What's wrong with the U.S. car industry in a nutshell

Before settling in for a day of cartoons yesterday, we caught some of CNBC's program Saving GM, which focused on the development of a new version of the old Chevrolet standby, the Camaro, for 2010. (You can watch it yourself here and here.) And it struck me how this portrayal of the money and effort that GM was spending to try to revive an old brand name from an era radically different from today was the essence of what is wrong with the U.S. car industry.

In the 1960's, when the Camaro made its appearance, it was a sporty car for people who couldn't afford a Corvette. It was a time of muscle cars, cheap gas, and plentiful jobs, and upward mobility. Today we live in a time of uncertain and volatile fuel prices, wars for oil, and a contracting economy. And instead of going full-bore with developing the next generation of transportation that does not rely on the petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine, General Motors is looking back to the 1960's and focusing on restyling an old car so they can market it as "If you just buy this car, we can turn back the clock." Swell. Yes, they have the Volt being hyped for a 2010 release, but frankly, we do not have the luxury of expending automotive R&D dollars on revamped muscle cars.

So while General Motors is trying desperately to turn back the clock to 1967, Toyota is looking way, way ahead into the future:

Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy in an effort to turn around its struggling business with a futuristic ecological car, a top business daily reported Thursday.

The Nikkei newspaper, however, said it will be years before the planned vehicle will be available on the market. Toyota's offices were closed Thursday and officials were not immediately available for comment.

According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources.

The solar car is part of efforts by Japan's top automaker to grow during hard times, The Nikkei said.

Americans have this peculiar need to have a car that's "fun to drive", though with increasing congestion on our highways, I'm not sure that there are many places left in the country where driving is "fun." And while I'll admire a cool-looking car as much as anyone (though my idea of cool-looking runs more towards this than pale imitations of 1960's muscle cars), when it's time for the rubber to hit the road, give me a fuel-efficient car that I can rely on to be on the road more than it is in the shop. Perhaps there are enough baby boomers in midlife crisis to buy this misbegotten beast that GM is betting enough of the ranch on to pay Dale Earnhardt Jr. to test-drive it. But if this is what GM's vision is for turning the company around, then we just wasted $7 billion on them.

And you can't for one minute blame this boondoggle on the UAW.