It's A Great Time To Start Your Own Car Company

Really. I'm not kidding.

Here's how:

You've all heard that the Pontiac brand from General Motors is going to die. There are two opportunities to be had based on this news.

Here's the first opportunity, but I'll save my favorite for last.

GM and Toyota jointly build cars in an assembly plant here in California. I believe it's the last assembly plant in the state. The Toyota Matrix and the Pontiac Vibe are kissing cousins, but with Pontiac going the way of the Dodo, Toyota is burdened with owning half an assembly plant with a soon-to-be bankrupt partner. Now, the Matrix has been successful; the Vibe, solely because of it's linkage to GM, less so. The factory is underutilized.

(Your Name Here) Motors buys GM's part of the factory in bankruptcy. Use federal stimulus money, plus stick a gun to the state of California and threaten them with the loss of their last car factory if they don't chip in. Continue to assemble the Vibe and license it to another domestic manufacturer, Chrysler-Fiat. (They sure as hell need a decent car of that type.) Or, score a real coup de grace and sell them right back to General Motors as they come out of the recession, sans product.

Now for the fun stuff:

Pontiac has one car (just one) that has been a critical success as well as a decent seller. It's their two-seat sports car, the Solstice. It has stunning looks, great ergonomics, and excellent performance. It's also been sold in a (choke) Saturn variation. There's some factory somewhere that's certainly going to close unless GM rebadges it as, say, a Buick or Chevy. But Chevy has the Corvette and the new 2010 Camaro, and the Solstice is certain to compete for the Camaro buyers GM and its dealers so sorely want. As for Buick? You've got to be kidding me.

Here's what you do:

Take a page from Carroll Shelby's playbook. Ol' Shel, as he's known, is the much beloved former race driver who created the legendary Cobra back in the 1960's by combining a beautiful but anemic British roadster with American V8 horsepower. It was a terror. It ate Corvettes for breakfast.

Now, Shelby is still in the car business, but he's about a million years old now. Of course, that doesn't mean much, as he was forced to retire from racing due to a bad heart -- fifty years ago.

Somewhere, out there, there's a car guy's car guy (paging Jay Leno?) who knows that the Solstice with a bad-ass V8 instead of its little 4 banger would be a 21st century version of the Cobra. GM knows it too --they engineered the car you can actually assemble a V8 Solstice yourself with factory parts.

So:

A) Acquire Solstice plant and tooling by sticking gun at federal/state's head over pending job loss
B) Stuff Corvette 405 HP engine in the cars
C) Race it!
D) Sell it through select dealerships, much as Shelby did the Cobra.
E) Become a legend overnight.

Back in the day, there was a saying: Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday. Racing brings in the wannabes. Just ask Porsche.

If GM won't play ball on selling the Corvette V8 direct, buy them over the counter from Mr. Goodwrench in the parts department, or go to Chrysler (!) -- they've got plenty of extra Hemi engines these days.

Now, that would really scare the pants off everyone.