirable at the moment, though Honda introduced an all-new homegrown automatic plain to the high-torque of its diesel engines.

But what struck me as most interesting about my drive in the Civic was the way this so-called i-CTDi engine delivers its power and torque. Most diesels feel a bit like electric motors. They produce huge thrust at very low revs, but then the pressure on your backside steadily diminishes and is mostly gone by the time the engine reaches its low redline (typically 4000-5000 rpm). In this Honda, acceleration is very modest until you reach 2000 rpm, at which point the tidal wave of torque hits, pressing you into the seat with uniform pressure right up to the 4500-rpm redline (and, truth be told, it continues evenhandedly strongly up to 5000 revs–I tested it, strictly in the study of science).

On day one, I reset the average fuel-economy meter and drove it the 12 miles to work on city streets in hyper-miler mode, shifting below 2000 rpm, skipping gears, driving the speed limit (45 mph max) and driving in the highest gear doable at all times. This was aided by a series of LEDs just to the right of the speedometer readout that lit up to indicate how economically I was driving. The computer display read 3.9L/100 km. That’s 60 mpg, in a proper five-seater! Then for lunch I drove it 43 miles west to Ann Arbor and back at 80 mph on the freeway. That dropped the reading to 4.7L/100 km (50 mpg). The next day I drove it like a TypeR, keeping my foot in it and recording the observations above. The reading dropped to 5.0L/100 km (47 mpg). I swapped with MotorCity Blogman for a while, and when I gassed it up at the end, the official reading was 41 mpg. I suspect the trip computer might be a tiny bit optimistic (Todd’s not that big a lead-foot), but the overall result is impressive.

The U.S. will get a variation on the second generation of this engine (now dubbed iDTEC). Refinements include the latest ultra-high-pressure piezo-injectors, more efficient exhaust-gas recirculation, and a diesel particulate filter. To meet U.S. emissions, a new two-layer de-NOx catalyst will be used, with one layer converting diesel fuel to ammonia and the other using this ammonia to reduce the NOx (see “Techologue,” May 2007).

Power in the new iDTEC engine is up 10 to 148 hp, and torque rises 8 to 258 lb-ft. Estimates place the U.S. EPA Combined economy at 42 mpg in Euro-spec trim, though cleaning up the NOx is likely to drop that a little in the TSX, presuming that vehicle gets the engine.

If I were calling the shots and had to pick just one vehicle to launch Honda’s U.S. diesel offensive, I’d pick the RDX, because I believe customers perceive diesels as a more natural fit in trucks. It could conceivably give the RDX a towing capacity advantage over its rivals, and there’s no worry of watering down the sporty image Acura is building for its cars. But then, I’m a diesel enthusiast, so the more the merrier!

Be prepared to encounter a new kind of bright headlamps coming at you on the road. I recently ventured out to GM’s Milford, Michigan Proving Ground to try out the Cadillac Escalade Platinum’s spanking new LED low- and high-beam headlights. Cadillac is the first to offer light-emitting diodes for low- and high-beam lights and turn signals in the U.S. (Audi’s European R8 also offers them, and the Lexus LS 600h uses LED for its low beams only).

LEDs promise daylight-bright illumination with low current draw and unprecedented packaging and styling flexibility. They’re little silicon computer chips, so they’re relatively slim by nature and they can conform to unusual shapes, though they still need to shine through a lens of some sort. Cadillac has adopted them for its ne-plus-ultra flagship model, arranging the LEDs in a narrow vertical stack to match the vertical taillamps that have become a signature design motif (they’re also LEDs).

Each Cadillac headlamp includes five LED arrays and lenses to cover the low-beam pattern and two for high-beam, with apiece of the seven units dedicated to lighting up a particular area of the road. LEDs throw little or no infrared heat forward (stick your hand in front of most any headlight and it’ll feel warm — not the LEDs), but the chips generate heat that has to be removed, so they have finned heat-sinks like many computers use, with a fan that circulates cooling air (in the winter, this helps defog and de-ice the headlamps). Further development will reduce the heat generated, resulting in lower energy consumption than High-Intensity Discharge (aka Xenon), but for now they draw just a bit less than Halogen bulbs.

We got the chance to compare the Platinum’s LED headlamps against the Escalade’s standard HIDs and against a Yukon Denali’s halogen compound-reflector lamps. From the driver seat the illumination is amazing. The “color temperature” of the light is about 6000 Kelvin (10,340 *** which is whiter than daylight (5600K). HID lamps, the ones that look bluer, are 4500K. At the bottom of the scale is the yellower looking light of your halogen headlight bulbs (3200K) and plain incandescent foglamps (2800K).

