Can anyone beat Team Eyesore? Apparently not. After becoming the only two-time overall winner in the 24 Hours of LeMons, the Ghettocharged Miata returned to the track this past weekend and won the Chumpcar World Series event at the Streets of Willow Springs.

Nice job Jay, Caroline and the rest of Team Eyesore.

Chumpcar World Series

We already showed you a glimpse of the 2011 Dodge Charger today. Now take a look at a current Charger that has been modified by Speedfactory Cars. It used to run 10s with a full interior, but in order to get the car into the 9s they had to gut the interior and place the car on a diet. Oh, and it runs a supercharged 426 Hemi in place of the stock 5.7, so yeah, other than the body there isn't much stock about this Charger.

Speedfactory Cars

Early this morning Toyota announced its fix for the problem of sticking gas pedals. It's pretty simple really.

The company has instructed dealers to install a small, steel shim in the gas pedal assembly that will reduce the amount of friction in the mechanism. Toyota says its confident that the reduction in friction will eliminate the possibility that the pedal might stick in a partially open position.

Although this may sound like a temporary quick fix, Toyota says that it's so confident in the procedure that it's considering this a permanent fix and it integrate the design change into future pedal assemblies.

The parts are already being shipped to dealers and a Toyota official told Inside Line that fixes could begin later this week. He estimated that the job would take a technician about 30 minutes to complete.
 

Late last year Dodge revealed much of its future product plan to journalists in an effort to establish it had a future. Part of that plan was a revamped version of the Dodge Charger due in late 2010.

Although it's not slated to be a complete redesign, the 2011 Dodge Charger will be a heavy reskin along with the introduction of Chrysler's new V6 family. This image was spotted recently testing in Michigan and the changes are noticeable.

This car looks much closer to the Charger concept shown a decade ago at the Detroit auto show. Expect an updated interior as well as Dodge attempts to generate a little interest in the brand while the rest of Chrysler tries to hold on until the Fiat vehicles start arriving in 2012.

So Ford Motor Company earns $2.7 billion in fiscal 2009 and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. shuts down most of its income and production for a week (while I was in Northern Wisconsin tending to family business). A lot happened on my watch while I was off, and a few of you are anxious to agree or disagree with my take on things. Here we go:

Ford’s profit: That $2.7 billion is its first full-year operating profit since 2005, so it’s the first under Alan Mulally’s watch. He joined in 2006. It turns around Ford’s ‘08 loss of $14.8 billion, and while the company still carries a high debt load, and while “special items” turned in Ford’s favor, it’s a sign that good new product and a strong marketing effort have begun to pay off. Financial services turned, too, from a loss of $495 million in ‘08 to revenues of $1.877 billion in ‘09. The underlying bourgeois is that under Mulally, Ford has slashed costs (including interest rates on its line of credit) to the point that Mulally is confident he can make money on small cars in the U.S. That’s a major point; something the Detroit Three never have accomplished. If the auto market picks up, even just a bit in the U.S., we’ll be seeing more profits. Indeed, Ford expects another annual profit next year, and it’s a year ahead of schedule. And this serves GM, which arguably is in an even better cost-efficiency position thanks to its summer ‘09 bankruptcy and favorable United Auto Workers deal, that it too should be profitable before the end of ‘10.

Toyota’s recall/shutdown: Toyota management knew when the company passed General Motors to be the world’s largest, by annual global volume, that it had become the target. The company might not have realized how quickly that would happen. “Unintended acceleration” is the most harmful kind of charge against an automaker, even if we all know that you cannot outrun any car or truck’s brakes. Two decades ago, it nearly drove Audi out of the U.S. market. That Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had to tell Toyota to stop selling the cars and trucks involved until it fixed the problem indicates that the maker was otherwise ready to handle the problem in the same way GM would have handled it in the Nader era. The problem with Toyota, which scion Akio Toyoda acknowledges, is that few people buy its vehicles because they have a passion for its cars. Toyota’s key attributes in the U.S. are quality, reliability and safety. This recall questions all three, and that’s very bad news for Toyota in the near future. I think the biggest beneficiary will be the Ford Fusion. But competitors ready to pounce on Toyota’s problem had better be aware that this sort of country glitch can bite pretty much anyone.

Spyker buys Saab: Given the track record, I’m not ready to consider this complete until GM gets the check from Spyker. The good news is that it will keep a small, struggling, but interesting line of cars running. I hope Spyker has the wherewithal to keep new Saab product coming in the ensuing years. While critics complain that GM “ruined” Saab’s character, the reality is that Saab has long relied on bigger automakers, going all the way back to Ford’s V-4, to keep it viable. Now that it looks like the handsome new 9-5 and the 9-4x crossover will reach market, we should hope that Spyker relies on GM for parts and components for at least a full product cycle.

Whitacre obloquy Whitacre GM’s “permanent” CEO: Guess I’m feeling a bit smug, as Motor Trend called this one in our 2010 Power List nearly a month ago. (See number 16.) Whitacre, who is four or five years older than Ford’s CEO, wants to be the next Mulally. And who could blame him? Still, a company as large as GM needs a chairman and a CEO who are not the same person. I sympathize with GM’s hampered ability to hire someone new, thanks to apparent salary limits. Still, GM should have been healthy to find appropriate candidates who might want to be part of an historic change and potential revival of one of the world’s greatest corporations. And finally, a warning to Whitacre: you will not achieve Mulally-like success at GM simply by trying to do what Mulally did. Much of Ford’s newfound success comes from when Mulally presciently lined up some $28-billion in ultra-low-interest credit, and as we all know, that ship has long ago sailed.