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The Department of Transportation just sent out some updated figures on the vehicles being scrapped and purchased under the popular cash for clunkers program, which provides up to $4,500 in cash to drivers who trade their gas guzzlers for more efficient vehicles.
Of the $1 billion allocated under the program, $775 million is out the door, [...]

Seems that critics of the White House decision to bail out General Motors and Chrysler were right to question how well federal government would manage its enormous new investment. The New York Times reported today that the administration recently bought thousands of new vehicles, but a lion’s share of the money went to the only [...]

President Obama just announced that the General Services Administration will purchase 17,600 new fuel-efficient government vehicles by June 1, using funds from the stimulus package. All purchases will be made from Ford, General Motors and Chrysler in an attempt to revive the American auto industry.
Yet the environmental goals of the program are quite modest. Although [...]

Car manufacturers looking for a bailout in December pledged to meet standards they now call unreasonable.

Nearly a month after the executives of the Big Three automakers arrived in Washington on corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, a group of auto workers made the same trip by carpool. Their mission was the same, but the blue-collar image they projected was strikingly different.

The heads of Detroit’s automakers might be willing to accept $1 salaries as a condition of a federal bailout, but they won’t commit to capping their total compensation, even at $1 million.
So says Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a liberal member of the House Financial Services Committee, which hosted the three auto execs this morning to [...]

Last month, when Detroit’s Big Three automakers stormed Capitol Hill in search of $25 billion in emergency loans, a number of lawmakers wondered aloud where that figure came from — and whether it would be enough.
It seems there was reason for their skepticism.
Chrysler yesterday afternoon was the last of the automakers to unveil its revamped [...]

In 1979, with Chrysler at the brink of failure, Lee Iacocca famously cut his salary to $1 per year in recognition of the federal help that eventually saved the company.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and several lawmakers have put the Iacocca challenge to the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three, who are in Washington this week [...]

If the auto industry fails, the pain will be felt across the country and throughout the economy — not just in the Motor City.