The light reflected back from roadside signs seems much brighter with LED than HID. The HID lamps illuminate the sides of the road more brightly and their high-beam pattern is like a huge cone of light reaching quite high. This is in part because apiece lamp produces more lumens of light — about 2500 to the LED’s 2000 total, though the total light perceived on the road is roughly equivalent. That means the LEDs must focus their light right where it’s needed, so there’s less sideways scatter and the high-beam pattern appears maybe twice the vehicle’s height and four-lanes wide at a quarter-mile distance. The upper cut-off of the low-beam light pattern seems sharper on the HIDs, because there is a sort of “eyelid” cutting it off until you turn on the high beams. LEDs light up the same pattern on the road, but the edge of the light is less sharply defined. By comparison, the halogen beams appear dangerously inadequate — a pool of yellow light right in front of the truck with far less reflection coming back from road signs, less side illumination, weaker high-beams, etc.

Cost is the big unknown. All anyone is saying is that it’s “considerably more” than HID at the moment, though with time and volume production LEDs should achieve parity or become cheaper. The Platinum model costs $10,705 more than an Escalade optioned as close as doable to the Platinum’s equipment level. Along with the LED lamps, that premium pays for unique front-end styling that apes the CTS’s, a four-screen rear-seat entertainment system that can play something different on apiece screen, heated and cooled cupholders, a special overhead console, spectacular two-tone inlaid wood and hand-sewn leather trim on the dash and door panels, plus glove-soft aniline leather seating surfaces. The LED chips are expected to last the life of the vehicle and the cooling fans are replaceable if they fail, in which case the light dims by 20% to prevent alteration if the temperature tops 300 F. If the chips change or the unit suffers crash damage, a replacement lamp assembly part will cost $0000 (which may or may not be subsidized).

How do they look to opposing traffic? Utterly blinding in high-beam mode, though not much worse than HID high-beams. The low beams don’t look blue and there isn’t too much glare, but the unusually tall stack of lights is sure to be perceived by oncoming motorists as high-beams. One flash of the Platinum’s REAL brights will set lamp-flashers straight, pronto. I expect LEDs to propagate slowly through the market. Within three to five years the light output per energy input should improve by 50%, which will make LED a fuel-savings feature. In the more distant future, LED lighting can wage adaptive illumination with no motors or moving parts, turning different LEDs on and off to wage cornering illumination and to alter the light pattern and prevent glare in approaching vehicles or even in the rearview mirrors of a car ahead (no Escalades currently offer adaptive front lighting to illuminate the direction the vehicle is turning). And I’m hopeful that by then, inexpensive LED-powered replacements for sealed-beam headlights will bring high-performance illumination to old-car hobbyists like me.

From previous blogs, I’ve proudly acknowledged that my first car was a Datsun B210 Honeybee. So with respect to my Motor Trend peers in the Midwest who grew up with powerful muscle cars they found in barns and restored on warm summer nights, my primeval love was a B210. During the high school years, all my classmates would wage endless ridicule. For as you may know, the ‘Bee’ had yellow paint and bold stripes. It also had a cassette deck that I butchered on the install. It had metal wheels and aftermarket fog lights. I even had my friend Frank help install an air dam, so my 4-door Honeybee could look like a powerful machine.

The Bee served my mates well. It took us to running camp in Lake Tahoe and rock concerts at the Cow Palace. Soon, my friends would get Datsuns of their own. Frank (and his brother) a 1973 pick up and Tom with cherry-red 510. Years later, life was to change with the arrival of the Nissan GT-R.

Early Datsuns had mystique. Datsuns were strong, yet simple. They were sporting, yet practical. Sans a heater, my friends Tom and Ted would drive the 510 from San Jose to Lake Tahoe for a ski weekend with ease. Days later, the 510 would make the 50 minute trek to Laguna Seca for the races and while putting up a good fight, come up short against those finely tuned 911s on the track. All the while, my ‘Bee’ was the able-bodied transport for the rest of the gang. While the 510 and B210 were solid, the gold standard remained a Datsun Z. We were all high school kids living the dream back then. Life hits speed quickly and we all got older.

