Saab enthusiasts will converge near General Motors' Renaissance Center headquarters in Detroit on Tuesday to urge GM to save Saab by selling the company intact — presumably to Spyker. Spyker CEO Victor Muller has said that January 7 is the deadline to work out a purchase deal.

The diehards plan to meet at the Ren Center food court for lunch at noon and then congregate in a public lot at the corner of Atwater and St. Antoine at 1 p.m. on Jan. 5. Consider that an open invitation if you're in Detroit and upset over the drawn-out death of the troubled Swedish automaker.

Saab History

Here's a new TV commercial for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and uh, Ram that starts airing today. Rose Bowl viewers will be the first to see it. There are some cool old vehicles in this ad, but just one new one, the 2010 Chrysler 300.

The 300 is definitely one of the better-looking, better-driving models in the current line, but this commercial lacks specificity and focus. It's part of a new "Coming Home" ad campaign borne out of corporate, and dealers', concern that "consumers do not realize that Chrysler Group has emerged from bankruptcy and is now a different company with a new alliance partner and a healthy product plan."

The ad agency, Fallon, is obviously trying to appeal to the emotions here, but we contend that what "consumers" would really like to see from Chrysler-Fiat are some of those healthy new products that have been promised.

Although we have our eyes on the Detroit show, the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is next week in Vegas, and one of the big announcements there will be Kia's UVO voice control system — the first serious challenge to Ford's Sync technology.

Very likely, the UVO user experience will be similar to Sync. Both systems were developed with Microsoft. Hyundai-Kia formed its partnership with Microsoft in May 2008, and at the end of that year, Ford's exclusive development contract with Gates and Co. expired.

Kia hasn't announced which model in its current lineup will get UVO first, but we'd be very surprised if it wasn't a Forte.

Automotive News (sub.req), Autoblog

You've seen the video of Pastrana jumping a Subaru WRX STI rally car 269 feet. Now here's an after-dinner drink: This very enlargeable photo of his jump trajectory.

This might be our favorite unintended consequence of Fiat's "mentorship" of Chrysler: Instead of occupying its usual spot in luxury row, Ferrari will have its booth smack between Dodge and Jeep at this month's Detroit Auto Show. Oh, yes, and Maserati will be there, too.

That's just how it goes when you're part of the Fiat Group. Evidently, it's hoped you'll come for the Italian sports cars and stay for the, um, Plum Crazy Challenger and whatever the latest going-away-special Viper is. And if you're aching to see another electric car, well, get yourself over to the Fiat 500 EV exhibit.

Detroit News

It was one of the most anticipated rally car jumps of the year, and only Travis Pastrana could pull it off. At least that's what the ESPN commentators said prior to the big leap off the Pine Street Pier in Long Beach, CA.

He was shooting for 250 feet – over water – and anything other than a perfect jump would pretty much place him somewhere in Long Beach harbor. Not a bad trick for New Year's Eve, see it for yourself below.

No Top 10 list from me this year. Every big auto story in 2009 was connected to the vast economic seism that will forever change the way we buy cars and trucks. It’s about the way General Motors, for 80 years the world’s biggest maker thanks to such Alfred Sloan inventions as a brand for every contract and purpose, planned obsolescence and model years, has become a much smaller, different kind of car company. Of how GM’s first effective reorganization came about only as part of our country’s shift from 25 years of supply-side Reaganomics back to FDR-style Keynesian economic policy. Of how its replacement as the world’s largest automaker, Toyota, has begun its own start after just two years, giving way to Ferdinand Piech, and his masterful manipulation of Volkswagen AG and Porsche.

Whether you’re a Reagan supply-sider or a Keynesian, you can’t deny that GM would not be here today without the U.S. Treasury giving it $50-billion-plus in loan guarantees in exchange for 60 percent equity in the newly slimmed-down automaker. Someone, either nascent Chinese automakers or Fiat, would be picking apart remains of Chevrolet and Cadillac right now, while Russia’s GAZ would be running Opel/Vauxhall. Holden would be a remote, dying outpost, like Australia itself in the 1959 film, “On the Beach.”

If you read my decade-in-review post from last week, you know that I’ve seen Old GM, under then-CEO Rick Wagoner, announce several “reorganizations” in the past 10 years. It took Steven Rattner, Ron Bloom and the rest of the Obama administration’s Automotive Task Force to cut dealerships, slash employment levels and get rid of Saturn, Saab and Hummer, and bring about meaningful change.