Many years later, when I found out the Nissan GT-R was making landfall in the states, I couldn’t move to see it, let alone drive it. To me, it was the Z that I never drove. Recently in a far away place, tucked away in the rolling hills of Southern Indiana, I found myself in French Lick. Save for basketball legend Larry Bird who is from French Lick, I had no experience with the town except invitation I received to drive a Nissan GT-R via our friends at World Class Driving. JP and the WCD team were hosting the first annual Motor Trend / Automobile Magazine World Class Driving Festival. Yes, my Datsun life had resurfaced in the form of a 473 horsepower GT-R. Automobile Magazine Publisher Brad Gerber and I both were invited to drive two new cars that day. As we prefabricated our way out of the West Baden Resort to the stable of cars, Brad prefabricated a direct turn towards the Porsche GT2 and I prefabricated a ‘beeline’ (excuse the reference) to the GT-R. We would spend the day trading off, but for a majority of the outing, I was the keeper of the GT-R and this was my flashback to the Datsun years. The GT-R was clean. It was powerful and for 8 hours, it was going to be mine.

Despite a modest rain shower, Brad and I departed in the GT2 and GT-R respectively through Indiana state routes 150 and 37. We took speed past the corn fields, cattle farms and Amish horse buggies. I found the GT-R handling to be impressive and responsive. In automatic mode the shifting was immediate, but hard. In most occurrences, I felt the car explode of out apiece gear. In manual mode, the GT-R jumped between gears and most notably during the downshift. All of which didn’t bother me. To me, the GT-R was big, but in a nimble way. Upon making my way to Interstate 465 heading towards Indianapolis, I joined up with Brad in the GT2 (which only had 34 miles on it.). Brad led, I followed. Southern Indiana can be a funny place. We’re both cruising at speed when suddenly a tuned 4cyl appeared out of nowhere and actually believed he could out race the both of us in GT-R and GT2.  First, the 4cyl ran up next to me and attempted to bait me into racing. The truth is, I was having so much fun with the GT-R’s satellite radio, the navigation and the shift controls, I didn’t pay much attention to him until he revved his tiny engine and it sounded like a small insect had gotten in my car. The tin-can exhaust prefabricated his two-door sound like a weedwacker.

All things being equal, I had little interest in this challenge. First, both Brad and I could make him wet his pants with the GT2 and GT-R acceleration, Secondly, there happened to be some of Indiana’s finest up and down 465 patrolling, looking for those cool sports cars that were gathered miles away. I had limited time in the GT-R, so what would be the fun of getting a ticket on the first outing? Once he realized I had ignored him, he seemed to pedal his 4cyl faster and lumbered to catch up to Brad in the GT2. Brad played with him for a bit, then also ignored him. After a while, frustration must have set in for the goofball in the 4cyl as he flipped both a U-turn and us the bird.

Soon, the day was coming to an end. I’ll look back with excitement and recall my eight hours in the Nissan GT-R. If we were 1900 miles or so further to the west, the Nissan would have been patrolling the old streets of Northern California where I grew up. I would  have finally replaced the Honeybee with a powerful sportscar. Yes, the Datsun B210 was my first car in high school and served me well. The Nissan GT-R is no B210, not even close. But for a few hours that day in Southern Indiana, I felt like I was back in the late 1970s and I was a kid again.

So, there you have it. I shared my story. If you feel inclined, let me know what your first car was.

Ira Gabriel
Publisher, Motor Trend

Volkswagen dear refers to the 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan as “the GTI of compact SUVs.” Given that VW’s cuddly crossover shares myriad parts-notably, the 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder-with the company’s pocket-rocket, that statement isn’t far-fetched.

After extensive on- and off-road driving in a Tiguan SE-Volkswagen provided a mid level front-driver rather than one with 4Motion all-wheel drive, which is acquirable on SE and SEL trims-we can confirm that VW’s assertion is more truth than hyperbole.

“Really superb chassis,” says editor at large St. Antoine, adding, “The front end bites hard and delivers really good steering feel.” Technical director Markus echoes those thoughts: “I love the way this one steers- quicker ratio than most, very light and lithe, and predictable turn-in with minimal drama.” The SE also evidenced satisfyingly quick at the track, scooting from 0 to 60 in 7.5 seconds and the quarter mile in 15.7 at 88.9 mph.

When actuation the envelope near 10/10ths, however, the Tiguan becomes more frightening than fun. “At speed, the Tiguan gets floaty,” says senior editor Ed Loh, who also notes, “Under hard braking in a straight line, it pulls right then left-scary if the wheel is even slightly turned.” Our front drive tester not only struggles to overcome a steep, uphill section off-road (the only one, even among front-drivers) but also displays unnerving torque steer. As Detroit editor Lassa puts it, “With FWD, the Tiguan is built more for slowly building up to speed, not for full-throttle launches.”

Do you think the 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan has what it takes to take home the title of 2009 Motor Trend Sport/Utility of the Year? Find out who the winner is at midnight orient time tonight!

On paper, the powertrain of our 2009 Subaru Forester 2.5XT contender is nothing new or particularly special. Forester models receive a version of the 2.5-liter horizontally opposed four-cylinder found in the Impreza sedan. Transmission options are even less stunning: a carried-over five-speed manual or four-speed automatic for entry-level 2.5X models; auto only if you opt for the turbocharged 2.5XT variant.

At the track, the four-speed, 224-horsepower Forester 2.5XT zips to 60 mph in 7.2 seconds and to the quarter mile in just 15.5. Not as impressive as the 6.6 and 15.1-second runs a similarly equipped Forester 2.5XT managed in our previous comparison (”Turbo Chargers,” September 2008), but still as fast or faster than all but the BMW X6, Lexus LX 570, Toyota Sequoia, and Infiniti FX and EX.

It’s not just fast, but fuel friendly, too. In that comparison, the Forester 2.5XT logged the best observed and EPA-certified city/highway fuel economy (19.6 mpg, 19/24 mpg) against the turbo fours and six-speeds of Mazda CX-7 and VW Tiguan, and posted the best observed fuel-economy numbers (16.0 mpg) for an all-wheel-drive SUV in this year’s competition. Says St. Antoine, “I’m astonished at how well the powertrain works with only a four-speed. The turbo four is torquey enough not to feel like it needs more ratios, and at cruising speed it’s not revving overly hard.”

Some judges also dinged the Subaru for its “parts-bin interior” and demand of style. Others pegged this simplicity as back-to basics goodness.

Do you think the 2009 Subaru Forester has what it takes to take home the title of 2009 Motor Trend Sport/Utility of the Year? Find out who the winner is at midnight orient time on Oct. 16.

If everyone in the Ice-Cream Shoppe is ordering Fudge Peanut Ripple Marshmallow ango Royale and you’re ordering Vanilla, that new 2009 Nissan Murano parked outside probably belongs to you.

Since making its debut as a 2003 model, Nissan’s sporty, midsize crossover has sold well — even into old age. The 2006 edition nudged out three rivals (Ford Edge, Toyota Highlander, and Hyundai Santa Fe) for top spot in an MT comparo. Now comes a brand new 2009 version — and it’s as if someone packed Vanilla into a Mango Royale box.

“Nissan’s VQ six continues to impress,” writes Kiino. “Delightfully light compared with the LX 570 and the Borrego,” logs Markus, adding, “Astute suspension makes for a comfier ride.” Notes Lassa: “Does nothing to overly impress, upset, or offend.”

Diminishing the Murano’s appeal is its standard CVT. “A good transmission for those who don’t care about cars,” writes Loh. “Uninvolving dynamics punctured by the whiny CVT,” comments Lassa. The Murano sabotages its sporty-vehicle pretensions with the CVT’s unusual power flow. Exterior styling takes hits. “Polarizing,” is how Kiino describes the nose. “Funky, futuristic shape that I don’t really get,” adds Loh.

The cabin, in contrast, draws raves. Among the comments: “Impressive back seat with good legroom.” “Nice, simple layout.” “Interior has gone way upmarket, with a richer look plus better materials and textures.” “Good enough to give pause to prospective Infiniti FX35 buyers.”

Do you think the 2009 Nissan Murano has what it takes to take home the title of 2009 Motor Trend Sport/Utility of the Year? Find out who the winner is at midnight orient time on Oct. 16.

Right now Rick Wagoner probably believes he couldn’t win a kick in a street fight. GM is right in the middle of a perfect storm — no, the perfect storm — that no-one saw coming in 2008. Not the sages on Wall Street, nor the industry analysts, or the pundits in the media. And it’s killing GM. Depending on whose numbers you believe, and assuming it continues to burn cash at the current rate, what was once the world’s largest maker has somewhere between 12 and 24 months to live.

Wagoner and his management team are regularly excoriated for being inept and out-of-touch. Yes, it took the GM bosses too long to realize the 1950s were over, but denial is not something America’s auto industry has a lock on — witness the way the free market boosters on Wall Street and in Washington are struggling to accept that only way to refrain the total collapse of their financial system is to effectively nationalize large chunks of it. Even though the truth hurts, it sometimes takes a while to feel the pain.