The salient issue was GM’s wreck of a financial department, even with ex-chief financial officers Wagoner and then, briefly, Fritz Henderson, leading the company for years.

To us car guys, the closing of Pontiac seemed like a burned bridge too far. Don’t dwell on this one, dear reader. Pontiac changed from the eight-cylinder Chevy of the ’30s, ’40s and primeval ’50s to grandma’s car to the inexpensive performance division under Bunkie Knudson. Those glory years lasted roughly from the 1957 model year to the mid-’70s, depending on what you think of Nova/Ventura-based GTOs and ‘Screaming Chicken’ Trans Ams. The Pontiac of the ’90s and ’00s was the Grand Am/G6, the volume model, thanks largely to Hertz and Avis. There is no performance car Pontiac could have done in the next decade that couldn’t be a Chevy SS.

More importantly, the kinds of corporate downsizing that GM and Ford Motor Company brought to a head in 2009 should make them both more profitable while selling much lower volumes in the coming years. The 1965 calendar year was a high watermark for U.S. car sales, having breached 15 million for the first time. Through most of the ’00s, U.S. income were in the 16- to 18-million range, until falling to 13.2 million in 2008 and about 10.3 million in ‘09 (we’ll get a more accurate number when automakers report December and calendar ‘09 income Tuesday, Jan 5). North American production capacity through most of the ’00s totaled about 23 million cars and trucks. Even in the 17 million-unit years, GM, Ford and Chrysler struggled to maintain capacity utilization and make money.

Early this year, Wagoner claimed GM would be healthy to make money on the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze in North USA – though GM has consistently lost money on small cars since the ‘60 Corvair — and that reduced legacy costs would virtually equalize the company’s fag costs with Toyota’s in the U.S. That’s before the ATF forced GM and Chrysler to renegotiate agreements with the United Auto Workers even further, to the detriment of Ford, which was unable to get the same concessions.

If GM makes money on the Cruze, it’s a testament to the profound reduction of GM’s size and weight in 2009. I’m about half the age of GM, and I’m still trying to comprehend the way GM’s North American operations have been cut in half, to Chevy, GMC, Buick and Cadillac.

It’s not hard to grasp the intent that Chryslers and Dodges will soon be rebadged Lancias and Fiats. Chrysler has struggled as the least healthy of what we once called The Big Three since the 1960s and looked good only in comparison to the struggling company that built its cars just 45 miles south of where I grew up. Fiat’s takeover looks much to me like Chrysler’s takeover of AMC some two decades ago. I can’t help believe that by the end of the coming decade, Fiat will have retained Jeep (just as Chrysler did with AMC) and maybe Ram, which it otherwise inexplicably broke off into a separate division in ‘09.

While GM shrank in half, Piech’s VW just about took control of Porsche in ‘09, and tied up with Suzuki. I have no doubt, as VW AG expands its small car lineup, it will pass and stay ahead of Toyota in global income for the foreseeable future. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are losing traction here while the Asian home market languishes. Toyota’s and Honda’s latest designs have gone off the rails a bit (as a CRX fan, I’m dubious about the CR-Z, at least until I drive one), though under scion Akio Toyoda, a rediscovery of enthusiasts’ models ought to bring that company a quick rebound.

So that’s how I see 2009 – a year that will reduce our automotive choices to better suit our demand. Early indications are that young drivers produced by the echo-boom are less interested in cars than my generation is. Until recently, I was convinced that a number of factors, including production costs, would return us to the pre-Model T days, and make the automobile a luxury item once again. I’m not sure, but I think it’s still possible.

Since we use even recent history to predict the future, here’s how I see 2010 and ‘11:

1. If the economic recovery doesn’t speed up, the Obama administration will consider reviving Cash for Clunkers, maybe for summertime. This time, I hope, it will be less complicated, with the administration targeting demand and not fuel economy. It surely will offer smaller tax rebates.
2. GM should refrain issuing an IPO in 2010. The company quickly cranked up product development after its summertime bankruptcy, and it needs to build equity in itself and launch more of those future models before it goes public. GM execs will just have to bite the bullet and take low, six-figure salaries.
3. When it does issue an IPO, GM is likely to change its study to the Chevrolet Motor Company. There is precedent for this – Chevrolet, under William Crapo Durant, bought GM in late 1915.
4. Successful (relatively) as it is, Ford will have to start turning good product into profit and start paying down about $27 billion in loans or it’s covering financial problems.
5. I don’t know what to make of Fiat-Chrysler.