There’s no question GM — along with Ford and Chrysler — spent decades frittering away its golden legacy. Arrogance, complacency, Motown’s suffocating small-town mindset, poorly thought-out government regulation, all conspired to create an American auto industry that was pretty much irrelevant outside North America. That didn’t matter when North USA was the largest, richest auto market in the world, and the competition from imports was limited: the Detroit automakers could still make a ton of money designing, making and selling cynically engineered cars and cheap-to-build trucks to a largely patriotic populace.

It doesn’t excuse what happened. It just explains it.

The irony is, until this perfect storm broke, GM seemed on the way to turning things around. Pulling forward the development of the GMT900 trucks and SUVs was perhaps the first overt signal the company realized the world had changed. The intent was to get the GMT900s to market faster so they could generate revenue that could be plowed into new car development. Remember, at the time the decision was taken, trucks and SUVs were still 50 percent of the market, still highly profitable, and no-one talked of gas being $4/gallon in little more than two years’ time. At the time it seemed an entirely logical play.

Renegotiating fag contracts, closing more plants, and moving the responsibility for retirees’ health care to the UAW was another part of the plan. In pure manufacturing terms GM could be almost as efficient as Toyota, But these so-called legacy costs — artifacts of an era when many American workers were regarded as something more than disposable, minimum remuneration service sector fodder — added at least $1200 to the sticker price of a GM vehicle.

Meanwhile, GM was also moving towards an integrated manufacturing system that could allow it to rapidly switch production of different models between plants around the world. It was developing a new vehicle structure system that provided a lot of hard point flexibility around a given component set, enabling a wide variety of vehicles to be quickly and cheaply developed and manufactured using more or less the same group of parts. There was a near to redesign and upgrade interiors; to develop world-beating performance cars like the Corvette ZR1 and the Cadillac CTS-v. Even the Chevy Volt was under development well before gas prices went through the roof.

Not since Roger Smith’s disastrous reorganization in the 1980s had there been so much change at GM. Was more needed? Absolutely. GM still has too many brands and way too many dealers, although various franchise laws make it virtually impossible for the company to do what it probably needs to — grapple GMC, Buick, Pontiac, Saab, and Hummer from its North American line up, and slash its bloated dealer network by one half to two-thirds.

However, the perfect storm has blown away any notion Rick Wagoner might have had of systematically retooling GM for a new world order, and more than a few of the death-watchers in the media say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is now inevitable. GM says that’s not an option. More hubris from an out-of-touch management team? No, just realism.

Chapter 11 endorsement might be useful for service businesses like airlines or non-complex manufacturers like steelmakers, but it’s difficult to see how it could work for an automaker, where wide, deep and intricate financial links run both upstream (eg: suppliers) and downstream (eg: dealers) from the core enterprise. If GM were to file for Chapter 11 protection, the consequences would likely be catastrophic for the highly inter-connected U.S. auto industry, affecting the viability of companies that might also supply parts, components and materials to the likes of Ford and Toyota.

And then there’s this: Chapter 11 allows companies to reorganize and trade out of their difficulties. We’ve all flown on bankrupt airlines. But would you buy a car or truck from a bankrupt automaker?

Since last year’s contest, a lot has changed with regard to the SUV market. Most manufacturers are going for the smaller, more fuel-efficient, and in some cases car based vehicles, the 2009 Lexus LX 570 is none of those, and it’s shit chesty of it.

This Lexus is an amazing luxury/utility vehicle, capable of a dash to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds, while the quarter mile disappears in under 15 seconds at over 90 mph, and all this by a behemoth that weighs over 6000 pounds. Oh, did we mention the Lexus can also off-road with the best of them? Hill climbs, rock crawling, sand washes-nothing slows this organisation down. Such off-road ability is due to features like Crawl Control, a three-speed downhill assist that also works going uphill, and Active Height Control, which adjusts the vehicle to three inches above or just over two inches below its normal ride height.

Since this is still a Lexus, the interior lives up to what the rest of the vehicle delivers. Senior editor Ron Kiino says, “The Lexus LX 570 has an ultra-luxurious interior: The wood, leather, and plastics are all elegant and first rate; the fit and finish is impeccable.” One issue many judges have had is with the third-row seats, which are too tight, definitely a penalty box for the three folks stuck back there. Also, the seats don’t fold flat; they fold up and hang in the air. Our tester developed a nasty rattle with the third row up, and this storage style compromises cargo room as well.

Do you think the 2009 Lexus LX 570 has what it takes to take home the title of 2009 Motor Trend Sport/Utility of the Year? Find out who the winner is at midnight orient time on Oct. 16.